What are Core Web Vitals and do they matter for a contractor website?

Core Web Vitals are Google's three page-experience metrics: Largest Contentful Paint (loading), Interaction to Next Paint (responsiveness), and Cumulative Layout Shift (visual stability). They matter because most Tampa Bay homeowners hit your site on a phone, often on spotty LTE, and a slow or jumpy page loses the call before the form even loads.

We build on Webflow with compressed WebP images, lazy loading, and minimal third-party scripts so LCP stays under roughly 2.5 seconds and INP stays snappy. Passing Vitals is a modest ranking factor, but the bigger win is conversion — every second of delay quietly bleeds leads. We measure real-user scores in PageSpeed Insights and Search Console, not just lab tests, and re-check after adding chat widgets or tracking pixels, which are the usual culprits behind a sudden slowdown.