Debugging Union Bank of Nigeria's Core Web Vitals Issues

Background

On mobile, the Union Bank of Nigeria’s website is relatively slow compared to other banking websites worldwide. According to the PageSpeed Insights report, the First Contentful Paint (FCP)—which indicates the first sight of content appearing—starts at 4.9 seconds. Ideally, FCP should be less than 1.8 seconds for a good user experience.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) Issues

The Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) on the Union Bank of Nigeria’s website is recorded at 8.3 seconds. This means that less than 14% of actual Chrome users experience LCP load times of less than 2.5 seconds. In general, users will have to wait over 8 seconds for the primary contents of the page to be visible in the viewport, which negatively impacts user experience and retention.

Impact of High LCP and FCP

Studies show that user frustration starts to skyrocket when a page takes more than 5 seconds to load. With Union Bank of Nigeria’s current LCP of 8.3 seconds, users are likely to become frustrated and leave the page. Optimizing these load times is essential for providing a smoother and more engaging experience.

Optimization Suggestions

There are several ways to address these performance issues:

• Use Chrome DevTools’ Show Coverage Tool: This can help identify unused CSS and JS assets that are being loaded unnecessarily. For instance, the `/sassy-social-share` asset, which is approximately 120kb in size, is not used at all by the website. Eliminating such unused assets can reduce load times.
• Reorder the Head Tag: Place all Meta Tags, Preload, and Preconnect assets before Stylesheets and Scripts. This ensures that critical resources are loaded first, speeding up FCP and LCP.

Suggested Head Tag Order

To optimize the head tag, consider using the following order:

• Meta Tags
• Preload Assets
• Preconnect Assets
• Stylesheets
• Scripts

Additional Recommendations

Analyze the order of scripts and remove or defer non-critical JS files that are currently blocking the rendering of the page. This will minimize the time the browser takes to parse the page and begin rendering content, thus improving the user’s experience.

Conclusion

Addressing Core Web Vitals issues is crucial for providing a seamless user experience and maintaining competitiveness in search rankings. With a few optimizations such as reordering the head tag, eliminating unused assets, and prioritizing critical resources, Union Bank of Nigeria can significantly improve its website performance.