What is Largest Contentful Paint?
Also called: LCP
The short answer
Largest Contentful Paint measures how long it takes for the largest visible element, usually the hero image or headline, to appear; good is 2.5 seconds or less.
Largest Contentful Paint, explained
Improve it by serving the hero fast: optimised and preloaded images, fast server response, no render-blocking resources and text that does not wait for a web font.
Questions people ask about Largest Contentful Paint
What is Largest Contentful Paint?
Largest Contentful Paint measures how long it takes for the largest visible element, usually the hero image or headline, to appear; good is 2.5 seconds or less.
Related terms
Core Web Vitals are Google's three user-experience metrics: Largest Contentful Paint for loading, Interaction to Next Paint for responsiveness and Cumulative Layout Shift for visual stability.
Hero sectionThe hero section is the large opening area at the top of a page, usually a headline, a short promise, a call to action and a visual.
Time to First ByteTime to First Byte is how long the browser waits after requesting a page before the first byte of the response arrives; it reflects server and network speed.
Image optimisationImage optimisation is serving images at the right size, format and quality for each device, so pages load fast without visibly losing quality.
Part of the Web Encyclopedia by Apex Flow Digital. Definitions are general knowledge, kept current, with no invented statistics.