Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) shows how long it takes for the biggest part of your webpage to appear. Until this happens, you just see a mostly empty screen. This big part usually sits at the top, so if it loads slowly, your page feels slow too.
LCP can be an image, text, video, or animation. It might even be different between mobile and desktop. If it takes too long to load; users might get frustrated, wait less, and leave. To offer a good experience to visitors, websites should make an effort to have under 2.5 seconds of LCP for at least 75% of page visits.
Search engines include LCP in their Core Web Vitals to evaluate user experience and rank you accordingly.
So, you should fix LCP issues not just for your visitors but also for better SEO. But how? Of course, this guide will help you with that, and even tell you how you can measure your LCP score.
Let’s just first understand what Largest Contentful Paint is, and why fixing it matters so much.
What is Largest Contentful Paint Meaning?
As you know, Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) checks how quickly the biggest parts of the page, like images and text, appear. A good LCP score means a better experience for users, and fewer people leaving the site quickly. The lower, the better.
Wanna know how a bad LCP score hurts your brand?
- Sites that load slowly ultimately indicate that they are broken or outdated.
- Visitors won’t stick around, they will leave before even seeing your content.
- Your site’s credibility is also at stake.
- If people leave too early, search engines will mark you as unhelpful, and push your rankings lower.
- High LCP scores make visitors question your service or product quality.
So, a smart move will be to make LCP performance improvement, rather than losing potential customers.
Plus, a fast-loading website feels professional, reliable, and well-maintained.
And only with this, you win higher rankings, lower bounce rates, and increased conversion rates.
But how do you measure your site’s LCP score? Let’s understand it in the next section.
How to Measure Your Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)?
You need the right tools to measure Core Web Vitals like the LCP. Your tool should be able to gather data from real users as well as from a simulated environment for a complete picture and deeper insights.
And Google’s PageSpeed Insights is just right for this, it is free, plus, it gives clear performance reports and fixes.
You only need to enter your website URL, click Analyze, and wait a few minutes. Once the test is done, you’ll see a detailed report with useful metrics and recommendations. You can just follow these insights for LCP optimization.
But do you know what is a good LCP score? If not let’s find out:
LCP Standards
| Good | 2.5 seconds or less | This is where you want to be |
| Average | 2.5-4 seconds | You should make changes now |
| Poor | Above 4 | This can seriously hurt your ranking |
LCP makes up 25% of the overall PageSpeed Insights score, so, a WordPress LCP fix highly boosts your page speed grade.
Also, LCP looks at images, videos, background images, and text that takes up space but only checks what you can see, not what is hidden off the screen. Even small delays can make your site feel harder, so it’s important to improve LCP score using the below strategies.
What Are the Largest Contentful Paint Causes and How to Fix Them?
Several factors are forcing your site’s LCP metic to go above 2.5. We understand that it is one of the most challenging Core Web Vital for you to maintain but doesn’t it make this the most essential one?
The main reasons for bad LCP scores are:
- Slow Server Response Time
- Render-Blocking Resources
- Large Images & Unoptimized Media
- Client-Side Rendering Delays
- Lazy-Loading the LCP Element
- Too Many Third-Party Scripts
- Inefficient CSS & Fonts
However, don’t be afraid of seeing these many Largest Contentful Paint WordPress-causing elements, as this guide is all about helping you how to fix LCP issues.
Let’s start with the first tip:
1. Use a CDN & Reliable Web Hosting
A content delivery network helps improve Core Web Vitals LCP by spreading out traffic to different servers, so visitors don’t have to wait for the same server.
Plus, an image CDN that makes images smaller while loading can also help your website load faster.
However, setting up a CDN depends on your hosting service but is usually easy.
A slow or unstable web host drags down your LCP score, no matter what else you do. That’s why for a fast and high-performance hosting provider you need to look for someone who offers the:
- High server speed
- Strong uptime guarantee
- Efficient server locations
- Handle the extra load efficiently
2. Optimize & Resize Images
- Your images could be the reason you are searching for “how to fix LCP issues?”. They take up a lot of space, but you can do a WordPress LCP fix instantly with the following simple steps:
- Convert images to WebP or next-gen formats because when they are lighter, they load faster.
- Use responsive images so mobile users don’t load large, unnecessary images meant for desktops.
- Exclude LCP images from lazy loading as lazy loading delays important images and hurts your LCP score.
- Use a static image instead of a slider.
- Check your platform’s default image sizes and make sure they match the right device.
- Optimize every image before uploading as once they are online then resizing alone doesn’t help in LCP performance improvement.
3. Implement Caching & Minify Files
Next, you can try this, one of the easiest things to overcome the WordPress or Shopify LCP issue.
First, talking about caching, it is of two types; server-side and browser caching.
With caching, your pages load faster, and you significantly improve largest contentful paint issues.
Browser caching lets visitors save parts of your site on their devices, so they don’t have to download the same ones again when they come back. You can set this up yourself or use automated plugins like W3Speedster.
Server-side caching saves a ready-made version of your page on the main server, so it doesn’t have to load everything again each time.
Using both makes your website much faster and Reduces LCP time.
In addition to caching, you should also lighten the size of your CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files. These files often have extra spaces and lines that slow down your site. Reducing their size helps your site run better.
However, please check your Core Web Vitals LCP report after this step to see if there are more ways to improve.
4. Compress Text
Compression greatly affects load speed, and we know you are not using it that’s why you are here to find out how to fix LCP issues.
You should make text files like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript smaller so your browser can get them quickly, which helps your LCP score. It is highly important to avoid using big files, and rather compress them.
There are two main ways to do it: GZIP and Brotli, where GZIP is common, but Brotli works even better.
Even some web hosts turn on compression by default, so you should check if it is working.
Plus, many cache plugins and CDNs automatically turn on compression, but some files might still be left because of setup issues. So, please check and fix it, as even one uncompressed file can slow down your page.
Moreover, if you see a warning about “Enable text compression” in your performance reports, fix it right away.
5. Eliminate Render-Blocking Resources
Your website loads slower when certain files block the page from displaying quickly. These files (mainly CSS and JavaScript), are known as render-blocking resources. Instead of letting them delay your Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), you should remove or optimize them.
Identify and Remove Unnecessary CSS and JS
Not all CSS and JavaScript files are needed for the first visible part of your page. Instead of loading everything at once, focus on what’s important.
- Find render-blocking files using a site audit tool.
- Remove unused CSS so the browser loads only what’s necessary.
- Delay non-essential JavaScript to prevent it from slowing down the page.
Optimize CSS Loading
CSS files also block rendering, but you can still improve how they load.
- Use inline CSS for styles needed immediately.
- Load additional stylesheets asynchronously instead of blocking the page.
- Minimize CSS file size to reduce LCP time and processing time.
6. Defer JavaScript Parsing
Your browser reads a webpage from top to bottom, but it stops processing JavaScript before moving forward. This slows down loading and hurts your Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) score.
Instead, you need to defer JavaScript parsing to delay the loading of non-essential JavaScript files until after the page content is ready.
Here’s what You Need to Do:
- Use the “defer” attribute to stop JavaScript from blocking the page.
- Prioritize essential content first so visitors don’t have to wait.
- Let the browser process HTML first, then run JavaScript in the background.
By doing so you ensure your page loads faster, and users see content immediately, instead of waiting for scripts to load. They stay engaged, plus, this improves your LCP score and makes your site perform better.
In summary, LCP is a key measure of website performance today, and solving its issues is one of the best things you can do to speed up your website and improve user experience.
Still, Need Help on How to Fix LCP Issues? Let Experts Help.
You can start your LCP optimization task by first choosing a good hosting provider and using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to reduce LCP time. Further in this process, you must optimize site images, enable caching, and minify unnecessary files to make your pages lighter. Also, do not forget to compress text files, remove render-blocking elements, and defer JavaScript, only this way your content will load quickly.
Is it feeling too much? Don’t worry! You don’t have to be a tech expert for Shopify and WordPress LCP fixes. You can apply these tips manually, or simply use an automated tool like W3Speedster to handle everything for you.
It is not only affordable but easy to use and delivers unbelieve performance.
If you follow these steps, either way, your LCP score will improve, your website will feel faster, and visitors will stay longer.
