E-commerce Search Engine Optimization Services: The Power of Core Web Vitals

Importance of Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are like a report card for how well a website or store performs, especially in terms of speed and user experience. Google uses these metrics as part of its algorithm to influence the ranking of pages in search results. The data for Core Web Vitals comes primarily from the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX), which provides real-world insights into how users experience different websites in the Chrome browser. These metrics focus on key user-centric indicators such as loading performance, interactivity and visual stability to help site owners navigate for the overall betterment of user experience.

Google doesn’t rely exclusively on Core Web Vitals; they also consider user interaction signals to measure the relevance and quality. This includes how users navigate the site such as how many pages they click on, how long they stay on each page and whether they leave quickly. If users spend a significant amount of time on a page, it indicates that the content is valuable and engaging. On the contrary, if users leave quickly, it suggests that the content did not meet their expectations resulting in higher bounce rate.

All of the mentioned factors are part of E-commerce SEO success, as they impact how well your site ranks for specific keywords. It’s obvious that higher ranking will help increase organic website traffic, meaning more people finding your site through search engines. By focusing on Core Web Vitals optimization, you can improve your site's performance and make it more appealing to both users and search engines, ultimately leading to increased conversions.

Look at that. Isn’t it worth having a higher position in search results?

Main pillars of Core Web Vitals

Google shares openly that to provide a good user experience, your website needs to aim to perform well at the 75th percentile for both mobile and desktop users. This means that it should meet recommended standards for key performance metrics for at least 75% of your visitors on all subpages. It’s worth keeping in mind that not all of the metrics are “mandatory” to pass the assessment, however you shouldn’t neglect them in the long run, especially TTFB. As of 2024, the main three pillars of Core Web Vitals are:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Which measures loading performance. It reports the render time of the largest content element that is visible within the viewport. An ideal LCP is 2.5 seconds or faster.

Interaction to Next Paint (INP): Which gauges interactivity. It reports the overall responsiveness to user interactions, as measured by the longest time from an interaction until the next frame is presented with visual feedback, ignoring outliers. Aim for an INP of 100 milliseconds or less.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Which assesses visual stability. It measures the sum total of all individual layout shift scores for every unexpected layout shift that occurs during the entire lifespan of the page. Keep CLS under 0.1 for a smooth experience.

What are the Benefits of Core Web Vitals optimization?

ORGANIC TRAFFIC

Based on our up-to-date optimizations, when your store will finally pass the CWV assessment on both Desktop and Mobile devices, you will be able to notice an increase in organic Google clicks due to keyword rankings improving by at least a few positions on average. This of course leads to a better organic conversion rate, increases in revenue and finally more valuable visitors. On top of all that, your store will load faster, cutting load times by several seconds and your bounce rate - the rate at which visitors leave quickly - will decrease, this helps keep people on your site longer. Easy, as it is.

PAID TRAFFIC

Not so obvious benefit, which we are in the process of more thorough mapping out, is the impact of passing CWV on Paid Ads. Having good Core Web Vitals will improve your PPC results. Looking from a less technical angle, the better the landing page experience the bigger is your quality score, which affects your ad's position and how much you need to bid. We have seen cases where improving the technical side of a website led to a minimum 5% drop in cost per click (CPC). Lastly, a faster page can help with your automated bidding strategy to work even better.

What opportunities are there for your e-commerce?

Based on our most recent projects, here are the real-life results we’ve seen with Hatimeria’s Core Web Vitals optimization services:

• 4x more Google clicks
• 600% revenue increase
• 24% increase in views
• Hundreds more customers every week

Mekster passed INP

Source: Mekster's Google Search Console, Desktop

Who is able to optimize your store’s Core Web Vitals?

While any developer should be able to take care of Core Web Vitals optimization, not all developers know where to look and what should be tweaked for maximum efficiency and time invested. Whether it is Magento, Shopify, Optimizely, PWA or Headless applications it’s worth mentioning that the proper knowledge comes from hands-on experience in the framework you are using. Don’t shoot blindly.

Due to the CWV collecting data based on 28-days period of users interactions, you could see the first results after a minimum of 1-2 months. It’s totally worth it, but do you really want to wait 4, 5 months or a year?

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