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Core Web Vitals for Insurance Websites: Why Speed and UX Matter

What Are Core Web Vitals?

Core web vitals metrics measure a website’s loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability, mimicking a real-world experience. Google uses Core Web Vitals to help site owners improve the performance of their websites by measuring page experience signals. Core web vitals metrics are tangible and trackable. If your website has good core web vitals, it will succeed at providing a good user experience. In this blog, we will give you everything you need about core web vital metrics, why they matter for your website, and how to optimize them.

 

What are the Core Web Vitals Metrics?

Understanding core web vitals is essential to be able to track your website’s performance issues and solve them, optimizing your website to provide the best user experience. Core Web Vitals consist of three primary metrics: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint (INP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

Largest contentful paint, or LCP, is a metric that measures the loading speed of the largest content block or visual element on the page. A good LCP score to aim for is 2.5 seconds or less.

Interaction to Next Paint (INP)

This metric replaced First Input Delay (FID) as of March 2024. Interaction to next paint or INP measures the speed of responsiveness and interactivity of your website. It starts measuring from the moment the user interacts until the browser responds. An interaction could be clicking a button, opening a navigation menu, or choosing a menu option. You should aim for a score of 200 milliseconds or less.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

CLS calculates the visual stability of your website. It measures unexpected layout shifts happening while the user is browsing. If the elements on your page move around while the page is loading, that is considered bad as it provides a poor user experience. A good score to aim for is less than 0.1.

These are the core web vitals metrics. The other web vitals mentioned next are considered separately, but are worth knowing as well.

First Contentful Paint (FCP)

FCP measures the duration it takes for a web page to start loading until it displays the first piece of content, which could be text, background images, or any other elements. You should aim for a speed of 900 milliseconds or less.

Time to Interactive (TTI)

TTI measures the speed, starting from when the page starts loading until the most important sub-resources, like third-party resources, are loaded, and the page can respond quickly to user input. A good speed for TTI is 2400 milliseconds.

Total Blocking Time (TBT)

TBT measures the time between First Contentful Paint and the Time to Interactive. It helps measure the delays in the browser’s reactions. The TBT speed should be less than 300 milliseconds.

 

 

The Importance: Do Core Web Vitals Affect SEO?

Google confirmed that, yes, core web vitals highly impact search engine optimization (SEO). It is less mysterious compared to other ranking factors and can help you find out the most efficient ways to help search engines crawl your website. They are a ranking factor.

Page experience is a site’s search ranking factor in Google Search results. It utilizes Core Web Vitals to determine how your website performs relative to other sites. If your website scores low in Core Web Vitals, it will get less organic traffic. Creating relevant content is paramount for SEO, but if two pages have a similar quality of content, Core Web Vitals can act as a tie-breaker between them.

Improving Core Web Vitals scores may yield gradual Google search ranking benefits, even if thresholds are not fully met. However, to achieve the biggest ranking boost, 75% of users need to have a ‘Good’ experience across all three Core Web Vitals metrics.

 

How Does Google Measure Core Web Vitals?

Google uses field data, which is known as RUM or real user monitoring, and lab data. Field data uses actual user experience to capture the website performance, while lab data is collected in a controlled environment, using scripts simulating user behavior on the website. Google’s data uses a 28-day sliding window to assess Core Web Vitals performance for ranking.

Both field data and lab data have their advantages and drawbacks. Field data provides a realistic view of user interactions under various circumstances, as it reflects real user experiences and is collected from users of the Chrome browser, but it may not be available for websites with low traffic or ones that don’t meet threshold criteria. On the other hand, while lab data helps developers predict performance issues before launching the web pages, they don’t reflect real-world experience, taking into account the variables like different devices or network issues.

Google only considers the Core Web Vitals field data when ranking your site, ignoring Lighthouse scores.

 

What Google Tools Can Measure Core Web Vitals?

  • Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX): Google uses the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) to determine how well a website performs regarding Core Web Vitals using real-world user data. The Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) is the official dataset of Google’s Core Web Vitals program.
  • PageSpeed Insights: PageSpeed Insights is a user-friendly tool that reports Core Web Vitals and provides actionable recommendations to improve them.
  • Google Lighthouse: Lighthouse is a tool developed by Google that measures the quality of web pages, whether public or requiring authentication.
  • Chrome DevTools is an analysis tool that provides detailed insights, including a performance panel for debugging and optimization.
  • Google Search Console: Provides a report that identifies pages with poor user experience.
  • Web Vitals API: is a tool that allows developers to collect and measure core web vitals metrics directly using JavaScript.

 

How to Make Core Web Vitals Improvements for Your Website

Optimizing core web vitals has great SEO benefits for your website and provides a critical user-centric outcome. Next, we go over how to enhance each of the three websites’ core web vitals.

 

How to Improve Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

40% of websites fall behind the recommended LCP threshold for good user experience. It’s the one metric that a lot of developers struggle with.

Use the fetchpriority Feature

Whee a browswer is parsing a web page, it assigns priority to each resource, be it an image, script, ot CSS, to download it in the best order. With the Fetch Priority API and fetchpriority HTML attribute, you can control that. It allows you to hint at a resource’s relative priority, whether high, medium, or low. When you boost the LCP resource’s priority to high by applying fetchpriority=high, the LCP element will load faster.

It’s important to note that elements dynamically inserted via JavaScript can’t be assigned priority, and techniques like using the data-src attribute instead of the standard src attribute aren’t allowed. Moreover, the technique is most effective for sites where the LCP element is consistent for different visitors.

 

Shorten request chains

To load a webpage, the browser has to make a sequence of network requests that are known are request chains. The browser requests various resources, like HTML, CC, JavaScript, images, and fonts. Then, these resources request additional resources, forming something called a chain of dependencies, where one resource depends on another to be fully loaded. Having a long chain of elements that need critical resources to load causes a latency. Shortening these chains can improve the loading speed.

To shorten request chains:

  1. Inline critical CC directly within the HTML. This way, you eliminate the need for the browser to make an additional request.
  2. Reduce the number of dependencies by combining files or removing them if they are unnecessary.
  3. Use rel=preload to signal the browser to fetch critical resources faster.
  4. Optimize third-party scripts to ensure they are loaded asynchronously. You can also optimize them to get deferred if they aren’t critical to the page’s initial rendering.
  5. Refer to the first optimization method of prioritizing some resources using fetchpriority.

 

Avoid Redundant Server Connections

When your page loads content, like the main document, from example.com but pulls the largest image (LCP) from image-cdn.com, the browser must first set up a new connection to that second server. This isn’t instant, as it involves several steps:

  1. DNS Lookup – Find the server’s IP address.
  2. TCP Handshake – Set up the connection between the browser and server.
  3. SSL/TLS Handshake (for HTTPS) – Secure the connection.

Each of these steps takes time and delays the start of downloading the image.

By reusing an existing connection, the browser can skip this setup and start downloading right away. This is why it’s best to keep critical resources, like your LCP image, on the same server.

 

How to Optimize for Core Web Vitals

  • Serve important resources (like LCP images) from the same domain as the main page.
  • Use HTTP/2, which lets multiple requests share one connection.
  • Host third-party resources locally when possible.
  • Remove unnecessary third-party tools that add extra DNS lookups.
  • Take advantage of DNS caching so repeat visits are faster.

 

Don’t lazy load LCP elements

While a powerful web performance optimization technique, Lazy loading should be used sparingly. It does magic on JavaScript files, but could negatively impact your LCP score. For example, if the main hero image, which is an LCP element, is lazyploaded, users might see empty space or a placeholder until they scroll to trigger the load. Not only does this delay cause the LCP score to go down, but it also may contribute to a high bounce rate. Instead, you could use hints like rel=preload or fetchpriority to load your LCP elements as soon as possible.

 

 

How to Improve Cumulative Layout Shift

If your CLS isn’t optimized, user interactions might become frustrating, especially when users click on the wrong buttons by mistake. Here’s how to optimize Cumulative Layout Shift.

 

Fine-tune the fallback font

We recommend using font face descriptors to make the fallback font match the web font and reduce unexpected layout shifts.

Here is how:

  • Use size-adjust to scale the fallback font to match the x-height of the web font, which helps reduce visual discrepancies when switching between the two.
  • Use Ascent-override, which allows you to use a custom ascent metric for the fallback font to align its height closer to the web font’s height.
  • Use descent-override to set a custom descent metric for the fallback font. That way, it ensures its descent aligns more accurately with the descent of the web font, reducing layout shifts.

 

Avoid lazy loading above-the-fold CSS

Some themes typically break up some of the CSS into files that are section-specific and add the CSS link within the section. As a result, the browser treats the CSS as render-blocking, causing unstyled or semi-style flashes. Layout shifts happen as a result. To fix that, you should analyze and simplify your code using a tool like WebPageTest.

Reserve Space for Lazy-Loaded Images

Lazy-loading off-screen images is a known strategy. It boosts the page’s performance, actual and received. However, to maintain a fast initial loading and smooth user experience, you need enough space for the lazy-loading images.

Visitors usually skim through the pages and scroll down fast, and if they do so before the image gets a chance to load, the content might shift.

 

How to Improve Interaction to Next Paint

Back when FID changed to INP, nearly 600,000 websites failed core web vitals. That meant the websites needed more work to optimize web performance. Next are some strategies for INP.

Reduce DOM Size

A large DOM slows down performance because the browser has to process and render more elements. Keeping the DOM lean improves INP (Interaction to Next Paint) and overall responsiveness.

Key Techniques:

  1. Use Document Fragments – Batch multiple element updates into a fragment and insert them all at once to reduce re-renders.
  2. Simplify CSS Selectors – Keep selectors concise and straightforward so the browser can apply styles more efficiently.
  3. Use content-visibility for Off-Screen Elements – Defer rendering of elements not in view (e.g., comments, long articles) so the browser focuses on visible content first.

This results in faster rendering, reduced main thread workload, and a smoother user experience.

Remove unused plugins

Experts often recommend removing unused plugins for web performance optimization. Not only does it improve the site’s interactivity and INP score, but it also boosts the website’s performance and core web vitals. Plugins significantly add to loading time.

Reduce the Number of Ads

Running ads is a common monetization strategy, but ads are complex and resource-intensive. A page with numerous ads becomes slower due to the high demand they place on resources.

The effect is massively seen on mobile devices because of their limited processing power and memory in comparison to desktop devices.

We’re not saying you should eliminate all ads, but removing some of them can strike a good balance between monetization and the website’s performance. Or else, a high bounce rate can end up costing you more than the ad’s income.

 

 

Core Web Vitals-FAQs

 

Why are Core Web Vitals important for Search Engine Rankings?

Core Web Vitals help website owners diagnose performance issues and measure how sites perform during real user interactions, even on a throttled network connection. Since Google’s ranking system values user experience signals like site speed and page stability, optimizing these metrics leads to better web performance, an engaging user experience, and higher visibility in search engine results and Google rankings.

How does Google’s experience ranking system affect a site’s ranking?

Google’s experience ranking system uses page experience ranking signals to evaluate a site’s usability. Factors like load speed, visual stability, and interactivity directly influence a site’s ranking in search results. Strong field data scores show that real visitors are having a positive experience, which can boost your SEO score.

Why do Core Web Vitals matter for iPhone users?

For iPhone users, smooth browsing depends on quick load times, stable layouts, and fast responsiveness. Since Google’s page experience ranking relies on exact element measures of performance, improving site performance ensures that mobile users enjoy a seamless visit, helping strengthen your SEO score.

What’s the difference between lab tests and field data scores in measuring a site’s performance?

Lab tests simulate user events under controlled conditions, giving insight into potential issues. Field data scores, however, come from real visitors and reflect actual page experience ranking signals. Both are valuable, but Google prioritizes field data when assessing site performance and determining a site’s ranking.

Which exact elements matter most for SEO score and site performance?

Google looks at exact element measures like load speed, interactivity, and visual stability to judge a site’s page experience ranking. Improving these metrics enhances site performance, raises your SEO score, and helps secure better positions in search results.