WordPress Speed (and how it Impacts Core Web Vitals)

Struggling with WordPress speed and trying to get a grasp on the intersection of Core Web Vitals and WordPress performance? You’ve come to the right place. In this guide I’ll explain the difference between WordPress speed and Core Web Vitals, what Core Web Vitals are, as well as common issues and misconceptions related to these performance measurements.

Let’s start with a quick story.

Poor WordPress Speed is Expensive

As a remote worker it takes me exactly 37 seconds to walk from my upstairs bedroom to my downstairs office to begin my work day. Imagine if during my morning “commute”, I lost $435.

That’s the real life story of my good friend Eric. Eric owns a very successful eCommerce business selling health supplements and other items to make people’s bodies feel good. And Eric had a problem. Eric was investing many thousands of dollars into advertising every month. But because his WooCommerce store was too slow, people were hitting the product page, adding their items to the cart, and then while they waited for the cart page to load, they left and never returned.

We noticed this pattern over and over again during peak traffic hours. Eric was losing at least 1 customer every 10 seconds. Each customer had an average order size of $75. SiteCare helped Eric address the slow-loading cart page and revenues increased substantially.

WordPress speed may not be as important to everyone as it was to Eric. That said, the reality is that millions of WordPress website owners are losing opportunities to showcase their work, sell products, capture leads, and tell their stories because their website is too slow or hard to use.

WordPress Speed and Core Web Vitals – What’s the Difference?

WordPress Speed is simple. It really only asks one question: How long does it take for each page of a website to load? When you hear web consultants talk about how “every page should load in under 3 seconds”, ultimately that’s referring to WordPress or website speed.

The measurement of time between when a link is clicked to when the destination is fully-loaded is called Fully Loaded Time.

In the world of the Fast & Furious’ Dom Toretto, WordPress speed is the quarter-mile finish line.

Google Core Web Vitals, however, introduces more nuance and measure more specific components of what Google calls “Page Experience.”

How fast things happen on a website are certainly a factor, but they aren’t the only factor. Core Web Vitals measures a blend of performance, interactivity, and overall user experience.

Core Web Vitals are what I imagine a post-stay survey at the Four Seasons would entail: comprehensive measurement of every facet of the experience.

Introduction to Core Web Vitals

This is Google’s own definition of Core Web Vitals:

Core Web Vitals are the subset of Web Vitals that apply to all web pages, should be measured by all site owners, and are surfaced across all Google tools. Each of the Core Web Vitals represents a distinct facet of the user experience, is measurable in the field, and reflects the real-world experience of a critical user-centric outcome.

Put much more simply: Core Web Vitals measure how fast a page loads its main content, how quickly it responds to user actions, and how stable it is as it loads. These metrics give site owners a clear picture of how real people experience their website’s performance.

Core Web Vitals consists of three key measures, each of which has their own name, accompanying acronym, and threshold.

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – LCP is the amount of time it takes for Google to load the main element, or piece of content, on the web page.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – CLS measures how much a page’s layout shifts unexpectedly as it loads.
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP) – INP tracks how long it takes for the screen to visually respond after you interact with a webpage (like clicking a link or button).

And here are the thresholds for each of these measurements:

Core Web Vitals have three possible scores:

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