Core Web Vitals
Vitals show up in three separate jobs — auditing a site, configuring measurement so the field data is trustworthy, and building so the numbers were never bad. The last one is by far the cheapest.
How I use it
A green Lighthouse score and slow real users
Field data first, lab data second. Lighthouse reports what a fast machine on a fast connection experienced; CrUX reports what your visitors did, and they regularly disagree.
Layout that moves under the reader
Explicit media dimensions and fonts loaded so they do not reflow the page once they arrive. CLS is almost always a handful of specific, fixable offenders.
A page that got slower and stopped converting
When I configure measurement I put vitals alongside conversion tracking, because those two events are frequently the same event and nobody connects them otherwise.
JavaScript shipped out of habit
Static generation where the content allows it, and a lighter framework where React was never required. The fastest script remains the one never sent.
What I use
- PageSpeed Insights
- CrUX
- Lighthouse
- Chrome DevTools
- GA4
Related skills
Want the detail behind any of this?
I can walk through any of it in as much depth as you want.