LCP
Largest Contentful Paint: how long it takes for the biggest piece of content in view, usually the main image or heading, to appear on screen.
Largest Contentful Paint, or LCP, is one of Google’s three Core Web Vitals. It measures how long a page takes to show its largest visible element, usually a hero image, a large heading or a block of text. It’s a good stand-in for the moment a visitor feels the page has loaded.
According to web.dev’s LCP guide, a good LCP is 2.5 seconds or less.
Why it matters to a small business
LCP is the measure visitors feel most. If the main content takes several seconds to appear on a phone, many people give up before seeing your offer or phone number.
Common causes of a slow LCP:
- An oversized hero image.
- Slow server response, often from hosting without caching.
- Fonts, sliders or scripts that delay the main content.
- Lazy-loading the main image, which delays it on purpose.
Example
A salon’s homepage has a 3,000-pixel photo as its banner. On a mobile test, LCP is well over the threshold. Resizing the image for the screen, compressing it, and telling the browser to load it first brings LCP down substantially.
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