WordPress Ranks Last in Core Web Vitals Study

A new report from HTTP Archive brings mixed news for business owners running WordPress sites. The study compared seven major content management platforms and found WordPress finishing dead last in Core Web Vitals performance. However, the findings also revealed something surprising: lighter pages don’t always guarantee better performance.

What Core Web Vitals Mean for Your Business

Core Web Vitals measure three things that directly affect your bottom line. First, how quickly your page loads. Second, how stable it stays while loading. And third, how responsive it feels to visitors clicking around your site.

These metrics matter because they impact what happens after someone lands on your site. Sites with high scores tend to convert better and keep visitors engaged. Sites with low scores? They frustrate people, which means more abandoned carts and fewer leads coming through your contact forms.

The Surprising Shopify Story

Here’s where things get interesting. Shopify sites ranked third overall with roughly 79% receiving good Core Web Vitals scores. Yet Shopify also had the heaviest pages in the entire study at 3.77 MB and performed poorly in lab-based Lighthouse tests.

Shopping sites typically struggle with performance because of all the scripts, tracking tools, and product features they need. Shopify somehow manages to deliver a smooth experience despite carrying all that weight. This tells us something important about how your site actually performs in the real world.

How Shopify Pulls It Off

Shopify maintains stable layouts that don’t shift around while loading. Their hosting infrastructure aggressively optimizes how resources get delivered to browsers. Additionally, they prioritize making sites feel responsive even when pages carry considerable weight.

The platform proves you can have heavy pages and still deliver excellent user experiences. Therefore, the conversation needs to shift from just making pages lighter to managing complexity more efficiently.

The Top Performers

Duda took first place with approximately 85% of sites receiving good scores. Their median page weight measured just 1.78 MB, one of the lightest in the comparison. The combination of lightweight pages and strong architecture paid off.

Wix claimed second place with roughly 80% good scores and a median weight of 2.55 MB. Both platforms demonstrated that keeping pages lean generally helps performance. However, Shopify’s success shows this isn’t the only path forward.

WordPress Falls Behind

WordPress sites managed only 49% good Core Web Vitals scores, placing it firmly in last place. The median page weight came in at 2.63 MB, which isn’t the heaviest but certainly isn’t helping matters.

Compare that to Duda at 1.87 MB or Astro at 1.65 MB. The performance gap between WordPress and top performers has grown wide enough that they’re operating in completely different ranges. This matters because your site’s performance directly affects whether visitors stick around or bounce.

What’s Dragging WordPress Down

WordPress also ranked second to last in Lighthouse audit scores at 44 points. Those lab tests measure things like unused JavaScript, render-blocking resources, and image optimization. When your site struggles in these areas, real users feel the impact.

The challenge for WordPress site owners is that plugins and themes often add weight without optimizing how that complexity gets delivered to browsers. Each additional feature competes for loading priority and execution time.

Understanding the Data

The report combines two data sources to paint a complete picture. Chrome UX Report provides anonymized real-world performance data from actual Chrome users. HTTP Archive contributes lab-based testing data from crawling websites across the internet.

Real-world data includes factors like caching, CDN behavior, and repeat visits. Lab data measures performance under controlled conditions. Comparing both reveals whether theoretical improvements actually help real users.

Other Platform Results

Astro landed in fourth place with 67% good scores and the lightest median page weight at 1.65 MB. Drupal took fifth with 64% good scores, maintaining steady performance throughout the measurement period. Joomla finished sixth at 58% despite having relatively light pages at 2.53 MB.

Joomla’s disappointing performance despite low page weight reinforces the main lesson here. How efficiently your platform handles complexity matters more than page weight alone. Joomla scored lowest on Lighthouse audits at 43 points, suggesting issues with JavaScript behavior and resource blocking.

What Actually Breaks Site Performance

Each Core Web Vitals metric reveals specific failure points. Largest Contentful Paint breaks when sites load oversized images or block rendering with CSS and JavaScript. Your main visual content needs to appear quickly, regardless of total page weight.

Interaction to Next Paint suffers when third-party scripts, tracking tags, and excessive JavaScript execution block the browser’s main thread. Every popup, chat widget, and slider competes for execution time. This is where complexity becomes expensive for your visitors.

Cumulative Layout Shift happens when images lack reserved dimensions or when ads and embedded content push visible elements around. Users trying to click buttons that suddenly move find this incredibly frustrating. Shopify excels here by maintaining stable layouts throughout the loading process.

What This Means for Your Site

If you’re running WordPress, this report isn’t great news. However, it also shows the path forward isn’t just about stripping features to reduce page weight. Focus instead on how well your site handles the technical failure points outlined above.

Check whether your images have proper dimensions set. Review which scripts are blocking your main thread. Look for layout shifts that frustrate visitors. These specific issues matter more than shaving a few kilobytes off your total page size.

The platforms succeeding in this comparison excel at managing complexity, not avoiding it. Shopify carries massive page weights but still delivers smooth experiences. That’s the real competitive advantage: handling real-world website needs efficiently.

Action Steps for Business Owners

Start by measuring your current Core Web Vitals scores using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. Look specifically at your scores for Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint, and Cumulative Layout Shift. These reveal where your site struggles most.

Next, audit your third-party scripts. Chat widgets, analytics tools, and marketing pixels all compete for browser resources. Each one needs to justify its impact on user experience. Remove or defer anything that doesn’t directly serve your business goals.

Finally, work with your developer to address the specific metrics dragging your scores down. A care plan that includes performance monitoring helps catch issues before they impact your visitors. This proactive approach beats chasing page weight reductions that may not improve real-world performance.

Original Source: www.searchenginejournal.com