If you’re a web developer looking to improve the performance of your website, you’ve probably heard about Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). However, what is LCP exactly, and why is it so important?
It’s important to understand the larger context of Core Web Vitals before getting into the specifics of LCP documentation. These are a set of Google-defined criteria that are essential to providing an excellent online user experience. LCP stands out as an essential loading performance metric among them.
Every website needs to consider page loading speed, but this is especially true when discussing Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
User experience changes are mandated by Google and affect a website’s ranking. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is a new statistic that the company developed in light of this.
The main goal of this parameter is to guarantee that website visitors are happy with their experience. That includes presentation and performance in addition to content.
The visitor is likely to navigate away from the page if it takes a long time to show what it offers. This indicates to Google tat the experience could have been better.
This article will outline the LCP metric, its components, and other related information. We’ll talk about:
What is Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)?
One user experience (UX) metric is the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). It is the interval of time that passes between the browser’s start of a page’s loading and the appearance of the largest content element—a text block or image—on the screen.
Among the three indicators Google employs to evaluate a website’s performance concerning user experience (UX) is LCP. The remaining two are:
- First Input Delay (FID): the amount of time that passes before a page reacts to a user’s input.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): The amount that the page layout suddenly shifts while the page loads is measured by a concept called cumulative layout shift, or CLS.
There is a relationship between LCP, FID, and CLS; each affects the other two. For example, because the web browser cannot react to user input before the LCP element loads, a high LCP may also result in a high FID.
The metric called Largest Contentful Paint calculates how long it takes a website to load the most content—complete and interactive—on the screen for a user.
According to Google, this score only takes into account material that appears above the fold of the page—that is, stuff that can be viewed without scrolling.
Another important aspect concerns the kind of information that is taken into consideration. Only the loading times of content that is essential to the user experience are included in the statistics, which are:
How to measure it?
Certain tools and software are needed to measure the Core Web Vitals metrics, which include Interaction, Next Paint (INP), and Largest Contentful Paint (LCP).
While lab data gathers information from a simulated environment, field data is obtained from actual users and their experiences. Additionally, some technologies integrate the two forms of data to offer a more comprehensive report for website optimization.
A widely used tool for calculating LCP is Google’s PageSpeed Insights. This free application presents pertinent audits and chances for improvement to assist users in diagnosing and analyzing web performance.
LCP can be quantified in two ways:
- Straight on the spot, utilizing a technique called “field.”
- Using algorithmic performance simulations, specifically the lab mode in this case.
Different tools accelerate the process and improve measurement accuracy for each of these methods. Using the field technique first, you may apply:
- User Experience Report for Chrome;
- PageSpeed Analytics
- Search Console (report on Core Web Vitals).
The following are the most highly suggested lab instruments:
- Chrome Developer Tools.
- A lighthouse.
- TestPageWeb.
Since LCP is a Google-created statistic, it is readily accessible in all of these apps. When required, it allows for the execution of the Largest Contentful Paint test with ongoing results monitoring.
What is a Good Score?
Given the importance of metric monitoring, it is also essential to comprehend the minimal performance requirements.
Google’s algorithms place a specific requirement on page loading speed concerning the primary content. This is a decent outcome because we are talking about a maximum of 2.5 seconds
Using this illustrated meter made by the web. dev is a terrific method to keep an eye on the Largest Contentful Paint.
Maintaining a load time of less than 2.5 seconds requires regular monitoring of this parameter. It is imperative to look into the reasons and take action if a negative variance is found, growing this time.
There is a mistake with the Largest Satisfied Paint that prevents this rate from being improved. Your continued efforts will enable you to get what you want.
Largest Contentful Paint vs First Contentful Paint
LCP should not be confused with First Contentful Paint (FCP). The two measurements are extremely dissimilar.
FCP counts the time between the page loading and the first visual element (which may not be the largest) appearing on the screen, whereas LCP measures the loading time of the largest element on the page.
A web page’s level of interaction readiness can be better determined by looking at its LCP. FCP can be a little deceptive because the page’s primary content may not load first, but rather something very little, such as an empty image tag.
Both Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and First Contentful Paint (FCP) are metrics used to measure website performance, but they capture different stages of the loading process:
Since loading the largest element usually takes longer than loading the first, LCP will usually occur after FCP. Rarely, there may be an exception, such as when a user exits the page before the LCP element fully loads.
Why does it matter for SEO?
One thing to note regarding SEO and its relationship to LCP is that, according to Google, this statistic is a relevant component of Core Web Vitals.
Largest Contentful Paint is therefore an essential indicator that the algorithms consider, and websites need to perform well in it.
Google has been putting more effort into developing assessment parameters to improve user experience over the last few years, and they have all integrated Core Web Vitals.
Since LCP has to do with how quickly a page loads, it automatically affects how Google evaluates and ranks a website in the search results.
User experience is both a differentiator and an essential element of what makes a website visible on the internet. Because of this, having high-quality content, eye-catching merchandise, and smart design is insufficient.
Not only is quick website loading better for users, but it also guarantees high search engine ranking for the content.
Why Is LCP Important for Website Performance?
Today’s digital world places a premium on website performance. The user experience is an essential element of this performance and has a big influence on a website’s success. Largest Contentful Paint is one of the important criteria used to evaluate user experience (LCP).
Web developers and company owners alike must comprehend and maximize LCP. We explore why Is LCP Important for Website Performance?
Why is LCP Important?
Factors Affecting LCP
Several factors can influence the LCP of a web page:
- Server Response Time: The time it takes for the server to respond to a request can significantly impact LCP. Optimizing server performance and using a reliable hosting provider can help reduce response times.
- Resource Load Times: Images, videos, and other large elements can delay LCP if they take too long to load. Optimizing these resources by compressing images, using efficient formats, and lazy loading can improve load times.
- Client-Side Rendering: Excessive JavaScript execution on the client side can delay LCP. Minimizing and optimizing JavaScript can help speed up rendering times
- Render-Blocking Resources: CSS and JavaScript files that block the rendering of the page can also delay LCP. Ensuring that these resources are loaded efficiently and asynchronously can enhance LCP.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is a crucial metric for assessing and improving website performance. It directly affects user experience, SEO rankings, conversion rates, and bounce rates.
By understanding the factors that influence LCP and implementing best practices to optimize it, web developers and business owners can ensure their websites are both user-friendly and competitive in search rankings. In an era where users expect fast and seamless online experiences, prioritizing LCP is more important than ever.
How to Make the Largest Contentful Paint Better 11 Powerful Techniques
A low Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) score can lead to a subpar user experience because LCP is a key metric for determining how quickly a website loads pages. Poor website performance can be attributed to several common issues, such as:
- Slow resource load times and server response times
- Client-side output
- Resources that inhibit rendering
Thankfully, there are multiple approaches to resolving these problems.
Let’s examine 11 practical ways to raise the Largest Contentful Paint score on your website.
1: Make Use of a CDN
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) distributes your website’s static files across multiple servers worldwide. When a user accesses your site, the CDN delivers content from the server closest to their location, reducing latency and speeding up load times.
An excellent solution for enhancing the traffic management of your website is a content delivery network (CDN). When the origin server must handle a lot of traffic, a CDN uses other servers to help. Larger websites typically employ this technology to manage high volumes of frequent visitors.
As a result, a CDN can balance network load and enhance LCP by preventing visitor requests from waiting on the same server. This could enhance the user experience and lead to a quicker LCP score.
Additional software, such as an image CDN that optimizes and modifies picture sizes in real time, can further improve a CDN. This can enhance the speed at which content on a media-rich website loads even more quickly.
Depending on your hosting provider, there are different steps involved in setting up a CDN. In most cases, it is fairly easy. Direct cPanel CDN activation is feasible if you are utilizing ARZ Host .
This geographical proximity ensures faster delivery of images, stylesheets, and scripts, which directly impacts your LCP.
Benefits:
2: Verify Proper Image Scaling
Images that are not properly scaled can significantly slow down your page load times. Ensure that images are resized to fit their container dimensions to prevent the browser from having to resize them on the fly.
As previously stated, depending on how big they are, some pictures may make up a substantial and interesting paint element. Therefore, maintaining a high LCP score requires making sure your web pages have appropriate picture sizes.
Knowing the appropriate image size depending on the user’s device is crucial in this situation. Web pages must use responsive pictures to guarantee a high LCP score.
For example, your mobile version of the website should utilize medium-sized photos if the desktop version uses large-sized ones.
Steps to Verify Image Scaling:
3: Image Optimization
Optimizing images involves compressing them without compromising quality. This reduces the file size, making them quicker to load and thus improving LCP.
You may optimize photos on your website in other ways besides just making sure they are the correct size if you want to speed up loading times.
The process of optimizing photos in WordPress is quite simple, requiring only that you select the appropriate file format or make use of a plugin.
The most widely used programs for optimizing photos for webpages are Kraken, Imagify, and TinyPNG. For WordPress users, plugins such as Optimole, EWWW Image Optimizer, and ShortPixel are excellent choices.
Improving the LCP score is not the only benefit of picture optimization. You can potentially increase the search engine optimization (SEO) performance of your website and conserve storage space. If you use WordPress, see other strategies for enhancing your SEO.
Techniques for Image Optimization:
4: Accelerate the Response Time of the Server
The server response time is a critical factor in LCP. A slow server response delays the rendering of the page’s largest element. Optimize your server performance to ensure faster load times.
The web server response times are directly tied to how quickly your page loads. One major factor influencing loading speed is the back and forth between the server request and the user’s browser request. The round trip time (RTT) is another name for this procedure.
Ways to Improve Server Response Time:
5: Pick a Reputable Web Server Provider
Choosing a reputable web server provider ensures that you have access to robust infrastructure and support, which can significantly enhance your site’s performance and reliability.
A significant element affecting the overall performance of a website is the caliber of web hosting. Good hosting usually has tools that make managing websites easier and is set up to maximize user experience.
Thus, you can increase the perceived load speed by selecting a web hosting package that meets the needs of your website. There are many different hosting services available from ARZ Host to suit different requirements and tastes.
For example, our WordPress hosting packages have been specially adjusted to maximize the potential of the CMS and guarantee quicker loading times. Additionally, the service offers an easy-to-use control panel to minimize the hassles associated with web management.
Considerations:
6: Put Caching into Practice
Caching stores frequently accessed data in a temporary storage area, reducing the time it takes to retrieve it. Implementing caching can drastically improve your LCP by speeding up resource delivery.
Static page elements are kept in temporary storage through a process known as caching. This minimizes the amount of data delivered during the initial rendering step, enabling faster page loads. Server-side caching and browser caching are the two primary types of caching techniques.
Visitors can store cache in their local storage by utilizing browser caching. They won’t need to download the same information when they visit your website again as a result. Plugins or manual methods are also available for enabling browser caching.
However, one way to store a pre-made version of a web page on the origin server is through server-side caching. When a user returns to the website, the server doesn’t need to rebuild or load the page content from the database thanks to this technique.
LiteSpeed is one of the most widely used programs for enabling website caching. Along with other helpful features like HTTP load balancing and dynamic content optimization, it has sophisticated caching capabilities.
Types of Caching:
7: Address Lazy Loading Problems
Lazy loading delays the loading of non-essential images and iframes until they are needed. However, improper implementation can cause delays in loading crucial elements, affecting LCP.
A page can use the lazy loading technique to postpone loading non-essential CSS and other resources until after it has first rendered. To speed up the page load time, it will instead concentrate on loading material that is above the fold and render non-critical resources only when necessary.
Depending on how far away the files are from the viewport, your website can load them asynchronously using this technique.
For example, during the initial loading, information that is rendered above the fold, such as a featured image, will appear quickly. But outside of the viewport, components like video thumbnails are replaced with placeholder pictures that viewers must navigate through.
Solutions:
However, for a variety of reasons, slow loading can occasionally make the LCP score worse. A website may receive a lower LCP score, for example, if it uses native lazy loading and all of its images follow the lazy loading behavior.
Just apply the property loading=”eager” to the hero or featured picture that might be chosen as the Most Contentful Paint element to resolve this problem. Regardless of how far away the image element is from the viewport, this method enables instantaneous rendering.
JavaScript lazy loading approaches are also vulnerable to this. The browser may take longer to load and receive a lower LCP score if JavaScript needs to be executed before an element can be displayed.
Turning off lazy loading for images produced above the fold is the best way to solve this issue. Because of this, browsers will load them without requiring JavaScript to be run beforehand.
8: Minify Your HTML, CSS, and JS Files
Minification removes unnecessary characters (like spaces and comments) from code files, reducing their size and improving load times. This results in faster rendering and a better LCP.
One way to reduce the size of a file is to minify it, which primarily involves removing lines of code from the file. One of the most popular techniques for file optimization that can raise your LCP metric is this one.
Certain essential files, such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, may include a lot of unnecessary white space in the code, which increases the file size. When they accumulate, even though they might not appear important individually, they can negatively impact site performance.
Owners of websites can use WordPress plugins or manually minify CSS, HTML, and JS files. WordPress Super Minify and Fast Velocity Minify are two of the most widely used minifying plugins.
Minification Tools:
Remember to review the Core Web Vitals report afterward. In the event that you missed any minification options, tools such as PageSpeed Insights can provide you with more.
9: Remove CSS and JavaScript Render-Blocking
Render-blocking resources delay the rendering of a web page. By eliminating or deferring these resources, you can speed up the loading of the largest contentful element.
File components known as render-blocking resources have the potential to cause page loading times to increase. JS and CSS files are usually where you may find this. These resources may result in page elements loading more slowly simultaneously, creating the appearance of a poorly performing website.
For this reason, getting rid of JavaScript and CSS that block rendering should be your priority if you want a better Core Web Vitals report. This gives you the option to use progressive loading, which could lower the bounce rate.
You can more effectively remove render-blocking resources with the aid of some WordPress plugins. W3 Total Cache, Autoptimize, and Speed Booster Pack are a few of these.
Techniques:
Don’t forget to review the recommendations provided by your lab tools regarding which non-essential CSS or JS files you should remove.
10: Reduce the Size of Text Files
Large text files, such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, can slow down your LCP. Compressing these files can reduce load times.
Compressing can be a useful technique to optimize text resources like CSS, HTML, and JavaScript in addition to minification. Because of the decreased file size, this can speed up the transfer process and improve the LCP score.
GZIP, a type of lossless compression, is one of the most widely used techniques for text resource compression. This indicates that throughout the compression process, all of the data within the file will be preserved.
Website owners can use free web compression services like gzip.swimburger.net or WordPress plugins like WP Rocket to allow GZIP compression. Remember that some web hosts additionally activate GZIP by default.
Compression Methods:
11: Postpone Parsing JavaScript
Parsing JavaScript can delay the rendering of important page elements. By deferring non-essential JavaScript, you can ensure that critical content loads first.
Although a web browser normally loads codes from top to bottom, JavaScript will load first and take precedence. This could make it take longer for pages to load and make the user experience worse.
Deferring the parsing of JavaScript entails changing the page such that any non-essential JavaScript code is processed later. By using this technique, the browser may focus on loading the content of the page more quickly while capturing users’ attention.
You can use programs like WP Rocket or Speed Booster Pack, or you can manually change the function.php file to delay parsing JavaScript on your page.
Methods:
Optimizing your Largest Contentful Paint is essential for enhancing your website’s performance and user experience. By implementing these 11 powerful techniques, you can ensure that your site’s largest visible content loads quickly, keeping visitors engaged and satisfied.
From using a CDN and optimizing images to minimizing file sizes and addressing lazy loading issues, each step plays a crucial role in achieving a faster and more efficient web presence.
Conclusion
One of the Core Web Vitals measures, Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), indicates how quickly a web page loads its largest content. This important user-centric parameter influences both the overall user experience and load speed.
With any luck, this post helped you in raising your Largest Contentful Paint rating. Please post a comment below if you have any further advice or inquiries on this subject.
FAQS (Frequently Asked Questions)
1: What is Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)?
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is a performance metric that measures the time it takes for the largest visible element (typically an image or a text block) on a webpage to become visible within the user’s viewport. It is a key indicator of perceived load speed and user experience, as it helps determine when the main content of the page is fully rendered and available for interaction.
2: Why is LCP important for web performance?
LCP is crucial because it directly impacts user experience. A fast LCP ensures that users see meaningful content quickly, reducing the likelihood of them leaving the page due to slow loading times. Google also considers LCP as part of its Core Web Vitals, which are metrics used to evaluate and rank websites in search results. Therefore, a good LCP score can improve both user satisfaction and search engine rankings.
3: What are common causes of poor LCP scores?
Several factors can contribute to poor LCP scores, including:
- Slow server response times
- Render-blocking JavaScript and CSS
- Slow resource load times, particularly for large images and videos
- Client-side rendering issues
- Non-optimized web fonts
Addressing these issues involves optimizing server performance, minimizing render-blocking resources, optimizing images and other media, and improving client-side rendering efficiency.
4: How can I measure LCP on my website?
LCP can be measured using various tools:
- Google PageSpeed Insights: Provides an overview of your website’s performance, including LCP.
- Lighthouse: A tool integrated into Chrome DevTools that offers detailed insights into web performance.
- Web Vitals Chrome Extension: A browser extension that measures Core Web Vitals, including LCP, in real-time.
- Field Data: Tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics can provide real user metrics (RUM) for LCP based on actual user experiences.
5: What are the recommended LCP thresholds for good performance?
To provide a good user experience, Google recommends the following LCP thresholds
- Good: LCP within 2.5 seconds
- Needs Improvement: LCP between 2.5 and 4.0 seconds
- Poor: LCP greater than 4.0 seconds
Aiming for an LCP of 2.5 seconds or less ensures that the main content loads quickly, enhancing user satisfaction and improving your site’s search engine rankings.
