Wouldn’t it be great if you could see your site through Google’s eyes?
We know the fine algorithms of Google are firmly left well enough alone. Simultaneously, we have a great deal of data about the viewpoints Google considers significant when passing judgment on a site.
Also, Google offers us a large group of free devices intended to assist us with improving our sites and one such instrument is Google Lighthouse.
One positioning variable we know is turning out to be increasingly more basic is page insight, and Google Lighthouse could be the instrument you need to ensure your site is acting around there and some more.
What is Google Lighthouse?
Google Lighthouse is an open-source, automated tool for improving the quality of web pages. You can run it against any web page, public, or requiring authentication. It has audits for performance, accessibility, progressive web apps, SEO, and more.
It also includes the ability to test progressive web applications for compliance with standards and best practices. Google Lighthouse is developed by Google and aims to help web developers.
Since Lighthouse is a Google application, it could be a great way to see your website in the way that Google might see it, knowing any recommendations come straight from the search engine giant itself.
A great thing about Lighthouse is it gives you actionable insights while being simple to use. In just a few clicks, you can get detailed page experience information, providing powerful insights into improving performance.
Benefits of Google Lighthouse
- Loading – Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
As a user, you don’t necessarily need the entire page to load quickly; you just need the most important content to do so. If a website is slow to load the most meaningful content (“largest contentful paint”), it will frustrate users and may cause them to bounce from the page.
Most of the time, we put the critical, eye-catching information above the fold—this is the content that needs to load most quickly.
- Interactivity – First Input Delay (FID)
“First input delay” is an important metric because it measures a user experience error that annoys everyone who’s ever used the internet.
You know when you click the submit button on a form, and nothing seems to happen, so you end up aggressively clicking it over and over?
First input delay measures the time between the user initiating an action (like clicking “submit”) and the website moving on that action (sending them to the next page). A long first input delay can be frustrating for users, resulting in leaving your page and looking for information elsewhere.
- Visual Stability – Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
You may often notice another UX error when you browse on a mobile device: Cumulative layout shift.
“Cumulative layout shift” is when content moves around on the screen as the site loads. This might not seem like a big issue at first glance, but the problem comes when you go to click something and, suddenly, it’s moved. It’s obnoxious to the end-user, so it’s an important metric to pay attention to.
With Lighthouse, Google offers free information to help improve your website, and it takes almost no time at all to generate a report. So, make the most of it!
