Google judges your website the way a customer would: Does it show up fast? Does it respond when I tap? Does stuff jump around while I’m reading? Those three questions are measured as three metrics — LCP, INP and CLS — and together they form your Core Web Vitals, a confirmed Google ranking factor.
LCP — “How fast does the main thing appear?”
Largest Contentful Paint measures when the biggest element — usually your hero image or headline — becomes visible. Good: under 2.5 seconds. On Indian 4G, we target under 1.5. If your LCP is 4+ seconds, a chunk of your visitors are leaving before they see your headline. Every site we ship targets under a second.
INP — “Does it respond when I tap?”
Interaction to Next Paint measures the delay between a tap and the page reacting. Heavy JavaScript — the kind page builders pile on — makes phones freeze for half a second after every tap. Users read that as “broken”. Good: under 200 milliseconds.
CLS — “Does the page jump around?”
Cumulative Layout Shift measures things moving after the page loads — you go to tap a button, an ad loads above it, and you’ve tapped the ad. Infuriating, and Google penalises it. Good: under 0.1. It’s caused by images without dimensions and late-loading embeds — both trivially fixable when the site is built properly.
Core Web Vitals aren’t a developer vanity metric. They’re Google measuring what your customers feel.
Check yours in two minutes
Open PageSpeed Insights, paste your URL, and look at the “Core Web Vitals assessment” at the top. If it says “Failed”, your rankings and your conversion rate are both taking a hit. Send us the report on WhatsApp — we’ll explain what’s causing it in plain language, free.
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