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 Core Web Vitals LCP metrics to evaluate user experience and rank your WordPress site accordingly.
So, you should fix LCP issues not just for your visitors but also for better SEO. You need front-end tweaks that speed up visible content, and back-end upgrades that improve server response time. The good news? This guide will show you how to measure your LCP score and fix it step by step. Let’s first understand what Largest Contentful Paint is and why fixing it matters so much.
What is the 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- Sites that load slowly ultimately indicate that they are broken or outdated.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 reduce LCP time using a free plugin like W3Speedster, and make deeper performance boosts by optimizing server-side rather than losing potential customers.
A fast-loading website reflects strong LCP performance improvement and 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 will see a detailed report with useful metrics and recommendations.
When you click on the specific issue, PageSpeed Insights will show you the resources (like images, scripts, or styles) that are affecting your LCP score. These resources are examples of where improvements can be made to optimize performance.
You can just follow these insights for LCP optimization. And if you want a shortcut on this, then use our dedicated W3Speedster 90+ PSI guide. It will explain how to optimize settings in the plugin and consistently hit top scores.
However, are you aware of what a good LCP score is? 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 specifically measures how fast the largest visible element loads within the part of the screen users first see, known as the viewport. Anything off-screen (outside the visible area) is not considered in LCP calculations. Even small delays can make your site feel slower, so it’s important to improve the LCP score using the strategies below.
What Are the Largest Contentful Paint Causes?
Several factors are forcing your site’s LCP metric to go above 2.5. We understand that it is one of the most challenging Core Web Vitals 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
- 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 how to fix LCP issues.
How to Fix Largest Contentful Paint WordPress Issues?
There are two ways to improve the LCP score as discussed above. Let’s begin with the first one, then:
1. Front End Optimization:
One of the fastest and easiest ways to fix LCP is by pushing your Google PSI score above 90. When you hit that mark, your LCP and overall speed are already in a strong zone. But how to achieve 90+ Scores on Google PageSpeed Insights?
Here’s where W3Speedster makes things easy. It is a free plugin built to solve performance issues automatically, without coding or confusion.
It includes dedicated settings that help you reduce LCP time and site loading time, all while achieving a 90+ score with a few clicks.
W3Speedster Installation:
- Click on this link to get Free W3Speedster. Complete the checkout process, and receive the plugin file download link in your email.
- Now, go to your WordPress dashboard → Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
- Upload the W3Speedster file, click Install Now, then Activate.
- Now that you see our plugin added to your WordPress menu, click it to open the plugin dashboard.
- From there, switch to the General tab (the second menu option). On the right, you will find all the optimization settings.
- Please scroll down to the section called “Way to 90+ in Google PSI”. This area includes six powerful pre-configured options designed specifically to help your site improve largest contentful paint.
We have created a complete guide on how to use this plugin to reach 90+ PageSpeed scores, so you can read that for exclusive insights on each setting.
Once you have fixed your LCP by optimizing your website’s frontend, here comes the need to optimize it for the backend too.
2. Server-Side Optimization:
A slow server causes everything, including the largest element, to appear late. Even the fastest theme or plugin won’t help if your server chokes. Server-side fixes remove this bottleneck and improve performance where it starts.
Moreover, it’s the process of making your server smarter and faster at delivering your site content. This includes database tuning, server caching, compression, and reducing time-to-first-byte (TTFB). Unlike frontend fixes, this improves the “engine” behind your website.
How to Do Server-Side Optimization?
It is the invisible power boost that makes your entire website feel lightning-fast before a single image even loads. Here is how to improve your server’s speed and reduce delays that impact your Largest Contentful Paint:
- Choose a High-Speed Hosting Plan
Your server is the foundation of your site, and if it is sluggish, your site will always be sluggish. So, don’t go for cheap shared hosting, instead, you should opt for a cloud server, VPS, or dedicated hosting that offers you faster speed, more control, and improved uptime during traffic spikes.
- Use the Latest PHP Version
As you might know, old PHP versions are most likely to be slower and less secure, compared to newer versions. So, upgrade it and make your server process requests much more quickly. Because when your code executes faster, your content loads sooner, and that is a direct LCP performance improvement.
- Turn On Full Page Caching
You do not have to rebuild your pages on every visit. You can have your server store a pre-built copy of each page and deliver it immediately. This will avoid additional work and help you display your content sooner.
- Reduce Your TTFB
Your page begins loading after the server has responded, and if it is too slow, everything gets bogged down. Now it’s time to debloat your server, repair latency, and accelerate how fast your content begins to display. Because a quicker server response will reduce LCP time and result in a faster page.
- Utilize a Good CDN
A CDN stores duplicates of your site in various countries. So when a visitor goes to your website, they download it from a local server. This causes your large images and critical content to load faster.
- Clean and Speed Up Your Database
Your database holds all your content, and if it is cluttered or filled with junk, it is harder to retrieve what’s desired. So, to improve largest contentful paint, you need to clean out unused data, optimize slow spots, and get it lean so your site responds fast.
- Eliminate Excess Redirects
If your server continues to send visitors from one link to another, it is wasting time. So, reduce these leaps so your primary content loads quickly.
However, not everyone can spend the time or possess the technical expertise to dive into server configurations. That is where W3SpeedUp enters the picture to help you solve not only WordPress but also Shopify LCP issues effortlessly. Their server-side optimization process is taken care of by specialists who have the know-how of optimizing sites at lightning speed from the backend.
They optimize your hosting stack, tweak your database, eliminate slowdowns, and reduce your LCP significantly, all without you having to do a thing.
So, if you are serious about boosting your Core Web Vitals and want deeper performance gains beyond plugins, W3SpeedUp is your next shortcut to a powerful, optimized server setup.
Final Words:
In summary, largest contentful paint 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.
You now know that WordPress LCP fix isn’t only about using a plugin or hosting upgrade, it’s a full-circle approach. You need both frontend improvements with tools like W3Speedster and backend upgrades through expert server-side optimization
So take action today. Start by checking your LCP score, apply the steps we shared, either way, your LCP score will improve, your website will feel faster, and visitors will stay longer.
