Website speed and enquiries: what Core Web Vitals mean for a local business

The three Core Web Vitals

Google measures how a page feels to real visitors with three numbers, and calls them Core Web Vitals¹:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): how long the main content, usually the headline or hero image, takes to appear. Good is 2.5 seconds or less.
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP): how quickly the page responds when someone taps or clicks. Good is 200 milliseconds or less. It replaced the older First Input Delay measure on 12 March 2024².
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): how much the page jumps around while it loads. Good is 0.1 or less.

A page passes when at least 75% of real visits meet all three, measured separately on phones and desktops¹.

Why phones are the test that matters

Your customers search on their phones, often on a mobile connection, and phones are slower than the computer you use at work. A site that feels fine at the office can take five seconds on a phone. Only 38.4% of WordPress sites pass Core Web Vitals on mobile, and almost all of the gap is loading time³.

Speed and enquiries

Speed shows up in the number of calls and bookings you get. In one 2026 study, pages that loaded in under two seconds converted at 3.05%, against 1.94% for pages taking three to four seconds: 57% more conversions from the same visitors⁴.

What usually makes a local business site slow

• A heavy hero. A full-width slider or autoplay video at the top, loaded before anything else.
• Third-party scripts. Chat widgets, old trackers, review badges and font services, each one a separate download.
• Page builders. Code for every feature the builder offers, on every page, whether you use the feature or not.
• A distant server. Pages built on request, on one server, for visitors who may be far away.

How to fix it

Measure on a phone profile first. Then make the main content load first, compress and resize images, remove what's above the fold that doesn't earn its place, and cut scripts you don't need. Reserve space for images so the page doesn't jump. For the biggest gain, serve pages built in advance from a network close to your visitors, so nothing is computed when someone arrives.