When it comes to creating an optimized experience for your shoppers, there are many things to consider. From visual elements such as site design and page layout to behind-the-scenes things such as speed and page weight. Regardless of whether they are customer-facing or not, all of these are key factors not only for conversion but for organic search ranking.

Google has put together a set of standards that they are encouraging site owners to adopt to deliver a great user experience. These standards, or guidance, are called Core Web Vitals (CWV) and they apply to all pages within a site.

Each CWV focuses on a specific user experience and is measurable. Right now, Google is focusing on three distinct CWV – loading, interactivity, and visual stability. Each of these has specific thresholds that site owners are encouraged to be within.

As a site owner, you should be concerned about making sure you reach the desired threshold for these vitals. If your site has hundreds or even thousands of pages, it’s understandable that you won’t be able to meet the threshold on every single page for one reason or another, but the majority of pages on your site should.

The immediate impact of meeting these vitals is the obvious improvement in the customer experience. The long-term impact will create a faster web for all of us as site owners and developers work together to build and maintain sites based on meeting these guidelines.

Core Web Vitals are becoming Google’s new ranking factor. Core Web Vitals, presents an opportunity for a rankings boost — but only for those who get it right.

By defining these Core Web Vitals, Google aims to provide clear guidance on the quality signals it says are “essential to delivering a great user experience on the web.” Web page performance matters to publishers because fast pages generate more leads, more sales, and more advertising revenue.

• Google Search Console – There’s a new Core Web Vitals report in Search Console to help site owners to evaluate pages across an entire site.  The report identifies groups of pages that require attention based on real-world data from the Chrome UX report.  With this report, be aware that URLs will be omitted if they do not have a minimum amount of reporting data.
• Google PageSpeed Insights – PageSpeed Insights has been upgraded to use Lighthouse 6.0, which makes it capable of measuring Core Web Vitals in both the lab and field sections of the report.
• Lighthouse – Lighthouse is an open-source, automated tool for improving the quality of web pages.
• Chrome DevTools – Chrome DevTools is a set of web developer tools built directly into the Google Chrome browser.
• Chrome UX Report – Also referred to as CrUX, this report is a public dataset of real user experience data on millions of websites.  The Chrome UX report measures field versions of all the Core Web Vitals, which means it reports real-world data rather than lab data. Google has recently updated the report with a new Core Web Vitals landing page.
• Web Vitals Extension – An extension, available to install from the Chrome Web Store, measures the three Core Web Vitals metrics in real-time.

Using our proprietary methods used through months of experimentation and benchmarking on test sites – we’ve developed a method of decreasing load times through methods such as reducing Java Script execution, lazy loading, optimizing and compressing images, properly sizing images and more.

Over the course of three months, we will analyze and tweak your Core Web Vitals data and benchmark the results.  We’re confident in the results we can deliver for your website, you only pay us if we improve your scores!  The cost of the service is quoted on an individual site basis and must be mutually agreed upon in our service agreement.  Below are details of our service guarantee:

Core Web Vitals Website Optimization Guarantee for Shopify eCommerce Stores:
Using Google Page Insights, if we:

• Achieve or exceed a score of 80 on mobile and 90 on desktop, you will pay 100% of the agreed-upon service fee.
• Achieve a score between 80-90 on mobile and between 70-80 on desktop, you will pay 50% of the agreed-upon service fee.
• Achieve a score of 79 or less on mobile and 69 or less on desktop, all service fees will be waived and you pay nothing.

Core Web Vitals Website Optimization Guarantee for BigCommerce and Verizon Small Business Essentials:

We do not use Google Page Insight scores as the benchmark for the BigCommerce and Verizon Small Business Essentials store platforms. Instead, we guarantee:

• A Largest Contextual Paint (LCP) score in the “green” (Good) passing score range for home, category, and item pages.
• A First Input Delay (FID) score in the “green” (Good) passing score range for home, category, and item pages.
• A Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) score in the “green” (Good) passing score range for home, category, and item pages.

For each of the above metrics that achieve a passing score, you will pay a flat, mutually agreed-upon service fee.  For each of the above metrics that do not achieve a passing score, you will pay nothing.

For more information, or to schedule a consultation to discuss improving your eCommerce store’s Core Web Vitals, contact us at support@yourstorewizards.com.