Performance & SEO
How to Improve Website Speed and Core Web Vitals
Practical steps to make a business website faster: image optimisation, fewer scripts, caching, fonts and hosting, measured against Google's Core Web Vitals.
A fast website feels more trustworthy, keeps visitors on the page and is easier for search engines to crawl. Google measures real-user experience with three Core Web Vitals, and they are a good practical target for any business site.
The three numbers
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): how quickly the main content appears. Good is within 2.5 seconds.
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP): how quickly the page responds to a tap or click. Good is within 200 milliseconds.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): how much the page jumps while loading. Good is below 0.1.
You can see these figures for your site in Google Search Console and in PageSpeed Insights.
Images are usually the biggest win
Serve images at the size they are displayed, in modern formats such as WebP or AVIF, and compress them. Load images below the fold lazily, but load the main hero image straight away. Always set width and height so the page does not jump.
Load fewer scripts
Every chat widget, tracker and slider adds code the phone must download and run. Remove scripts you do not use, load the rest after the main content, and avoid large libraries for small effects.
Fonts without the wait
Use only the font weights you need, host them with the site where possible, and use font-display: swap so text appears immediately. Load language-specific fonts, such as an Arabic font, only on the pages that use them.
Caching and compression
Static files such as images, stylesheets and scripts can be cached by the browser for a long time, with a version number in the file name or address so updates are picked up. Enable compression on the server for text files.
Hosting that fits the audience
A server close to your visitors, a current version of the programming language and enough memory all reduce the time to the first byte. For audiences in both India and the Gulf, a content delivery network can serve static files from nearby locations.
Measure, change one thing, measure again
Record your scores, make one improvement at a time and measure again. Field data in Search Console updates over several weeks, so be patient and track the trend rather than a single test.
