6 Strategies to Enhance FCP in WordPress Websites

With Google’s announcement in 2019 that they would consider the FCP score to evaluate a website’s speed rank, it has emerged as a significant component to measure the loading speed of WordPress websites. It indicates the time taken for your website to deliver the results. So, the poorer the score, the longer the readers need to wait. However, there are ways to repair the First Contentful Paint WordPress score and optimize the performance of your WordPress website.

Check these steps to learn how to improve First Contentful Paint or FCP score strategically:

1. Pick a fast web hosting provider

Try to choose a hosting service that has its servers situated near your users. It is one of the most important aspects you need to consider when you are keen to know how to reduce First Contentful Paint.

2. Install a plugin

When it comes to plugins for WordPress, everything falls short of success, especially when you are trying to manage the First Contentful Paint. There are several different options to choose from when improving the score. Instead of choosing various tools that are often used to get rid of those resources that stop the website from rendering or minifying the site files, stick to a comprehensive option that resonates with your requirements.

3. Reduce Time to First Byte

Time to First Byte or the response time of the server refers to the period that the server requires to deliver the first information byte back to the browser. That is how the delay or waiting time from the time when the request is put to the beginning of the first response is measured. Now, FCP relies on TTFB. So, reducing the server response time is one of the effective ways to make your website perform efficiently. Ask your hosting service to optimize your content to enhance the server response time and in turn, fix the FCP score. Keep an eye on this link https://www.technoblogsonline.com/category/web-design-development/  for more technical updates.

4. Identifying the critical scripts

The first step is identifying the critical styles and scripts that play a vital role in rendering the First Contentful Paint of your WordPress site. Once you are done with it, all you need is to remove them from the render-blocking resources and put them in order inside the HTML page with <style> and <script> tags. That way, the webpage will always have the things it needs to manage the core functionality when the website loads.

5. Improve the CSS structure

When writing a code, it is necessary to include spaces to make it easier for people to understand. However, the challenge that may come up during this process is that the additional characters consume the space of the disk. Moreover, browsers stay away from white spaces when processing the codes. Take care of CSS structure wherein these extra spaces and characters can be removed from the CSS files. Eventually, the size of the web page reduces allowing browsers to read and account for a good FCP score. This is an effective answer to the question, “how to reduce first contentful paint?”.

6. Managing the elements that stay above the fold

Are you into optimizing JavaScript and can’t get a satisfactory result, especially when you know that it can harm FCP? Even if you put the critical scripts in sequence, they will still need to load. To improve the FCP score, even the milliseconds count.

So, failing to manage the time may take a toll on your website’s speed. Several WordPress themes may include elements above the fold that include a lot of scripts. Therefore, the theme you choose needs to be well-coded to ensure that the FCP score is near perfect. The fewer the elements above the fold the better it is for you to keep the FCP score appropriate.

Improving the First Contentful Paint and reducing the time won’t be easy. However, it is no longer an aspect to enhance the website loading time that you can bargain for but a necessity you have to manage with the best efforts.

Knowing how to improve First Contentful Score (FCP) has gone from being optional to mandatory, given the highly competitive online business market of the present day. A good FCP score is referred to be an effective indicator of a fast-loading website, which encourages online users to stay longer on your website, thereby negatively affecting bounce rates, which results in an increased user experience, and therefore, drives higher organic traffic.
Hence, improving the First Contentful Paint (FCP) for WordPress website is undoubtedly a crucial job to do! Failing this might increase the frustration of users landing on your website, which ultimately can cause an overall rank drop in SERPs. So, if you want your WordPress website to rank higher, and improve the overall conversion rates, focus on enhancing the FCP, and a majority of your job is done!

We have tried to explain it to those who may find it tough to cut through all that technical and apply it correctly. You are sure to see improvements gradually and here is an image that best explains what your score should look like.