Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Meaning, Score, & Practices
User experience is foremost important in a website. Thus, to ensure this, every website owner should measure their core web vitals element, including the LCP. LCP stands for large contentful paint, which measures the loading time for the largest element in the viewport.
Slow-loading websites can deter visitors, affect bounce rates, and ultimately impact a website's search engine rankings. So, in this article, you will learn about LCP, starting from its definition, score, and how to improve LCP.
The Definition of LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)?
LCP is a user-centric performance metric that measures the loading time of the largest and most visually significant element on a web page. It evaluates the time it takes for this critical element to become visible to the user.
This element is often a large image, a video, or a block of text. LCP provides insights into a user's perception of page load speed and is considered a key element of Google's Core Web Vitals.
Why is LCP Important?
LCP is essential because it directly correlates with the user experience. A fast-loading LCP contributes to a better user experience, as visitors are more likely to engage with a website that loads quickly. In contrast, a slow LCP can lead to higher bounce rates and decreased user satisfaction.
Furthermore, Google and other search engines consider page speed and user experience as ranking factors. Websites with faster LCP scores are more likely to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). As such, LCP has a direct impact on a website's visibility and, consequently, its traffic and conversions.
How LCP is Scored?
LCP is scored in seconds and measures the time it takes for the largest content element to become visible to users. Google provides specific guidelines for scoring LCP:
- Good: LCP occurs within the first 2.5 seconds of a page starting to load.
- Needs Improvement: LCP occurs between 2.5 and 4 seconds.
- Poor: LCP takes longer than 4 seconds.
To calculate LCP, Google utilizes a set of JavaScript events to monitor when a page's largest content element becomes visible. LCP is a field metric, meaning it is gathered from real user data rather than lab testing.
How to Improve The Largest Contentful Paint
Achieving a good LCP score is crucial for a website's user experience and search engine ranking. Here are some practical strategies to improve LCP:
1. Prioritize Critical Rendering Path
The critical rendering path refers to the sequence of actions browsers take to render a web page. Prioritizing the loading of essential resources (e.g., text, images, and styles) helps improve LCP.
You can use async and defer attributes in your script tags to ensure that non-essential scripts don't block the rendering of critical content. This allows the browser to continue rendering while scripts load in the background.
Let's say you have a web page with several JavaScript files. To prioritize the critical rendering path, you can modify the script tags like this:
<script src="essential-script.js" async></script>
<script src="non-essential-script.js" defer></script>
2. Minify Your Files
Minification involves reducing the size of your JavaScript, CSS, and HTML files by eliminating unnecessary characters, whitespace, and comments. Smaller file sizes lead to faster downloads and improved LCP. You can use various tools and plugins to automate this process.
3. Bring Server Closer to Users
Reducing the physical distance between your server and users can significantly impact LCP. Utilize content delivery networks (CDNs) to distribute your website's assets across multiple servers located in different geographic regions.
4. Use Caching
Browser caching stores static assets, such as images, stylesheets, and scripts, on a user's device after the first visit. This means returning visitors don't need to re-download these assets, speeding up load times.
5. Optimize JavaScript
JavaScript can significantly impact LCP if it's not optimized. Evaluate your JavaScript code for any inefficiencies or redundant functions.
Implement asynchronous loading of JavaScript files whenever possible to avoid blocking page rendering.
It's important to note that while these strategies can have a positive impact on LCP, website optimization is an ongoing process. Regularly monitor your site's performance using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse, and address issues as they arise.
You can do a comprehensive site audit through Sequence Stats and choose to use the Lightroom site audit to serve you more detailed results.
You will receive the result of your website health status plus the core web vitals score. This data is important to support the optimization for the future.
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| Picture 1 - Site Audit using Lighthouse through Sequence Stats. |
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