Layout shifts can cause a poor user experience on your site. They’ll also increase your Cumulative Layout Shift score, which is one of the three metrics in Google’s Core Web Vitals initiative.
Fortunately, there are a few best practices you can employ to prevent large layout shifts when a page is loading. By simply assigning dimensions and creating structural placeholders, you can drastically improve your site’s loading times. If that doesn’t work, you can try additional strategies like preloading fonts.
👉 In this post, we’ll briefly introduce you to website layout shifts and discuss their impact on your site’s performance. Then, we’ll share four ways you can avoid them. Let’s get to it!
An introduction to layout shifts
A large layout shift is exactly what it sounds like. When a website isn’t optimized for performance, large areas of content can become unstable, jumping and moving as the page loads.
