Google uses Core Web Vitals as a ranking signal. If your website is slow, you're losing both visitors and search positions. Here's what you need to know.
What Are Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals are three metrics that measure real-world user experience:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) — How fast the main content loads. Target: under 2.5 seconds.
- INP (Interaction to Next Paint) — How responsive the page feels. Target: under 200ms.
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) — How stable the layout is. Target: under 0.1.
Why Should Business Owners Care?
Poor web performance directly impacts your bottom line:
- 53% of mobile users leave a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load
- A 1-second delay in page load can reduce conversions by 7%
- Google ranks faster sites higher in search results
Quick Wins for Better Performance
1. Optimize Images
Images are usually the largest assets on a page. Use modern formats like WebP, implement lazy loading, and serve responsive sizes.
2. Self-Host Fonts
Loading fonts from Google Fonts adds extra DNS lookups and network requests. Self-hosting eliminates this bottleneck.
3. Minimize JavaScript
Every kilobyte of JavaScript needs to be downloaded, parsed, and executed. Static site generation (SSG) eliminates most runtime JavaScript.
4. Use a CDN
Serve your site from edge locations close to your users. Services like Cloudflare Pages do this automatically.
How We Approach Performance
At DoubleCoded, performance is not an afterthought — it's built into our process from day one. We use Nuxt 3 with static generation, optimized images, self-hosted fonts, and edge deployment to deliver consistently fast experiences.
Want to see how your site performs? Contact us for a free performance audit.