Core Vitals Are Killing Your Customers!

Not literally, of course, but is your website actually hurting your business?

In today’s business environment, it is imperative that a business has an online presence. Nowadays, a business without a website is like a business without a phone. The way people shop for goods and services is online. Like it or not, it is the way it is done. And, the impetus of online business interactions is gaining momentum. One thing worse than having no website, however, is having a bad website.

When creating and launching a website, it’s important to focus on the speed of the site. Customers are increasingly busy and have shorter attention spans. Therefore, it is crucial that websites make a positive first impression and provide quality services quickly. To get the best performance, you need to make sure that your website’s pages load quickly.

Before diving into the whys and hows, it is important to touch on a basic understanding of search engines. Search engines, particularly Google, are the lifeblood of a business website. New/potential customers will most likely use a search engine to find your website. Even existing customers will often need to search for your business because typically, a website’s address is not always imprinted in their mind or memory.

When someone types a phrase into a search engine, a list of relevant web pages is returned. This list, called a SERP (Search Engine Results Page), can contain hundreds of thousands, or more, results. For example, if you type “wall hangers” into Google, more than 1.68 MILLION web pages are contained in the SERPs. That is 1.68 million competitors for the shopper’s attention. Only the cream of the crop, the returns at the top of the SERPs, are likely to ever be seen.

You can read about one of my ranking experiments here. Purple Porcupine Pajama Pants

The conclusion, in a nutshell, is that the web pages at the top of the list have an excellent chance of attracting the shopper(s). The ones far down the list have a snowball’s chance in Miami.

So why is one web page at the top of the list, and another is on page 17,369? Who makes that call? The search engines do! That’s where core vitals comes on the scene. Google states that its search engine’s primary purpose is providing the most qualified, most optimized, most relevant, answer to a user’s search query. The happier a searcher is with the results of a search, the happier Google will be. So, Google returns SERPs that reflect what they deem will be the best user experience.

To achieve this goal, Google has a list of more than 200 indicators, which it refers to as signals. You can imagine this as a list of checkboxes with a name of a signal beside each checkbox. After analyzing a webpage, each box gets checked if the page satisfies the corresponding signal. If the box is checked, it’s a good thing, unchecked boxes are a bad thing. Not all signals carry the same weight, some signals are much more important than others.

Page speed is one of the most weighted signals. You can check yours here!It is highly important that this signal be satisfied because it has so much weight in the scoring.

Your website’s speed should be checked. It’s important to test the speed of your website on a regular basis. A website should load in 2.5 seconds. A website that takes longer than 2.5 seconds to load will be less popular with potential customers. Visitors will leave a site that takes more then three seconds to load if it is not fast enough. These statistics, while absurd, show that visitors are more likely to convert to a site that loads quickly.

Google favors websites that load quickly. Websites that load faster have higher ranking potential. A slow website frustrates users and hurts its bounce rate, which is a signal to Google that your site isn’t very good. The free Pingdom tool can be used to test your site’s speed. It can help you determine if your site is loading fast enough. By ensuring that your website’s speed meets or exceeds these standards, you can increase your website’s SEO performance.

In addition to page speed, your website should be responsive and easy to navigate. Websites that are slow can affect customer satisfaction and conversions. If your customers are not satisfied with their experience, they will be less likely to complete their transactions on your site. They will abandon your website if this happens. Slow websites can be a turning point in the lives of many visitors, and this can have a negative impact on your business. This article will teach you how to improve your website’s speed and increase your rankings.

Load times for e-commerce sites should not exceed 2 seconds. Conversion rates will drop if pages take too long to load. In addition to page speed, you should also consider the speed of mobile devices. Most mobile traffic will come from mobile devices so it is important to ensure that your website works on these devices. Slow websites will cause customers to leave, which will result in lower sales.

Websites should be fast enough for visitors to feel comfortable and welcome. A slow website can lead to bounced visitors. This is why it’s important to make your website as fast as you can, and attention to your core vitals will help achieve that. Your site will be more popular if it loads quickly. For every second of page loading time, you’ll lose 10% of your audience. The faster your site is, the more money you’ll make. The lower your core vitals score, the less potential your site will have. Your site will earn more money if more people visit it. Core vitals is really where it all starts.