Tips to Optimize LCP in WooCommerce

LCP stands for Largest Contentful Paint which is the most critical metric of the Core Web Vitals. It measures the time it takes for your website to load the primary content on the web page. LCP elements of a website can be anything like an image, text block, video, or even animation.

LCP in a Nutshell

Largest Contentful Paint is an important Core Web Vital metric that measures the time when the user starts loading the page until the largest image or text block is rendered on the screen. It is recommended to ensure a good LCP score for your website i.e. 2.5-4 seconds.  It helps you deliver a decent user experience and ultimately adds up to your SEO game.

Calculating LCP Value for Your WooCommerce Store

While calculating the LCP for a page, you must consider four aspects as elaborated below-

• Time to First Byte (TTFB) - The time from when the user initiates loading the page until when the browser receives the first byte of the HTML document response.

• Resource Load Delay - The delta between TTFB and when the browser starts loading the LCP resource.

• Resource Load Time - The time it takes to load the LCP resource itself.

• Element Render Delay - The delta between when the LCP resources finish loading and the LCP element is fully rendered.

LCP Breakdown Composition in %

Here is the detailed breakdown of the LCP sub-parts in terms of percentages-

LCP Sub-Parts	% of LCP
Time to First Bite ( TTFB )	~40%
Resource load delay	<10>
Resource load time	~40%
Element render delay	<10>

16 Tips to Improve Your WooCommerce LCP Performance

We have brought some amazing tips that will help you improve your WooCommerce site’s LCP performance-

1. Restrict delayed load and render-blocking resources

   The sole objective of this phase is for the LCP resources to start loading as soon as possible. Your browser can locate the LCP resource after duly scanning the HTML document response, given that-

   • The “src” or “srcset” properties of the < img> element contained in the initial markup HTML
   • LCP requires a CSS background image, but that image is preloaded via < link rel="preload" /> in the HTML markup (or via a Link header)
   • In the case of a text node, the browsers require WebFont and it is loaded using the HTML markup tag < link rel="preload" /> (or a Link header)
   Tips to Avoid This Condition-
   • Add images dynamically via Javascript
   • Use the lazy load feature on images that hide the src and srcset
   • Download the font via your provider and load it from the server in hand

2. Using CDN for the resources on your Woo-commerce site

3. Eliminating the 404 requests

4. Removing unused plugins

5. Deferring your JavaScript

6. Restricting unused JavaScript

7. You can delete Non-Critical CSS, Inline Critical CSS, and remove unused CSS

8. Compressing your text files

9. Compressing and optimizing your images

10. Minifying all CSS and JS Files on your Woo-commerce website

11. Utilizing preload for critical assets

12. Building Third-party Connections Early (dns-prefetch and preconnect)

13. Serve Webp Images at your WordPress woo-commerce site

14. Utilizing server-side rendering

15. Implementing caching

16. Pre-Loading LCP element resources like image, font, video, CSS

LCP is one of the three crucial metrics of the Core Web Vitals. We hope these tips helped you enhance the LCP performance of your WooCommerce store. It's best to opt for assistance when you are not able to optimize the Core Web Vitals for your website.

Need a hand with core web vitals?

Leave the technicalities to the experts. WordPress Website is the leading WordPress development company with over 9 years of expertise. We offer top-notch SEO services to improve your site’s ranking on the SERP. Our experts are well-versed in Core Web Vitals and will provide you with useful suggestions to deliver a stunning user experience. Contact us today!