Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures the total number of layout shifts that occur on a page as it loads. It can be caused by a variety of factors, including images that load slowly, adverts that resize the page, and dynamic content that is injected into the page.
High CLS can cause a bad user experience, as users may not be able to click on the desired content if it keeps moving around.
It is an important part to keep an eye on, especially as more and more sites are using dynamic content and advertising. By monitoring CLS, you can make sure that your site is providing a good user experience and that users are able to find the content they’re looking for.
Layout shifts can be annoying for users and can lead to a poor experience on your site. Google uses CLS, along with two other metrics (FID and LCP), to judge the overall page experience. So if you’re looking to improve your site’s performance, you should make sure to reduce your CLS score.
How to Check Cumulative Layout Shift
You can check your page’s Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) with tools like Lighthouse or the Core Web Vitals. CLS is a metric that measures how often users experience unexpected layout changes while they are viewing a page. A high CLS can negatively impact the user experience, so it’s important to keep an eye on your CLS and try to minimize it.
Good or Poor CLS
As of July 2019, Google has officially defined CLS scores into the following ranges:
0.0 – 0.1 = Excellent
0.1 – 0.25 = Good
0.25 – 0.5 = Bad
0.5+ = Very Bad
This change will help webmasters better understand how their pages are performing in Google Search, and take action to improve their CLS scores.
What Drives Poor CLS?
There are many factors that can contribute to poor CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift). Poor CLS can be caused by anything from unoptimized images to advertisements that are not properly sized. In order to have a good CLS score, your website must be designed and coded in a way that minimizes layout shifts.
Some of the common causes of poor CLS are:
1). Unoptimized images: Images that are not properly sized or compressed can cause layout shifts when they load.
2). Ads: Ads that are not properly sized or placed can cause layout shifts when they load.
3). Lack of content stability: If the content on your page is not properly sized or placed, it can cause layout shifts when users scroll or resize the page.
4). Poorly coded pages: Pages that are not properly coded can cause layout shifts when they load or opened.
How to Fix and Avoid Layout Shifts
To fix your CLS, you first need to identify the elements causing the shifts. You can do this using the Chrome DevTools browser extension. Once you’ve identified the culprits, you can fix the issue by ensuring that all your page elements have a width and height specified. You can also use the new `size` and `position` properties in CSS to prevent layout shifts.
With a small effort, you can improve your CLS and provide a better experience to your users.
How to Inspect Shifts
For Optimize your CLS, you need to understand what is driving shifts.
There are two most ways to understand the shifts:
1). Use of Trace
2). One of these special recommendations is called “avoid large layout shifts.” This recommendation is based on the factor that users are often annoyed by sudden changes to the layout of a web page. These changes can be caused by things like resizing images or ads that suddenly appear on the page.
So what does this recommendation mean for you? Well, if you’re working on a web app and you want to avoid large layout shifts, you need to make sure that your web is designed in a way that minimizes these types of changes. You can do this by using things like responsive design and by carefully planning the layout of your page.
You can run Lighthouse against any web page, public or requiring authentication. It has audits for performance, accessibility, progressive web apps, SEO, and more.
Running Lighthouse is easy. To open Lighthouse, right-click anywhere on the webpage and select Inspect. Click the Audits tab. Then, check the boxes next to the audits you want to run. Click Run audits.
Avoid The Large Layout Shifts
Layout shift occurs when the position of content on a page changes unexpectedly. This can create a crude user experience, as users may suddenly find themselves looking at a different part of the page than they were expecting.
To avoid large layout shifts, keep the positions of important elements static. This will ensure that users always know where to find the content they’re looking for.
View Original Trace
If you’re trying to track down Shifts in your website, or you want to understand what caused a sudden increase in page load time, viewing the original trace in Lighthouse can be helpful. The trace contains a waterfall view of all network requests made when loading the page. From here, you can see which resources were loaded, in what order, and how long each request took.
To view the trace, open the Lighthouse report for the page you’re interested in and click the “View original trace” link under the “Performance” section. This will open the trace in a new tab & and you will see it.
Hire an Online Marketing agency for better CLS
If you’re looking for a Digital Marketing Agency that can help you improve your Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), then you should consider hiring Bizjunket. We are a team of experienced online marketers who are experts at improving CLS scores and all Digital Marketing Services. We can help you improve your website’s layout and design, optimize your images and videos, and more. We also offer a money-back guarantee if you’re not satisfied with our services.
Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you improve your CLS score.
