As WordPress continues to gain traction, its first version is one of the most used programming platforms in the world. But WordPress 5.9, just released, could bring with it new core metrics that will ultimately help marketers learn more about the audiences they’re trying to reach and keep up with the fast-paced and ever-changing world of digital marketing.
WordPress 5.9 is slated to be released this week, and with it comes a few new features to the core WordPress platform. One of the most significant new features is “WordPress Web Vitals.” This new metric tracks website performance, including things like time on site, video views, and visitor engagement. A demo of this new metric is located at http://wordpress.com/5.9/wordpress-web-vitals.
WordPress has published an article in its developer area that suggests improvements to WordPress’ default lazy loading behavior. The tests showed that the proposed change improved the performance of Core Web Vitals by 33%.Proposal to improve basic web business cards in WordPress
The proposal states that theme developers are in control of the lazy loading attribute.
It was found that refining the way lazy loading is added by default resulted in a significant improvement in the Core Web Vitals Largest Contentful Paint indicator.
This is how the improvement is described in the proposal:
Instead of all images and iframes loading slowly by default, the very first content image (also called featured image) or iframe content should not load slowly.
This is a more sensitive default value than the one used in the current implementation, which allows better LCP performance on average and at scale, and keeps the required bandwidth low.
Lazy loading and largest content color
Lazy loading is a way to speed up page loading by delaying the loading of web page elements, such as images and iframes that are not currently needed.
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When using lazy loading, items such as. B. Images that are not visible on a website visitor’s browser screen can be slowed down using an HTML attribute, the load attribute.
An image is an HTML element of a web page.
An HTML attribute is code that defines an HTML element, for example. B. A photo, changed.
The loading attribute modifies the image, in this case it tells the browser to slow down the loading of the image.
The loading attribute tells the browser to delay loading the image so that it can load the more important elements of the page that are immediately available to the visitor.
This makes the page more interactive for the site visitor.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures the rate at which images and other elements are downloaded into a website visitor’s viewing area (the browser screen the visitor sees).
The image is usually encoded in HTML as follows:
To add a lazy load, just add the HTML lazy load attribute :
How WordPress 5.9 can improve the largest content table
The developer who released the LCP enhancement pointed out that since WordPress 5.5, the core code has added a default lazy loading attribute for all images and iframes.
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However, this is not ideal because the images at the top of the page, such as. B. logos and main images must be uploaded to make the site usable.
WordPress implemented lazy loading in this way because it had no way to accurately exclude key images from receiving the lazy loading attribute.
The reason for this is that all themes are coded differently and this detailed exclusion is best left to the theme developers.
While the current default implementation of lazy loading in WordPress is not perfect, adding lazy loading in this way is a significant improvement over not having a loading attribute.
What is proposed here is a significant improvement, as the test results below show.
How WordPress will improve the largest content table
The WordPress development team suggests eliminating the addition of a lazy loading attribute to the first image or iframe in the code.
The developer tested this method on 50 of the most popular WordPress themes and found that adding it to the first image or iframe element resulted in an average 7% improvement in the LCP Core Web Vitals index.
The developer then assessed the extent to which the quality of the LCP was improved by adding lazy loading to both elements. The performance gain decreased by 2% on average, clearly demonstrating that eliminating lazy loading of more than one element did not improve the LCP.
The following are some of the results obtained:
Not lazily loading the first content image resulted in a 7% improvement in median LCP (1877 ms vs. 2023 ms with current kernel behavior) and a 0% increase in median image bytes (368 KB vs. 369 KB with current kernel behavior). → The absence of the first content image leads to a significant improvement in LCP without a noticeable degradation in stored image bytes.
Non-slow loading of the first two content images resulted in an average LCP improvement of 5% (1,927 ms vs. 2,020 ms with current kernel behavior) and an average increase in image bytes of 2% (378 KB vs. 369 KB with current kernel behavior). → Skipping the first two content images leads to worse results for both metrics than skipping only the first image, i.e., it is better to skip the lazy loading only for the first content image, and thus not need additional tests with more images that are not subject to the lazy loading.
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New WordPressLazy Loading Test Results
- 5% of the test group had PCL scores between 10% and 21% worse.
- 42% of subjects improved their LCP score from 10% to 33%.
- The tests showed that most subjects improved.
According to the WordPress suggestion:
Although the median improvement in LCP across all themes is only 7%, a significant number of themes show notable gains, and notable losses are minimal.
Googler creates a proof of concept for thePlug-In.
A WordPress core participant created a proof-of-concept (POC) patch in the form of a plugin, presumably for debugging, and published it on GitHub.
This is not an official version of the WordPress plugin, so it is not recommended to install it in a hurry.
The official versions of the plugins are published in the WordPress plugin repository.
When will the improved inertial load be available?
For WordPress 5.9, a scheme is now defined to improve the lazy loading behavior.
WordPress 5.9 is currently scheduled for release in December 2023.
The proposal to improve the lazy loading feature is currently being discussed and has received a positive response in the comments so far.
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So, barring any unforeseen problems, it’s entirely possible that the improved scores in the Greatest Content table will appear on WordPress sites later this year.
Quotations
Official announcement of the WordPress
offering Improved lazy loading implementation in WordPress core.
WordPress GitHub page to improve lazy loading
Lower the lazy loading attribute on the first image/content frame.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I increase core Web vitals in WordPress?
You can increase core Web vitals in WordPress by adding a plugin.
How do I increase my core web vitals?
You can increase your core web vitals by increasing the number of visitors to your website.
How do I fix core Web vitals errors?
If you are experiencing core Web vitals errors, please contact our support team.
