Core Web Vitals and conversions

If the page is slow on a phone, or jumps while it loads, people leave before they read the offer. That looks like “the ads are not working”. It is often the page.

Google publishes three numbers for this, collectively Core Web Vitals. Funnel Mage pulls them for your URL and writes them up only when they are bad enough to matter.

The three numbers, in plain English

LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) is how long until the main thing on the page appears. A big hero image is a usual culprit.

CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) is whether the page jumps around while loading. Buttons that move as you try to tap them lose bookings.

INP (Interaction to Next Paint) is how quickly the page responds after a tap. A form that sits there feeling dead will be abandoned.

We show Google’s lab test (a simulated phone) and, where Google has them, real-visitor numbers, each clearly labelled so a lab-only score is never dressed up as field data. The speed check is $65 on its own, and sits inside the Ad-Waste Work-up and the full work-up.

Speed is not always the leak

In the Larkstone sample, mobile performance was reasonable. The conversion problems were a booking-method mismatch, a hero image that pushed the ask off the first screen on desktop, and missing tracking. A slow page would have been written up. A fine page is not padded into a finding.

If your ads run mostly on mobile and the first screen takes more than a couple of seconds to become usable, start with the speed check. If the page is fast and still nobody calls, look at the landing page and the message instead.

Related: Why ads get clicks but no sales · Landing page audit vs a CRO agency