Essential Core Web Vitals Testing Tools You Need for Checking Out Your User Satisfaction!

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Core Web Vitals is a set of three super important metrics that help Google assess the user-friendliness of your website. These triplets need constant care. Not just because Google uses them as ranking factors but also because users themselves can feel how much energy you’ve put into providing a great experience for them surfing on your website. So optimising your website for them will be vital.

In this lesson, we’ll have a brief overview of what these three metrics are (we’ve covered them in our previous lesson, but just in case you haven’t read it yet, you can check out the full article on core web vitals here). Our main focus in this lesson will be on the free, wonderful core web vital testing tools that can help you assess the user-friendliness of your website.

What Are Core Web Vitals?

Core Web Vitals focus on three key user experience signals that are crucial for evaluating the performance of your website:

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

 

 

This measures loading performance. Specifically, it tracks the time it takes for the largest visible content element (image, video, or text block) on the page to load. A good LCP score is 2.5 seconds or less.

2. Interaction to next paint (INP)

INP in SEO stands for “Interaction to Next Paint”. It is a user-centric metric that measures the time it takes for a website to become interactive after the user interacts with it, such as clicking a button or a link, until the next visual update (or paint) occurs on the screen.

3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

This metric tracks visual stability, ensuring that elements on the page don’t move unexpectedly, which could cause a poor user experience. A good CLS score is less than 0.1.

Top Free Tools for Core Web Vitals Testing

Several free tools can help you assess your website’s Core Web Vitals performance. Let’s explore how each tool works and how you can use it to monitor and optimize your website.

1. Google PageSpeed Insights

Google PageSpeed Insights is one of the most popular tools for evaluating the performance of your website. It provides detailed reports on your website’s loading performance, including both mobile and desktop versions.

How to Use PageSpeed Insights for Core Web Vitals Testing

1. Visit [Google PageSpeed Insights](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/).
2. Enter the URL of the page you want to test and click on the “Analyze” button.
3. PageSpeed Insights will analyze the page and provide you with a report that includes your Core Web Vitals scores—LCP, INP, and CLS—along with performance suggestions.
4. Under the “Core Web Vitals” section, you’ll find the individual scores for LCP, FID, and CLS. Each of these scores is color-coded:
– Green: Good (meeting the desired thresholds)
– Orange: Needs Improvement (requires optimization)
– Red: Poor (requires immediate attention)

Advantages of PageSpeed Insights

– Provides both mobile and desktop performance data.
– Offers detailed recommendations to improve scores.
– Displays lab data (from simulated tests) and field data (real-world user data via the Chrome User Experience Report).

 

2. GTmetrix

GTmetrix is another popular performance testing tool that provides insights into your website’s load time and performance, including Core Web Vitals. It gives you a detailed breakdown of how each metric contributes to the overall performance of the page.

 

How to Use GTmetrix for Core Web Vitals Testing

1. Visit [GTmetrix](https://www.gtmetrix.com/).
2. Enter your website URL and click “Test your site.”
3. GTmetrix will analyze your site and present a performance report, which includes information on LCP, FID, and CLS.
4. The report is divided into several sections, including performance scores, recommendations for improvements, and detailed insights into how to enhance loading speed and interactivity.

Advantages of GTmetrix

– Provides detailed information on each Core Web Vital.
– Allows you to choose the test location, which can help you understand performance variations across different regions.
– Offers a visual representation of how elements load over time (Waterfall Chart), which can be useful for diagnosing performance bottlenecks.

 

3. Google Lighthouse

Google Lighthouse is an open-source, automated tool for improving the quality of web pages. It provides detailed audits for performance, accessibility, SEO, and more, with a focus on Core Web Vitals.

How to Use Google Lighthouse for Core Web Vitals Testing

1. Open Chrome and go to the website you want to test.
2. Right-click on the page and select Inspect to open Chrome DevTools.
3. In the DevTools panel, navigate to the Lighthouse tab.
4. Click on Generate Report, and Lighthouse will run an audit on the page. It provides you with scores for LCP, FID, and CLS as part of the performance section.
5. The results are presented with actionable recommendations for improving each metric.

Advantages of Lighthouse

– Can be run directly within Chrome without needing a third-party tool.
– Provides in-depth insights with performance, SEO, accessibility, and best practices audits.
– Allows you to simulate various devices, network conditions, and CPU throttling for a more accurate performance audit.

4. Google Search Console

Google Search Console provides a comprehensive view of how your website performs in Google Search, including data on Core Web Vitals. This tool helps website owners monitor their site’s performance, fix issues, and optimize for better search visibility.

How to Use Google Search Console for Core Web Vitals Testing

1. Visit [Google Search Console](https://search.google.com/search-console/).
2. Log in and select the property (website) you want to analyze.
3. In the left-hand menu, click on **Core Web Vitals under the “Experience” section.
4. This section shows the overall performance of your website based on real-world user data from the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX). Google will display data on the percentage of pages with good, needs improvement, and poor scores for each Core Web Vital.

Advantages of Google Search Console

– Provides real-world performance data from actual users (field data).
– Displays the impact of Core Web Vitals on your website’s search rankings.
– Allows you to see which URLs are performing poorly so you can prioritize optimizations.

5. Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX)

The Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) is a public dataset that provides real-user data about how people experience websites in the Chrome browser. This report is an essential tool for understanding your Core Web Vitals performance across real users.

How to Use Chrome User Experience Report for Core Web Vitals Testing

1. Visit https://developer.chrome.com/docs/crux/dashboard.
2. Access the CrUX data for your site by querying the dataset via BigQuery.
3. Use CrUX data to understand how real users are experiencing your website’s Core Web Vitals.

Advantages of CrUX

– Provides real-user data, which is more reliable than lab-based tests.
– Available to anyone and doesn’t require any setup on your part.
– Offers detailed insights into Core Web Vitals performance across different device categories (mobile, desktop).

 

Core Web Vitals are a critical component of user experience and SEO. You can now check how optimized your website is for them, using the core web vitals testing tools that we mentioned above. If you’d like to increase your website’s SEO optimization speed, you can contact us and ask for a done for your plan, or check out our blog to access more tutorials.