How to Run a Core Web Vitals Audit Using Lighthouse

In this article, we will guide you through the process of running a core web vitals audit using Lighthouse, a popular open-source tool developed by Google.

What are Core Web Vitals?

Core Web Vitals (CWV) is a set of metrics introduced by Google to measure the user experience of a website. The CWV suite includes three primary components:

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures the time it takes for the main content of a webpage to load.
2. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Evaluates the visual stability of a webpage by measuring how often and how much unexpected layout shifts occur during loading.
3. First Input Delay (FID): Assesses the responsiveness of a website by measuring the time it takes for the user’s input to be processed.

What is Lighthouse?

Lighthouse is an open-source tool developed by Google that audits web pages and provides recommendations for improving performance, accessibility, and best practices. It can be integrated into various workflows, including development, quality assurance, and production environments.

Step-by-Step Guide to Running a Core Web Vitals Audit Using Lighthouse

Step 1: Set Up Lighthouse

To run a CWV audit using Lighthouse, you need to have the tool installed on your system. You can download it from the official GitHub repository. For this guide, we will assume that you are running Lighthouse on a Linux-based system.

Step 2: Install Lighthouse

Run the following command in your terminal to install Lighthouse:
bash
npm install -g lighthouse

Step 3: Run Lighthouse Audit

Open a new terminal window and navigate to the directory containing the webpage you want to audit. Then, run the following command:
bash
lighthouse <path_to_webpage> --ci
Replace <path_to_webpage> with the actual path to your webpage.

Step 4: View Audit Results

Lighthouse will generate an HTML report of the audit results. Open the generated report in a web browser by running:
bash
open lighthouse-report.html
Alternatively, you can open it directly from your file manager.

Interpreting Audit Results

The Lighthouse report provides detailed information about your webpage’s performance, accessibility, and best practices. The CWV metrics are displayed on the first page of the report:

• LCP: Measures the time it takes for the main content to load.
• CLS: Evaluates the visual stability of the webpage.
• FID: Assesses the responsiveness of the website.

If your webpage scores well in these areas, you can rest assured that users will have a great experience navigating and interacting with your site.

Tips and Tricks

To improve your CWV scores:

1. Optimize images: Compress and resize images to reduce their file size.
2. Minify CSS/JS files: Remove unnecessary whitespace and comments from code.
3. Enable compression: Use Gzip or Brotli compression on server-side responses.
4. Prioritize content loading: Ensure that critical content loads quickly.

By following these steps and tips, you can run a thorough core web vitals audit using Lighthouse and identify areas for improvement to enhance the user experience of your website.

Conclusion

In this article, we demonstrated how to run a core web vitals audit using Lighthouse. By following these simple steps and interpreting the results, you can ensure that your webpage provides an excellent user experience and improves its performance in search engine rankings.