Core Web Vitals are a growth lever, not a checklist
Speed is not a vanity metric. It is the cheapest conversion-rate optimization most sites never ship.
Google’s Core Web Vitals — LCP, INP, and CLS — are the closest thing the web has to an objective speed score. They also correlate with money: faster pages convert better and rank better. Yet most teams treat them as a pre-launch checkbox instead of an ongoing lever.
The three that matter
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) is usually your hero image or headline. INP (Interaction to Next Paint) is how quickly the page responds to a tap or click. CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) is how much the layout jumps while loading. Fix these three and you have fixed the experience that users actually feel.
Where the wins hide
Compress and correctly size the hero image. Set explicit width and height on media so nothing shifts. Defer non-critical JavaScript. Preconnect to font and CDN origins. None of this needs a framework migration — it needs discipline and a budget you check on every release.
We treat performance as a feature with an owner, not a one-off audit. The result is pages that stay fast as they grow.