Core Web Vitals for Wichita businesses, explained

Google grades every website on three things it calls Core Web Vitals. Most owners have never heard of them, and most local sites fail them. Here's what they are in plain English, and why they decide both whether you rank and whether a customer sticks around.

What they actually measure

Three numbers, that's it:

• LCP: how fast the main thing on the page shows up. It should be under 2.5 seconds. Plenty of local sites sit at 7, 10, or worse.
• INP: how quickly the page reacts when someone taps or clicks. Nobody waits on a button.
• CLS: whether the page jumps around while it loads. If a customer goes to tap 'call' and the layout shifts under their thumb, that's this one.

Why they matter twice over

First, Google uses them to rank you. A site that fails Core Web Vitals gets buried under one that passes. Second, and bigger: real people feel them. Someone on their phone in a parking lot decides in about three seconds. If your main content still hasn't loaded, they're already back on Google looking at the next result. You never see that lost customer. They just don't call.

What failing looks like

I audited a local site recently that took over eleven seconds for its main content to appear, with more than six seconds just to get a response from the server. That business is paying to get every visitor there and losing most of them before the page is even usable. It's not the owner's fault. They were sold a heavy, template-built site and told it was fine.

What passing looks like

When I rebuilt Cloud 9 Slime here in Wichita, the old site scored a 35 out of 100 on performance. The rebuilt one scores 92, with accessibility at 97 and SEO at a perfect 100. Same business, same products, completely different result in how fast it loads and how well it ranks. That gap is the difference between a customer who buys and one who bounces.

How to know where you stand

The three vitals are pass or fail, green or red. If yours are in the red, it's fixable, but usually not by tweaking a template. It takes a site built to be fast from the first line.

Want your real numbers? Send me your site, I'll audit it, and I'll tell you exactly what's dragging it down. No charge.