The First Contentful Paint (FCP) of your website is one of the most meaningful metrics in Google’s Core Web Vitals. In contrast with other paint and loading metrics, FCP isn’t a purely technical metric regarding response time. FCP is centered on the user’s experience and what they perceive first on the site, not what loads in the background. By optimizing your site’s First Contentful Paint, you are not only speeding up the overall load times and increasing page speed ratings, you’re also literally showing your visitors that their requests are being handled and that loading has not stalled.
In this article, we are going to go in-depth on what First Contentful Paint is, how to measure and optimize it, and answer some common questions about FCP so you can be sure that your site is as efficient and usable as it can possibly be.
