LCP

What LCP measures

Largest Contentful Paint measures how long it takes for the largest visible element, usually a hero image, a video poster or a big block of text, to appear on screen. According to web.dev's Core Web Vitals guidance, a good LCP is 2.5 seconds or less, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads.

How to measure it

Run your key pages through PageSpeed Insights. It names the element counted as the LCP and suggests what's delaying it, such as slow server response, render-blocking files or a large image. Search Console's Core Web Vitals report shows which groups of pages fail across your site.

Common causes of a poor result

• Lazy-loading the main banner image, which delays it.
• Uploading photos straight from a camera or phone.
• Using sliders or carousels for the first thing visitors see.
• Ignoring server response time on cheap hosting.

What a fix looks like

A landscaper's home page uses a beautiful 6MB photo of a finished garden as the banner. On 4G it takes several seconds to appear. Resizing it, serving it in a modern format such as WebP, and making sure it isn't lazy-loaded brings LCP comfortably within the good range without losing the photo.

Why speed and stability matter

LCP is the moment a visitor feels the page has loaded. If it's slow, people on mobile often give up and go back to the results. It's also the Core Web Vital small business sites most often fail, usually because of oversized images.

For many small business sites, LCP is the most visible speed problem, because the main image or heading is the first thing customers see. Fixing it often makes the whole site feel faster.

Other speed and experience terms

• Core Web Vitals: Google user-experience metrics: LCP, INP and CLS.
• Lazy loading: Deferring offscreen images: careful with LCP images.
• CDN: Content delivery network serving assets from edge locations.
• Image SEO: Filenames, alt text, compression and placement for images.