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I genuinely don't understand all these Core Web Vital optimisation things - do people really care if a site takes 3 seconds to load instead of 1 second? All the

I genuinely don't understand all these Core Web Vital optimisation things - do people really care if a site takes 3 seconds to load instead of 1 second? All these little "use this tag with this attribute and only when halfway down a page" or whatever, is just ... odd to me. It seems to be a very specific thing for very specific sites, to squeeze out a small performance increase, which could be cancelled out by any number of factors anyway. For instance, the /only/ thing I did for our work site was to strip down the JS/CSS to what is actually needed, compress the images (and serve webp as well) ... and that was it. The same as I've been doing for 20 years. And according to https://pagespeed.web.dev https://pagespeed.web.dev it gets a 98% of desktop and 92% on mobile. The one I /am/ down for, is not having the site load 10mb+ of assets to just look at a couple of images and text! (I'm looking at you, Wix and others) - that is just insane! If the site hasn't loaded any content I can read after 5 seconds or so, I'm gonna hit refresh and give it another go, 5 more seconds and I'll close it out and either come back later or just move on - but maybe thats because I remember 28kbps internet, or maybe Im just mellowing with age :) I guess there must be a use for all these things, but I personally can't see where the reward is > than effort

dazc 5y ago
If you are a solo developer you are going to be inundated with complaints from clients who've recently discovered their pagespeed score is only 97%. They will be particularly aggrieved that the Google are saying their FCP and CLS are in need of serious attention, despite not having the first clue what this actually means. Joking aside, layout shift can be a tad annoying.
onion2k 5y ago
do people really care if a site takes 3 seconds to load instead of 1 second? Yes. It has a measurable, statistically significant impact on sales. It's reported by users. It's even an issue for you because you say "If the site hasn't loaded any content I can read after 5 seconds or so..." I doubt you're measuring that. You're using a gut feel, finger in the air measure of 5 seconds. A "This site feels slow!" judgement. For a lot of people their threshold is 3s rather than 5s. That's compounded if the site is something you'd load several times a day. the /only/ thing I did for our work site was to strip down the JS/CSS to what is actually needed, compress the images (and serve webp as well) ... and that was it. That's a lot more than many devs would do if CWV or Lighthouse wasn't giving them a number to judge their effort by. It's all you really need to do for most sites. HTML and CSS are fast. It's only once you move into web apps and super-highend complex brochure sites that the advice from sites like csswizardry starts to be useful. Most people would get a site to load faster just be stripping out the things they don't need. If they aren't doing that but they are following the advice in an article like this one, and it makes their site faster anyway, that's still a win for the users.
dewey 5y ago
Unlike a lot of SEO ranking factors this one is actually one that not only benefits SEO efforts but also the actual user as it values the right things that also aid accessibility in the process. - Faster loading times - Less shifting of the layout while the website is loading - Better behavior for users with slow connections
shalmanese 5y ago
Try modifying a staging version of your site to add a sleep(3000) to the start of every page and browse around for a bit. Especially if it's a site where you need to do 4 or 5 interactions to do a certain thing. Everything just feels ponderous and weighty and like it takes a lot more cognitive load to work on it.
fuzzy2 5y ago
I care, yes. Subconsciously for sure, but also consciously. I really do appreciate fast web sites. And from your post, so do you! Most unpleasantly slow sites I encounter aren’t slow because they’re 10 MiB or whatever. They’re slow because it takes multiple seconds before a connection is even established and/or the bytes roll in. It’s 2022. Unless hosting on solar power, that’s not acceptable. I think the web vitals stuff is awesome anyway, if only in bringing attention to the topic. I have some (junior-y) colleagues who simply do not care at all. Hundreds of requests, images popping in late, fonts being requested dozens of times, layout shifts. They need to learn that this is important. Also, the clients. They need to learn this is important, too.
rob74 5y ago
Just look at the name "Core Web Vital" - I thought "vital" was already as important as it gets (I mean, the name implies that you are dead without it), but apparently there are "core vitals" and, er, less important vitals... That aside, the article sounds suspiciously like management techniques that define "important" metrics and then optimize for those metrics (while neglecting everything else).
chrisweekly 5y ago
Yes performance matters. See https://wpostats.com https://wpostats.com for some details.

dazc 5y ago

If you are a solo developer you are going to be inundated with complaints from clients who've recently discovered their pagespeed score is only 97%. They will be particularly aggrieved that the Google are saying their FCP and CLS are in need of serious attention, despite not having the first clue what this actually means. Joking aside, layout shift can be a tad annoying.

onion2k 5y ago

do people really care if a site takes 3 seconds to load instead of 1 second? Yes. It has a measurable, statistically significant impact on sales. It's reported by users. It's even an issue for you because you say "If the site hasn't loaded any content I can read after 5 seconds or so..." I doubt you're measuring that. You're using a gut feel, finger in the air measure of 5 seconds. A "This site feels slow!" judgement. For a lot of people their threshold is 3s rather than 5s. That's compounded if the site is something you'd load several times a day. the /only/ thing I did for our work site was to strip down the JS/CSS to what is actually needed, compress the images (and serve webp as well) ... and that was it. That's a lot more than many devs would do if CWV or Lighthouse wasn't giving them a number to judge their effort by. It's all you really need to do for most sites. HTML and CSS are fast. It's only once you move into web apps and super-highend complex brochure sites that the advice from sites like csswizardry starts to be useful. Most people would get a site to load faster just be stripping out the things they don't need. If they aren't doing that but they are following the advice in an article like this one, and it makes their site faster anyway, that's still a win for the users.

dewey 5y ago

Unlike a lot of SEO ranking factors this one is actually one that not only benefits SEO efforts but also the actual user as it values the right things that also aid accessibility in the process. - Faster loading times - Less shifting of the layout while the website is loading - Better behavior for users with slow connections

shalmanese 5y ago

Try modifying a staging version of your site to add a sleep(3000) to the start of every page and browse around for a bit. Especially if it's a site where you need to do 4 or 5 interactions to do a certain thing. Everything just feels ponderous and weighty and like it takes a lot more cognitive load to work on it.

fuzzy2 5y ago

I care, yes. Subconsciously for sure, but also consciously. I really do appreciate fast web sites. And from your post, so do you! Most unpleasantly slow sites I encounter aren’t slow because they’re 10 MiB or whatever. They’re slow because it takes multiple seconds before a connection is even established and/or the bytes roll in. It’s 2022. Unless hosting on solar power, that’s not acceptable. I think the web vitals stuff is awesome anyway, if only in bringing attention to the topic. I have some (junior-y) colleagues who simply do not care at all. Hundreds of requests, images popping in late, fonts being requested dozens of times, layout shifts. They need to learn that this is important. Also, the clients. They need to learn this is important, too.

rob74 5y ago

Just look at the name "Core Web Vital" - I thought "vital" was already as important as it gets (I mean, the name implies that you are dead without it), but apparently there are "core vitals" and, er, less important vitals... That aside, the article sounds suspiciously like management techniques that define "important" metrics and then optimize for those metrics (while neglecting everything else).

chrisweekly 5y ago

Yes performance matters. See https://wpostats.com https://wpostats.com for some details.