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Your Guide to the Lighthouse Score

Lighthouse Score measures critical aspects of your website, such as speed, accessibility, and SEO practices. A well-optimized score enhances user experience, leading to better engagement and improved search engine visibility.

Lighthouse Score

Introduction to the Lighthouse Score

The Lighthouse Score is a comprehensive performance metric developed by Google that evaluates the overall quality of a web page. It assesses four key areas: performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO.

  • Performance: Measures page speed and responsiveness, focusing on image load times and interactivity.
  • Accessibility: Ensures your site is user-friendly for people with disabilities, covering elements like alt text and high-contrast visuals.
  • Best Practices: Evaluates adherence to web development standards, such as security and efficient script usage.
  • SEO: Checks how easily your site can be found on search engines, reviewing elements like titles, meta descriptions, and mobile optimization.

The Lighthouse Score is calculated for both mobile and desktop versions, providing a clear snapshot of your site’s performance across critical areas.

Business Value of Lighthouse

The Lighthouse Score plays a crucial role in shaping business outcomes by directly affecting user engagement, conversions, and search engine visibility. As a comprehensive performance metric, Lighthouse highlights key areas where improvements can enhance user experience, which in turn positively impacts business metrics.

Impact on Conversions and User Engagement

A website's performance, particularly in areas like load speed and accessibility, is vital for user engagement. Research has shown that conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% for every additional second of load time between the first 0-5 seconds. A higher Lighthouse Score helps identify performance issues and offers solutions, such as speeding up load times or improving usability, which can lead to more seamless user experiences. When pages load faster and are easier to navigate, users are more likely to stay on the site and complete desired actions like signing up, making purchases, or engaging with content.

Boosting SEO and Organic Traffic

While the Lighthouse Score itself doesn’t directly impact search rankings, it addresses core aspects that contribute to better SEO performance. For example, Core Web Vitals, which are part of the Lighthouse evaluation, are a set of performance metrics that Google uses to assess page experience. Improving your Lighthouse Score can enhance factors like loading speed, layout stability, and interactivity, which Google takes into account when ranking sites. By optimizing these areas, your site becomes more user-friendly and can rank higher in search results, driving more organic traffic.

Why It’s Crucial for Business Goals

A well-optimized Lighthouse Score leads to a better-performing website, which translates to happier users and higher engagement. This, in turn, can increase conversions and reduce bounce rates. Furthermore, by enhancing performance and user experience, you’re aligning your site with Google's guidelines for search rankings, ultimately improving visibility and long-term business growth. The Lighthouse Score is not just a technical benchmark—it’s a valuable tool for ensuring that your website meets user expectations and business objectives.

High-Performing Examples

Landing pages with high Lighthouse Scores excel in key areas such as performance, accessibility, and user experience. Below are some standout examples that demonstrate exceptional optimization for both desktop and mobile devices, making them benchmarks in web performance.

Lex Reception Mobile App Landing Page

LEX Reception Mobile App Landing Page

With a Lighthouse Score of 99 on desktop and 83 on mobile, the Lex Reception landing page is a prime example of a well-optimized page for both devices. Its high score on desktop reflects fast loading times, adherence to best practices, and strong accessibility features. The mobile version, while slightly lower, still performs exceptionally well, offering a smooth experience with minimal load delays. This balance makes the Lex Reception landing page a reference point for high performance across platforms.

Krüss ADVANCE Software Landing Page

Kruss Advance Software Landing Page

The Krüss ADVANCE landing page achieves a 97 on desktop and 80 on mobile, highlighting its strong optimization for desktop users while maintaining a solid mobile experience. Its desktop performance excels due to well-executed loading strategies and adherence to Google’s best practices, while the mobile score, though slightly lower, still ensures a smooth and efficient user journey.

Bayfields Eye Tests Landing Page

Bayfields Eye Tests Landing Page

The Bayfields Eye Tests landing page boasts a 95 on desktop and 87 on mobile, demonstrating excellent performance across both platforms. The page is optimized for quick load times, accessibility, and user-friendly navigation, resulting in a smooth experience for both desktop and mobile visitors. This makes it a model example of how to balance performance across devices for the best user engagement.

These examples show how optimizing for the Lighthouse Score can significantly improve a landing page’s performance, usability, and overall user experience. By following best practices, these pages ensure fast load times and smooth interactions, leading to higher user engagement and better conversion rates.

Improvement Opportunities

While some landing pages demonstrate strengths in areas like content clarity and calls-to-action (CTA), there are often opportunities to improve the Lighthouse Score by addressing performance-related issues. Below is an example where certain optimizations could lead to a better score, ultimately enhancing the user experience.

NBA League Pass Landing Page

NBA League Pass Landing Page

The NBA League Pass landing page, with a Lighthouse Score of 35 on desktop and 6 on mobile, highlights areas where performance can be significantly improved. Despite the page's strength in content that clearly communicates key messages and drives users to the main CTA, several factors are impacting its Lighthouse Score.

Main Areas for Improvement:

  1. JavaScript Execution Time: The page has an excessive JavaScript execution time, which delays the rendering of key elements. Streamlining the JavaScript and optimizing the code can reduce loading time and improve the overall performance of the page.
  2. Main-Thread Work: The time spent on the main thread is too long, which affects the page's responsiveness. Reducing the amount of JavaScript that runs during this time or deferring non-critical tasks would allow the page to respond more quickly to user interactions.
  3. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): The LCP, which measures how long it takes for the largest content element to load, is much higher than optimal. Optimizing image sizes, compressing files, and loading only essential content first can help reduce the LCP and improve user perception of the page’s speed.
  4. Unused CSS and JavaScript: There is a significant amount of unused CSS and JavaScript being loaded. Removing or deferring these unused resources would not only improve performance but also reduce unnecessary loading time.
  5. Defer Offscreen Images: Deferring offscreen images until they are needed (lazy loading) could greatly benefit page speed, especially on mobile. This would allow the page to prioritize loading visible content first, improving perceived performance.
  6. Third-Party Cookies and Deprecated APIs: The page is using multiple third-party cookies and deprecated APIs, which are not only a security risk but can also slow down the page. Minimizing third-party resources and replacing deprecated APIs will enhance both performance and security.
  7. Missing Source Maps for JavaScript: Providing source maps for the large first-party JavaScript files can make debugging easier and reduce load times. This will not only improve the Lighthouse score but also make ongoing maintenance more efficient.

While the NBA League Pass landing page excels in content and action-driven design, addressing these performance issues will significantly improve both desktop and mobile Lighthouse Scores. By optimizing JavaScript, reducing unnecessary resources, and improving load times, this page can achieve a smoother user experience, which will lead to higher engagement and potentially better conversions.

Tips and Best Practices

Improving your Lighthouse Score and website performance may require technical adjustments, but these efforts are crucial to boosting user experience, engagement, and SEO. Here are some key strategies to help you get started:

1. Optimize Images for Faster Loading

  • Use compressed, next-gen formats like WebP or AVIF to reduce file sizes.
  • Implement lazy loading so images only load when they’re about to appear on the screen.

2. Minimize JavaScript and CSS

  • Remove unused JavaScript and CSS files to reduce page weight and improve speed.
  • Minify your code to streamline performance and enhance loading times.

3. Enhance Mobile Experience

  • Ensure your site is fully responsive and optimized for mobile devices.
  • Focus on key performance metrics like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and First Input Delay (FID) from Google’s Core Web Vitals.

4. Prioritize Accessibility

  • Add descriptive alt text to images and ensure your site supports screen readers.
  • Use high-contrast colors and readable fonts to improve accessibility for all users.

5. Secure Your Site

  • Implement HTTPS to protect user data and improve trust.
  • Regularly update software, plugins, and scripts to maintain a secure environment.

6. Optimize SEO Elements

  • Use clear and concise title tags and meta descriptions for each page to improve search rankings.
  • Structure your content with proper header tags (H1, H2) to improve readability for users and search engines.

7. Defer Offscreen and Non-Critical Elements

  • Defer loading of offscreen images and non-critical scripts to speed up initial load times and improve user interaction.

8. Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network)

  • A CDN distributes your content across multiple servers worldwide, reducing load times for users regardless of location.

While these optimizations can be technically complex, they are essential steps for improving your Lighthouse Score, creating a smoother user experience, and driving better SEO and conversion outcomes.

Benchmark and Measurement

Through our comprehensive benchmarking, we’ve found that the median Lighthouse Score for landing pages is 72 on desktop and 37 on mobile. This average serves as a reliable benchmark for assessing your page's performance against industry standards.

Google Lighthouse Score Benchmark by Landingmetrics

Below is a breakdown of the performance across three categories:

  • Benchmark (Median Performance):
    • Median Lighthouse Score: 72 on desktop, 37 on mobile
    • This represents the typical performance of most landing pages in our extensive benchmark.
  • Top Performers (Best-in-Class):
    • Scores of 95 or higher on desktop and 59 or higher on mobile
    • These are the top 10% of landing pages, showcasing exceptional optimization for performance, accessibility, and SEO.
  • Low Performers (Bottom Tier):
    • Scores of 47 or lower on desktop and 22 or lower on mobile
    • These represent the bottom 10% of landing pages, typically facing significant challenges in performance and usability.

This breakdown helps brands identify how they are performing compared to industry peers. Our benchmark is based on hundreds of landing pages from major brands across various sectors, offering valuable insights for improving your own performance.

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Lighthouse Score Measurement

The Lighthouse Score, developed and maintained by Google, is based on a series of audits run on both desktop and mobile versions of a webpage. These audits simulate real user interactions, such as loading the page, scrolling, and clicking buttons, to evaluate how well the site performs under typical user conditions. Lighthouse uses Google's Core Web Vitals as key performance indicators, focusing on factors like load speed, interactivity, and visual stability.

During the audit process, Lighthouse collects various types of data, including how quickly the page loads, how long it takes for users to interact with key elements, and whether the page layout shifts as it loads (causing frustration). It also checks the site’s accessibility for users with disabilities, the adherence to web development best practices, and whether SEO fundamentals like meta tags and mobile-friendliness are in place. This collected data is then analyzed to provide scores for each category—Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO—on a scale of 0 to 100, offering insights and recommendations for improvement.

Optimization and Services

We offer tailored services that leverage advanced tools and human expertise to optimize your landing page's Lighthouse Score and overall performance. Our comprehensive methodology includes the assessment of the Lighthouse Score as well as 28 other metrics to cover the whole user experience in regards of conversion goals.

UX Scorecard

The UX Scorecard provides a detailed evaluation of your landing page's user experience, offering a clear, actionable summary of strengths and areas for improvement. It includes scores for critical aspects of UX, allowing you to pinpoint exactly where enhancements are needed.

UX & Conversion Audit

Our UX & Conversion Audit offers an in-depth analysis of your landing page, combining UX insights with conversion optimization strategies. This audit delivers comprehensive recommendations to enhance both user engagement and conversion rates, ensuring your landing page achieves its full potential.