We would like to update you on the Pagespeed framework that was announced a few months ago. There has been a long delay because Google Pagespeed Insights changed their metrics when we were close to completion. So we ended up re-coding a lot of stuff to comply with the new metrics. Before, Google just evaluated the page size, HTTP requests, scripts, code practices, etc., but now they also audit user experience as part of the pagespeed score. They implemented some new metrics such as Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) to determine how user friendly your page is rendered on user's screen. For example, if you have a large element (whether it is a text, image, video, map, or slider) that takes a long time to load, it will trigger a long LCP. Or if you have an element that causes layout shift during page render (eg. inline popup, ad, social embeds, etc.), it will trigger the CLS issue. The long loading LCP and CLS will result in lower pagespeed score. For more information, read Google's Web Vitals.
The new changes have made it harder to score 95+ on Google Pagespeed Insights for everyone (including our new framework). If you refer to our previous post, the demos used to score 97 to 99 but are now down to 90 to 92 due to the new changes. The good news is we've tackled the new metrics pretty well. Most demos (even with heavy content) can still score 90 and up. In this post, we will share the Ultra and Shoppe beta version and show a few pagespeed comparisions between the old vs new version.
