Guide
Core Web Vitals dropped — diagnosis and fixes
A Core Web Vitals drop is a symptom. The cause is usually a release, a plugin, a tag or a template that made the important pages slower for real visitors.
Search Console went red. Traffic did not wait.
Largest Contentful Paint slipped. Interaction to Next Paint followed. The pages that receive paid and organic traffic are the ones that got worse. A generic “speed plugin” will not tell you which release caused it, or whether the platform can recover.
What is usually behind it
A release made the hero more expensive
A new banner, slider, font or tag manager container is now the LCP element. Lab tests on an empty page will not show it. Field data on the landing pages will.
Third-party scripts woke up
Chat widgets, A/B tools, ads pixels and consent managers compete with your content. One extra tag is enough to push interactivity past the threshold.
The template cannot meet the threshold
If the page builder has to boot before the heading paints, you will keep missing LCP on mobile no matter how much you compress images.
What a diagnosis involves
Measure the pages that matter, in the field, then separate what you can fix on this stack from what the stack cannot do.
- Identify the actual LCP element and the scripts that delay it on the pages that receive traffic
- Remove or defer what does not need to run before the page is usable
- Fix images, fonts and server timing where they are the constraint
- Say clearly when the remaining gap only closes with a new front end
What it costs to find out
The Headless Assessment includes a performance diagnosis and a costed route forward. £1,500, fixed. If the right work is a short fix list, that is what you get. If the platform is the limit, you will see that in writing.
How we do this work
Modernise the presentation layer and core functionalities without ripping out commerce, CRM, or content systems that still work.
Platform migrationsRelated guides
- Slow WordPress site — what is actually causing itA slow WordPress site is rarely one plugin. It is usually the theme, the page builder, uncached database work and a front end that cannot get out of its own way.
- WordPress to Next.js migrationMove off a slow, plugin-heavy WordPress site without losing the content, rankings and integrations you already paid for.
Common questions
Will fixing Core Web Vitals recover our rankings?
It can remove a drag. It is not a ranking package. We treat the vitals as a user-experience and paid-traffic problem first, and we do not promise search movement.
Can you do this without a full migration?
Yes, when the architecture still has headroom. The assessment exists to answer that before anyone commits to a rebuild.
How quickly can this be diagnosed?
A focused diagnosis of the live pages is part of the two-to-three-week assessment. Emergency patches on a single landing page can sit outside that if the traffic loss is acute — we will say so on the first call.
Find out what you are actually dealing with.
The Headless Assessment includes a performance diagnosis and a costed route forward. £1,500, fixed. If the right work is a short fix list, that is what you get. If the platform is the limit, you will see that in writing.
No lock-in. No obligation.