Core Web Vitals: Beyond the Numbers to Elevate User Experiences

When thinking about Core Web Vitals, the conversation often seems dominated by technical jargon and performance metrics.

However, as Barry Pollard, a web performance advocate from Google, explained in a recent episode of The Frictionless Experience, Core Web Vitals represent much more than just dry technical benchmarks—they reflect the real-world experiences of users, and every part of your organization should care about them.

Here are 5 of my major takeaways from Barry's episode with co-host Nick Paladino on the importance of Core Web Vitals and how these metrics help create a better, frictionless user experience.

1. Core Web Vitals are More Than Just Technical Metrics – They Represent Real User Experiences

While Core Web Vitals might initially seem like a focus for engineers and developers, they represent a broader, more critical concern that extends across your entire organization—user experience (UX).

From the developers writing the code to the marketing teams that care about conversion rates, everyone has a stake in ensuring that a website runs smoothly for users. As Barry explained, “At a higher level, it’s trying to measure the user experience in a way that can be meaningfully understood by most users of the internet."

These metrics—including Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), and Interaction to Next Paint (INP)—aren't just numbers on a dashboard. They directly reflect how users perceive the speed, stability, and interactivity of your website.

Barry described how these metrics are intentionally designed to measure experiences that are universal. For example, LCP gauges how long it takes for the main content to appear after clicking a link. "My dad can get that," Barry quipped, emphasizing that these are relatable experiences​.

By focusing on Core Web Vitals, organizations move from merely satisfying technical requirements to directly enhancing how users interact with their websites. It's about removing friction and making the web a "nicer place to visit," as Barry put it​.

2. Benchmarking Against Competitors is a Powerful Tool for Securing Management Buy-in

For organizations looking to improve web performance, one of the most effective ways to get leadership’s attention is by benchmarking Core Web Vitals against competitors. This kind of competitive analysis can be especially persuasive when it comes to making the case for performance optimization.

Barry discussed how comparing your website’s performance metrics with those of your competitors provides a powerful visual tool. “Whenever [competitors] started to load a little bit faster, it was a very powerful visual for management,” he explained. When executives see that your competitors are delivering a faster and smoother user experience, the case for investing in performance improvements becomes much clearer.

Benchmarking also highlights areas where you might be losing potential business. If your website takes significantly longer to load or is less responsive, users may turn to a competitor, even if your product or service is superior.

Pollard recalled how his team used film strips to show page load times, allowing them to visibly demonstrate performance differences. “It’s a good sales technique to sit there and go, ‘Hey, they’re beating us at this performance game here,’” he noted.

3. Don’t Underestimate Small Performance Gains – Even Fractions of a Second Matter

Another key takeaway from our discussion is the significance of even small performance improvements. While large changes like reducing load time from five seconds to three may be obvious, Nick emphasized that even shaving a fraction of a second off your load times can have a notable impact at scale.

Nick explained:

“What the phenomenon really becomes is subconscious. There’s going to be a small subset that the breakpoint happens to be at 2.8 seconds, and if it were 2.8 seconds or slower, they’re going to leave”​.

This idea is critical because performance improvements don’t need to be massive to be effective. When operating at scale, even marginal improvements can lead to significant gains in conversion rates and user retention.

Nick pointed out that this concept of breakpoints—subtle thresholds at which users decide whether to stay or leave a site—becomes particularly powerful when dealing with millions of users. By improving from 2.8 to 2.7 seconds, you might retain thousands more users.

The Core Web Vitals benchmarks help you track and aim for these subtle, incremental improvements, ensuring that you can deliver a smooth, enjoyable experience for every user.

4. Testing Across Devices and Networks Builds Empathy and Reveals Blind Spots

One of the most common mistakes web developers make is testing websites on high-end devices with excellent network conditions, which don’t reflect the realities of all users.

Barry shared a story about how teams at Facebook had a policy of slowing down Wi-Fi on certain days to help developers better understand what their users were experiencing.

He remarked:

“You get a lot of empathy there whenever you suddenly realize that oh, actually, not everyone has the latest and greatest devices and fast internet."

In the same vein, he encouraged web development teams to test on the lower-end phones or computers that many users still rely on to access the internet. By doing this, you gain valuable insights into how your site performs under less-than-ideal conditions.

Does the layout shift unexpectedly on a slow connection? Does the page become unresponsive on a budget device? These insights can help identify areas for improvement that might not be apparent when testing on high-end equipment.

Barry emphasized that field data provided by tools like CrUX (Chrome User Experience Report) gives developers a democratized view of how real users experience their websites. This field data can highlight disparities in user experiences across different regions or devices.

He gave the example of discovering that users in Ireland might experience slower load times than users in the UK, information that can be used to target specific performance improvements.

5. Creating a Frictionless Experience is an Ongoing Process, and Core Web Vitals Provide a Standardized Way to Measure It

Finally, creating a frictionless digital experience isn’t a one-time effort—it’s an ongoing process. Core Web Vitals offer a standardized way to measure and enhance the user experience, allowing organizations to make continuous improvements based on real, measurable data.

Barry pointed out that the Core Web Vitals program is designed not only to help developers improve performance but also to facilitate communication between teams within an organization. By standardizing the way user experience is measured, these metrics provide a common language that both technical and non-technical teams can understand. As Barry mentioned, Core Web Vitals are “usable, understandable things that my dad could understand."

In this way, Core Web Vitals serve as more than just a set of performance benchmarks—they act as a catalyst for cross-functional collaboration. From the SEO team to the product managers, everyone can align around these metrics to prioritize improvements that will make a tangible difference to users.

Additionally, Barry shared examples of ongoing innovations, such as pre-rendering and speculation rules, which aim to enhance the user experience even further by making websites feel instantaneous​. These developments highlight how web performance is constantly evolving and underscore the importance of maintaining a focus on continuous improvement.

Core Web Vitals and Frictionless Experiences are a Business Imperative

User experience is everything, and Core Web Vitals provide a crucial framework for improving that experience. While they may have started as technical metrics, they now represent business-critical performance indicators that impact not just SEO but also user retention, conversion rates, and overall customer satisfaction.

By prioritizing Core Web Vitals, organizations can ensure they are delivering a fast, stable, and responsive user experience—regardless of whether users are browsing on the latest smartphone or a laptop with a slow connection. And in a world where seconds—or fractions of seconds—can make the difference between a sale and an abandoned cart, every millisecond counts.

In the words of Barry, “We’re just trying to make the web a nicer place for everyone that’s using it”. And when you measure user experience through Core Web Vitals, you’re doing exactly that.