How Web Hosting Can Improve Core Web Vitals

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Time is money, especially on the web. Developers measure site performance not in seconds but milliseconds, and according to Amazon, every 100ms in lost site speed equals 1% of lost sales.

“For context, a 1% loss of annual revenue for Amazon in 2006 would have been around $107 million,” writes Conductor in its summary of Amazon’s site speed study. “Today, this would be about $3.8 billion!”

Few sites feel the effects of revenue lost to slow speed like Amazon. But if you are a business owner, you could still be losing money, leads, or traffic because your website isn’t fast enough—and it could be because of your hosting.

How Web Hosting Affects Site Speed Optimization

Your web host, or server, is in general about 50% of the speed equation (the other half being the “front-end” code that runs on your visitors’ devices).

Web hosting is the digital environment where your website’s code is stored and run. Most websites run on cloud computers or virtual machines run by tech companies.

These cloud computers are simulations of actual computers run on physical machines based in large data centers, such as the data centers in Ashburn, Virginia.

The type of hosting environment your website will need depends on a number of factors:

Daily site traffic
The size of the website database (photos, videos, etc.)
The type of code your website runs on
Security considerations (prominent websites are more likely to attract hackers)
Your developers’ preferences
How often your site code needs to be updated
Cost
The number of updates that need to be run

At TechArk, when we host a website, we consider all these factors when picking the right environment for our clients. Site speed optimization is at the forefront.

Google Ranks Sites that Provide a Great Customer Experience

Owners of e-commerce and lead-generating websites already know that a slow website means fewer people will complete their desired actions, such as purchases and form submissions. However, a slow site also has a major impact on Google traffic.

Google wants your website to deliver a great experience to users because it validates the quality of the search results and ensures people continue to use Google.

Fast sites also send positive organic search signals to Google through positive engagement: higher click-through rates and overall usage of the site.

How a Better Web Host Improves Core Web Vitals

In 2021, Google added site speed as measured by Core Web Vitals to its ranking factors for organic search. A quality web host ensures reliability with consistent website uptime and security. If your website is down, you cannot pass Core Web Vitals.

But even if your website is “up”, your server still has a lot of work to do: fetching files, getting data, and delivering code. A quality hosting environment ensures that your website will meet your need for site speed optimization to improve Core Web Vitals.

Core Web Vitals measures three performance indicators for websites. Sites that pass the assessment get a higher grade.

Here’s how a web hosting service can improve your scores across each of the Core Web Vitals metrics:

Faster “Paints”

LCP (largest contentful paint) measures how long your website takes to display its primary section. The browser “paints” the content using the resources delivered from the website.

A fast hosting environment ensures no contentful resources (such as images and videos) get stuck loading in the back-end.

Bye, bye “rage clicks”

Have you ever visited a website, tried to click on something, and it doesn’t work? And then you click over and over again?

We call that the “rage click.” Google calls that a failing “Interaction to Next Paint” (INP). This metric evaluates how long it takes between a user interaction and the website to respond visually.

A fast hosting environment will return those new elements quickly so that to the naked eye, it’s almost instantaneous.

Beating the “Shift”

When a web browser makes a connection to a web host, the host’s first job is to return the “raw” code to the browser. Sometimes new elements are placed on the page after the initial load, causing the whole page to shift. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures this performance issue.

Screenshot of CLS issue. Content jumps or moves as elements load, creating a confusing user experience. — Credit: https://product.webpagetest.org/core-web-vitals/cumulative-layout-shift

Many factors contribute to this shift, most of which are specific to the website’s code structure. However, if a website appears to shift to users because the server takes too long to load additional elements after the page is initially rendered the hosting environment can be to blame.