How To Improve The Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) WordPress?

WordPress is a content management system (CMS) that enables you to create a website or blog from scratch without writing any code. It's used by over one-third of all the websites on the internet, including many of the largest and most popular sites. One of the key performance metrics for WordPress is Largest Contentful Paint (LCP).

LCP is a performance test that measures the time it takes for your website to display a given amount of content. This means how fast the page loads and how quickly users can read the content on that page.

If you are designing or coding a website, you'll want to do everything in your power to get a high score on this test so that users have a smooth browsing experience.

You might be wondering where you can find LCP testing tools for WordPress sites and if there are any ways to improve LCP scores. Let us take a look at some ways that you can enhance your LCP scores with WordPress.

What is the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) WordPress?

The Largest Contentful Paint is the time that elapses from when the first paint is observed until the point at which 90% of the content on the page is visually complete. This test was first introduced by Google's PageSpeed Insights tool in 2013.

It is a valuable tool because it measures not just the time it takes to load the page but also how quickly it is ready for the user to interact with it after the page has loaded. If you want to improve the speed of your WordPress site, you should aim to have the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) as low as possible. 

This test measures how quickly your site's visitors can begin engaging with the page once it's fully loaded. The LCP is measured in seconds, and usually, between 1 and 2.5 seconds, the LCP score is considered good.

How does LCP impact user experience on a WordPress site?

As we mentioned above, the LCP is the time that elapses from when the first paint is observed until the point at which 90% of the content on the page is visually complete. This test is essential because it shows users when they can start interacting with the page. A slow LCP means that users might have to wait for a long time before they can start using the page.

This will result in a poor user experience as the user will have to wait for a long time before they can use the page. As a result, visitors might leave your website without interacting with it at all. With a large LCP, visitors will have to wait a long time before they can engage with the page.

This means that they might leave the page before it even loads, which will negatively impact your website's traffic and conversions. Understanding the impact of LCP on your website's user experience is essential because it will help you know how to improve the LCP.

How to measure LCP Word Press scores?

To measure the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), you can use the "PageSpeed Insights" tool. This tool is offered by Google and is available for free. You need to enter your website's URL and see the score for LCP (along with scores for other essential performance metrics).

This tool will show you the following data for your largest contentful paint:

• The amount of time it takes for a webpage to be fully loaded and ready for interaction.
• The number of elements that are present on the page once it has been loaded.
• How quickly the elements on the page load.

What causes a poor LCP score?

Many factors might cause a poor LCP score. Let's take a look at some of them.

• Slow-loading images

Images can make your website more engaging and exciting, but if they are too large or don't load quickly, they can slow down your page's load time. If you have many large images on your page, you might want to remove them or reduce their size to improve your page's load time.

• Too many CSS/JavaScript elements

Too many JavaScript plugins or CSS files on your site can also slow down your page's load time. You can reduce the number of these elements on your page by deactivating or removing unused plugins.

• Too many plugins

While plugins can make your website more engaging, they add more elements to your page. This can slow down your page's load time. You can reduce the number of plugins on your page by deactivating or removing unused plugins.

How to improve LCP in WordPress?

In this section, we have listed ways that you can improve the LCP for your WordPress site. Let's take a look at them.

1).  Use a plugin designed to help improve Core Web Vitals in WordPress

There are a few plugins that you can use to help improve your Core Web Vitals in WordPress. One such plugin is Thrive Architect, which is a premium WordPress plugin that offers lots of helpful features for website designers and developers.

Thrive Architect is a premium WordPress plugin designed to help you improve the LCP of your site. It uses a feature called "Smart caching" to help you reduce image sizes, defer render-blocking JavaScript, minify CSS, and more. 

You can also use Thrive Architect to reduce page load times by switching your WordPress website to HTTP/2 with a single click.

2).  Minify your website's CSS

When working with code, it's a good idea to format it so that it's easier for others to understand. This means using spaces, breaking your code into multiple lines, and structuring it for readability.

The problem with this approach is that each space and character takes up extra memory. If you're just talking about a few lines of code, it won't affect you much. However, when dealing with dozens or hundreds of CSS files, each with hundreds of lines of code, these scripts can affect the loading time of your website and the results of your LCP.

One way to minimize the impact of CSS is to "minify" your code. Reduce file size by removing unnecessary characters and spaces. To see how this works, here's an example of CSS code that styles multiple div elements.

Cascading style sheets (CSS) are used to style your website's content, such as fonts, colors, and images. If your CSS isn't minified, it will cause your site to load slower because the browser has to process the code before it can be displayed.

If you minify your CSS, you'll reduce the file size of your CSS, which means that your browser won't have to process as much code before your website is displayed. 

In other words, minifying your CSS will help speed up your website and improve your LCP score. You can use a tool like CSS Clean to minify your CSS.

3).  Defer render-blocking JavaScript and CSS

Render-blocking JavaScript and CSS are scripts and styles that need to be processed by the browser before your website can be displayed. These kinds of code can cause a significant delay in your website's load time and can also cause your LCP scores to suffer.

Render-blocking JavaScript and CSS can be deferred by either putting them in the page footer or by using a plugin like Autoptimize. 

Autoptimize is a free WordPress plugin that can be used to defer and combine JavaScript and CSS. It also supports CSS preprocessing, which means that you can use a preprocessor, such as SASS or Less, to write your CSS.

4).  Optimize your site's images

Large images will slow down your website and may cause your LCP score to suffer. To improve your LCP scores, you'll want to make sure that your pictures aren't unnecessarily large. You can do a few things to optimize your images, so they aren't too large.

The images can be optimized before or after loading them to the word press.

One such method is to use a tool like ImageOptim to compress your images without affecting their quality. You can also use ImageAlpha to reduce image file sizes without affecting image quality.

ImageAlpha uses a technique called "lossless compression" to reduce the file size of your images without affecting their quality.

You can also use a tool like TinyPNG to compress your images without affecting their quality. TinyPNG uses a lossy compression algorithm to compress your images.

5).  Use a content delivery network (CDN)

A content delivery network (CDN) is a type of network that is used to host your website's static content. It can host things like images, JavaScript, and CSS files.

When your website's static content is hosted on a CDN, it will be hosted on a network of geographically dispersed servers. As a result, your website's static content will be loaded from a physically closer server to your visitors, reducing their load time.

When your static content is hosted on a CDN, it will be served from a different domain name than your website, which means that your website's performance won't be affected.

A CDN service can be used to help improve your website's LCP score by hosting your static content, such as images and CSS, on a server that is physically closer to your visitors.

Measure before and after changes to see if you've improved

Lastly, when you have made changes to improve the largest contentful paint, you should measure the LCP score again. You can use the "PageSpeed Insights" tool, which will show you the original and new scores.

Another tool to check your LCP score is Viral Frog, which helps monitor your LCP score regularly, and if there is any decline in your LCP score, this tool lets you know about it via email.

Hopefully, you have learned how to increase your LCP score to increase your site's overall performance.