How to make the best of the Contentful Paint: 8 effective strategies

Since the biggest Contentful Paint is a major indicator of a site’s load speed, a low LCP score could result in a poor user experience. There are a variety of reasons for poor website performance, which include:

• Response times to server requests are slow and the time to load resources
• Client-side rendering
• Render-blocking resources

There are many solutions to these problems. Let’s take a look at 10 efficient methods to increase your site’s biggest Contentful Paint score.

1. Utilize a CDN:

Difficulty level: medium

Impact: low/medium/high

A Content delivery network (CDN) is a fantastic tool for improving the traffic management of your website. CDNs CDN utilizes additional servers in the event that the original server is required to handle a large volume of traffic. Most sites employ this technique to handle a large number of frequent visitors.

As a result, CDNs CDN could help boost LCP scores. LCP by balancing load across the network as visitors’ requests do not require queueing at the same time on the exact server. This could result in a better LCP score, and could also enhance user experience.

CDNs can be enhanced with additional software. CDN is also improved by additional software such as one called an image CDN which optimizes and alters the size of images in real-time. This could further increase how quickly a site with a lot of media renders content.

The procedure for installing the CDN is different based on the hosting service you choose to use. In general, it’s fairly easy. If you’re using Hostinger the software, you are able to turn on the CDN directly through your CPanel.

Sought-after CDN services are Cloudflare with more than 120 locations around the world. Cloudflare is a service that offers a free plan with a simple procedure for setting up, especially when you’re installing Cloudflare using WordPress.

It is worth looking into other CDN options, such as StackPath, Sucuri along with Google Cloud CDN.

2. Ensure Right Image Sizing:

Difficulty level: easy

Efficiency: low/medium/high

As previously mentioned, some images may be considered to be a contentful painting element based on their size. Thus, making sure that your web pages are optimized for image size is essential to maintaining an acceptable LCP score.

The most important thing is to determine the proper size of an image to fit the device of the user. In order to get a great LCP score, websites must use images that are responsive.

It is also essential to be aware of your website’s default size for images. For instance, there are four standard WordPress image dimensions that include:

• Thumbnail- Is precisely 150 pixels in size.
• Medium- Up to 300 pixels.
• Large- Maximum 1024 pixels in a square.
• Full-size- This is a reference to the original size of the image.

Be aware that images display the smallest size of their elements. So, a picture that is compressed will display its actual size however an image that has been enlarged will show its original dimension.

3. Optimize Images:

Difficulty level: easy

Efficiency: low/medium/high

In addition to ensuring that your site is properly sized, there are many other methods to optimize the images on your website to speed up loading.

In the event that your goal is optimizing images in WordPress, it is fairly simple as you’ll need to select the appropriate file format or utilize the plugin.

Some of the most well-known tools for optimizing images for web pages include TinyPNG, Imagify Imagify, as well as Kraken. The plugins the Optimole, EWWW Image Optimizer as well as ShortPixel are all great choices that are suitable for WordPress users.

Optimizing images isn’t just beneficial to increase your LCP score. It also allows you to reduce storage space and possibly increase your site’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) performance. If you’re a WordPress user, take a look at additional ways to increase your SEO.

4. Improve Server Response Time:

Difficulty level: medium

Efficiency: low/medium/high

The time it takes to load your page is closely linked to the speed of response from the server. The back and forth procedure between the browser request of a user and server request is among the major factors that affect the speed of loading. This is also referred to in the form of the Round Trip Time (RTT).

There are a variety of methods to increase the speed of response for your server, such as:

• Introduce server-side caching: Web owners can make use of server-side and browser caching. Server-side caching can be found in most hosting configurations.
• The upgrade of specifications for servers: The hardware specifications can greatly impact the performance of the server. So, you should consider upgrading to a server that has more powerful CPU capabilities and a larger capacity for storage.
• Optimize the code of your application: Streamlining code utilized in functions like queries in databases can help to improve the LCP score. Removing irrelevant CSS could speed up rendering in the initial stage. Don’t be afraid to seek assistance from web developers because this process can be extremely technical.

WP-DBManager plugins can be used to optimize WordPress websites by reducing bloat and automating cleanups.

5. Use a Reliable Web Hosting Provider:

Difficulty level: easy

Efficiency: high

The quality of the web host is an important factor impacting the overall web performance. Web hosting that is reliable is usually designed to improve user experience. It includes a variety of tools to make managing websites simpler.

So, choosing a web hosting plan that matches your website’s requirements can increase the load speed. Atozserver offers a variety of hosting plans that can be adapted to a variety of requirements and preferences.

For instance, our WordPress hosting plans are specially tuned to maximize the capabilities of the CMS and speed up loading times. The service also has a user-friendly control panel that helps make managing your website much easier.

6. Implement Caching:

Difficulty level: easy/medium/hard

Efficiency: low/medium/high

Caching is the practice of the storage of static assets on the page on a temporary server. This speeds up the loading of pages by cutting down on the amount of information that is transferred in the rendering phase. There are two primary caching techniques – the server-side cache and the browser cache.

When you enable browser caching the users are able to store cache locally in their storage. This means that they won’t need to download identical information every time they visit your site. Browser caching can be utilized via plugins or manually.

However server-side cache is a technique for saving a pre-made copy of a website’s page on the server that created it. This way it is not necessary for the server to rebuild or load information from the database every time visitors visit the site.

A very sought-after tool that allows websites to cache includes the LiteSpeed. It has advanced caching capabilities and beneficial features, such as dynamic content optimization, as well as the HTTP load-balancing tool.

7. Fix Lazy Loading Issues:

Difficulty level: medium

Efficiency: low/medium/high

Lazy loading refers to a method where the page delays rendering non-critical CSS or other resources. It will instead focus on loading content above the fold and render non-critical resources when necessary to speed up the page load. This method allows you to load files simultaneously depending on how far they are from the viewport.

The content above the fold, such as a featured image, will be displayed immediately upon initial loading. Until users scroll through them, video thumbnails that are not visible in the viewport will be replaced with placeholder images.

Lazy loading can sometimes lead to a lower LCP score. Websites that use native lazy loading and all their images follow lazy loading might have a lower LCP score.

This issue can be fixed by simply tagging the hero or featured photo that could get selected as the largest contentful painting element with the attribute loading= “Eager”. This function allows an image element to render instantly regardless of how far it is from the viewport.

This problem can be solved by disabling the lazy loading of images above the fold. Browsers will then load them without the need to run JavaScript before.

8. Minify JS, CSS, and HTML Files:

Difficulty level: easy

Efficiency: low

Minification is a technique that reduces file size by reducing the lines of code in the file. This file optimization method can improve your LCP.

Many white spaces in the code may make some core files, such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, larger. They can cause site performance problems when they accumulate, even though they may not be significant.

Minify CSS, HTML, and JS files by web owners using WordPress plugins or manually. The most popular minifying plugins are Fast Velocity Minimize and WordPress Super Minify.

Don’t forget about the Core Web Vitals report after you have completed these steps. PageSpeed Insights and other tools can help you find additional minification opportunities if you haven’t already.