If your website takes more than 3 seconds to load, over half your visitors leave before seeing a single word. For Vancouver businesses competing in local search, that’s revenue walking out the door.
The Core Web Vitals Shift
Google rolled Core Web Vitals into its ranking algorithm, measuring three things:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) — how fast the main content loads
- INP (Interaction to Next Paint) — how quickly the page responds to clicks
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) — how stable the layout is while loading
Sites scoring poorly on these metrics get penalized in search rankings. A Vancouver dental clinic we audited was loading in 8.2 seconds — they were invisible on Google Maps despite great reviews.
What Slows Down Most Small Business Sites
The usual suspects:
- Unoptimized images — a single hero image can be 4MB. It should be under 200KB.
- WordPress bloat — 30+ plugins, each adding JavaScript and database queries
- Cheap hosting — shared servers in data centers far from Vancouver
- No caching strategy — every visit rebuilds the page from scratch
The Fix
We rebuild sites on modern frameworks (Astro, Next.js) that ship minimal JavaScript. Static pages load in under 1 second. Combined with edge hosting on Cloudflare’s Vancouver PoP, your site loads faster than the competition.
The result? A Lighthouse score above 90 and a measurable jump in local search rankings.
Want to know your score? Get a free audit — we’ll run Lighthouse and show you exactly where you stand.
Want to discuss this topic for your business?
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