Core Web Vitals and CMS: which platform has the best performance?
Continues our approach toward May and the debut of the Page Experience Update, with our insights on best practices to prepare the site for the new algorithmic update of Google that will take into account for ranking also the technical requirements that influence and determine the user experience on our pages. Today we focus on the role of CMS, the Content Management System platform, which can have a specific weight in simplifying (or complicating) the achievement of the parameters provided by Google.
The relationship between CMS and Core Web Vitals
To shed light on the impact that a CMS can have on Core Web Vitals is an interesting study signed by HTTP Archive, which generally analyzes the spread of content management platforms and their main features, identifying also the strengths and critical points compared to the 3 essential web signals identified by Google.
In detail, the report has compared the real world performance and statistics of 5 different CMS – WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Squarespace and Wix, which are the most popular worldwide – to find out which recorded the best Core Web Vitals scores, revealing quite mixed results, as also noted by Roger Montti on Search Engine Journal.
Why using a CMS today?
Before entering the topic, the study focuses on outlining an overall overview of CMS and their current usefulness, starting with a definition of Content Management System: that is, systems that allow individuals and organizations to create, managing and publishing content and, in the specific sense of the Web, of “content to be consumed and experimented through the Internet”.
Each CMS implements a wide range of content management features and mechanisms to allow users to create sites in a simple and effective way around their content, with flexibility to reuse the content database “wherever it is needed for your content strategy”; in addition, these platforms also provide administrative features to simplify the loading and management of content by users as needed.
It is also important to remember that the CMS include “all the components that play a role in the feasibility of such a system to provide a platform for the publication of content on the web”, thus including “hosting providers, extension developers, development agencies, site builders etc.”, and therefore – by extension – CMS indicates “both the platform itself and the surrounding ecosystem“.
Versatility and ease of use are just two of the reasons why people and organizations continue to use CMS platforms today, which “in many cases offer a shortcut to creating a site that meets their needs” and solve a problem.
The spreading of CMS
Also very interesting is the analysis of the current spread of CMS worldwide, both for desktop and mobile sites: over 42% of the web pages taken into account by HTTP Archive “is powered by a CMS platform, with an increase of over 5% from 2019” and,