How to Improve Web Vitals and Site Speed

[jemsmyth]

The title of this thread has been edited by a Square Moderator from the original: "Poor Core Web Vitals and site speed"

Here at www.thecreativebranch.com we've been working on a new Square ecommerce site for a UK customer. We're almost ready to put the site live but some Lighthouse tests indicate a lot of room for improvement on the lab Core Web Vitals, they're so low as to be unacceptable. Literally below 20 for mobile. 

The super-helpful Square Customer Support contact advised the regular optimising images and front end element optimisations, but the Lighthouse report indicates that optimisation is required on sections of the site/infrastructure that we just don't have access to, as its a hosted service. 

I've noticed other posts on here from the last couple of years indicating this is an ongoing and unresolved issue. Making Square quicker is a win/win for Square users and Square. We all know that faster ecommerce sites = more revenue, and therefore more commissions for Square! 

So - Square… what are you planning to do about this? 🙂 

Has anyone in the community got a good (say, 85+?) lab score in Lighthouse on mobile? 

[Minion]

Hey @jemsmyth 

Just giving this a friendly bump more or less as I don't use Square Online but I have seen said posts about how slow the load times are/can be.  

Have you tried connecting a free cloudlare account to the website to improve some load times?  It is free to use (can get paid options) but it should increase the end user experience. 

[_Violet · Accepted solution]

Hello @jemsmyth and welcome to the Square Community. My name is Violet and I'm one of the Community Moderators. I apologize for the delayed response here.

I checked in with the Square Online Support Team on this one. They let me know that third party analyzers, such as Lighthouse, may not be accurate, as they do not have access to our internal servers and systems, so they are not able to truly analyze the back end of your site. There is some additional context and suggestions here, from Community Moderator Sheamus.

I hope this information is helpful, but please do let me know if you have any additional questions.