Core Web Vitals — LCP, CLS, INP Fixes

LCP was my biggest problem — 4.2 seconds. Turned out to be an unoptimised hero image loading without preload. Added a preload tag and converted to WebP. Down to 1.8s now.

My CLS was terrible on mobile. The CLS debugger identified an advert slot loading without reserved space. Fixed with a min-height on the container. Went from 0.31 to 0.04.

INP is the one I'm still struggling with. Anyone had success improving interaction responsiveness on a WordPress site?

For INP on WordPress — disable all non-essential plugins first and see how much it drops. I had a chat widget adding 200ms to every click. Replacing it with a lighter alternative fixed it.

The CWV tool showing field data vs lab data side by side is really useful. My lab scores looked fine but field data was failing — turned out to be third party scripts loading slowly for real users in certain regions.

Thanks Daniel — disabled 4 plugins and INP dropped from 380ms to 140ms. Now in the good range. Turns out a social sharing plugin was the main culprit.