Core Web Vitals

On 9/4/2023 at 3:28 AM, simon.stjohn said:

I want to add my voice to this appalling situation. After so many years and given the financial success of Squarespace, the fact they have not found a solution to the obvious flaws in their backend that cause most of these problems is unconscionable.

The most (un)helpful advice they give is to reduce image sizes, which I already do - but most of the problem, as highlighted by many more knowledgeable than myself in the comments above, has to do with issues like loading unnecessary libraries etc.

I will not be building my next site on SS. I know going to Wordpress will have its issues, but I can't stay in the same boat and continue financially rewarding a company that spends large amounts on marketing to expand its client base instead of investing in improving their system.

In the end, like it or not, the pressure we face as customers of Squarespace is that Google is marking down our sites for poor performance and it is hard to justify continuing to support a platform that devalues my efforts and sees my penalised by Google.

Anyone from Squarespace care to comment - in particular not to argue with the hundreds of comments here, but to tell us what you are doing to fix these deficiencies - or if you intend to keep doing nothing?

It keeps getting ignored. How much longer?

I guess until enough old timers move.

But with the influx of new users I guess SS would accept that price.

I can only assume the failure to address the problems is the result of either:

1. Squarespace simply cannot fix the problems - their system is broken and unfixable; or

2. Refusal to do anything because they resent the criticism (you remember those children from school, right?)

Surely it's not (2), so that leaves (1).

Not good.

On 6/5/2023 at 12:28 PM, GlynMusica said:

You can use things like PRELOAD and PREFETCH DNS to make optmisations.

Hi Glyn, interesting … that sounds like a little trick. 
Would you tell us more, please?

Hi folks,

We decided to migrate our site from Wordpress to Squarespace. Mainly for the ease of editing and absence of hands-on system updates and upkeep. We went live on October 15th, 2023. About a month ago...

We thought everything was great until we started getting information about site performance. To our dismay, we found what lots of others have: the site is terribly slow mostly due to poor Javascript bundling and lack of, or insufficient code-splitting.

I've been closely looking at our Search Console ever since go-live. Everything seemed normal, but now I'm realizing that it was because Google hadn't collected enough Web Vitals information. The numbers are out now, and they are pretty terrible.

Looking over this thread, I'm also very discouraged to know that this has been an issue for a while now. All that hard work we put into the site migration, only to realize we may have done a terrible mistake by moving to Squarespace.

So utterly disappointing!

@Matt-W-Urst go and take a look at web.dev to learn about how these things work, it's all really easily documented.  You can use Chrome Tools Network Inspector to isolate what needs to pre-load etc.

@Mr_E 

I feel you. Exactly the same here with our extensive Website! After launch I was shocked. How many hours I have spent on tests and optimizations to see that there is hardly any change in the bad score. I'm pretty sure 30-40 score points are being pushed down by SqS. That's a bad realisation. For such a large company with +4.2 million accounts, this is an absurdity. Especially with regard to all common and known to come SEO rules. 

You have minimum 1 opportunity to change this: Participate in the critique of some community members and let the SqS support know about your finding and your displeasure. This is what (too few) others have done, as you can read here in this thread, as well as me. I was constructively, friendly but quite direct and used the technical terms and screenshots to describe the problem because I realised: it's their JavaScripts! I was clear in what I thought of it and that I couldn't use it for myself and my customers in this state and would have to move away if it wasn't improved soon. I had to complain to support twice before I was assured that this problem was known and that my feedback would definitely be passed on to the relevant departments. So: be patiened but use your voice.
Here's the link to get in touch with them.

Whether they will discuss and change this is questionable. But the more users like you and I refuse to accept this impossible situation and complain to support, the louder our voices will become and hopefully we will be heard at some point. My hope is that this will be fixed very soon, by Feb. 2024. Otherwise I need to invest in expensive Ads – or to leave.

Ciao a tutti,

Ho lo stesso problema. Due siti on line, uno da poco passato da 7.0 a 7.1 dopo un mese intero di lavoro lato SEO e riscrittura di tutto il sito per farlo al meglio. Lato Google pessimo sempre per le stesse ragioni Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). 

Da quando ho messo on line il sito ad oggi (due settimane circa) google search console mi dice che solo 9 url sono validi!! Ho scritto all'assistenza... Molto frustrato.

Hello entrepreneurs! In general, the problem seems big and so it is, here are our graphs and I hope the support will at least answer something if their clients are important to them? This all looks pretty sad and we seriously think that we need to move to other platforms.

36 minutes ago, Artcoast said:

I hope the support will at least answer something if their clients are important to them?

@Artcoast 

This is a peer-to-peer forum where Squarespace users help other users. The community would love to help but there isn't anything that we can do to help with this topic. 

Squarespace doesn’t use this forum to track limitations or accept feature requests so you are encouraged to inform Squarespace directly by raising a ticket through Squarespace Customer Support. 

3 hours ago, paul2009 said:

@Artcoast 

… so you are encouraged to inform Squarespace directly by raising a ticket through Squarespace Customer Support. 

Thank you @paul2009 for your support and your true words. More users urgently need to contact support and make their displeasure clear. The status quo is absolutely no longer acceptable – especially not with Google's AI SGE approaching: From 2024, sites will have to be much more performant. Freedom from errors and speed will then be essential if you want to have a chance of keeping up with competitors who are with higher-performance hosters.

4 hours ago, paul2009 said:

@Artcoast 

This is a peer-to-peer forum where Squarespace users help other users. The community would love to help but there isn't anything that we can do to help with this topic. 

Squarespace doesn’t use this forum to track limitations or accept feature requests so you are encouraged to inform Squarespace directly by raising a ticket through Squarespace Customer Support. 

I wrote to them today, here is their response:

Quote

Third-party tools, such as Google PageSpeed Insights, examine a site's code and provide suggestions for improving its performance. These tools are useful when coding your own site but can present misleading results for sites built on a CMS platform, like Squarespace. If these tools display errors, it doesn’t always mean there’s an issue with your site.
 
If this tool is showing that your site is reporting JavaScript errors, it's not possible to disable those scripts as they’re used to display content on the platform. Our engineers have worked to "minify" the code, which means it’s been optimized to speed up its loading time for new visitors to your site.
 
If your site is loading slowly, I recommend working through these steps to troubleshoot:
 
https://support.squarespace.com/hc/articles/206545657

On 12/20/2023 at 6:09 PM, Artcoast said:

I wrote to them today, here is their response:

 

I received the same canned response months ago. After I linked back to this thread here, they promised to hand it over to their development team but that was it. No follow up, no beep.

i think they’re ashamed and so they should be. Not for difficult technical issues but for ignorant behavior towards their customers.

11 minutes ago, Gumbalaya said:

I received the same canned response months ago. After I linked back to this thread here, they promised to hand it over to their development team but that was it. No follow up, no beep.

i think they’re ashamed and so they should be. Not for difficult technical issues but for ignorant behavior towards their customers.

Exactly the same here. Thank you for sharing your experience.
 

Hopefully more users knocks at the support team. 

On 12/20/2023 at 6:09 PM, Artcoast said:

I wrote to them today, here is their response:

 

I‘ve got the same mail, months ago. Very sad

As a new Squarespace customer, this thread is a concerning read. 

It's also a major red flag that the company is not looking at their own forums for common complaints and legitimate issues.  It appears they don't care. There's a goldmine of customer feedback here. 

Before finding this thread, I discovered the issue myself after running Chrome's performance audit tool (Lighthouse?).  Having been mindful of image sizes, page and code content, I'm disillusioned to see that this is a common issue and is not something I can resolve myself.

It would be helpful if Squarespace could acknowledge the concerns raised here and state what they are doing to improve matters, rather than palming us of with generic responses and ineffective solutions.

The platform does not want to get a reputation for being slow... I'll think twice about recommending or renewing my subscription. 

17 hours ago, James-Gadbury said:

The platform does not want to get a reputation for being slow... I'll think twice about recommending or renewing my subscription. 

You are absolutely right. I'm annoyed that I didn't know about this major problem when I decided to move here and build my website in a very elaborate way.

I'll keep an eye on it for a short while and then, in the worst case, switch to Wix (a customer site I built with it, has much better results, without having to tune it with as much effort as my SqS site) or I'll switch to Wordpress.

But hope dies last. Please use the support - the more of us that do, the sooner they react.
Thank you

I just compared a site I built in Squarespace to a site I'm evaluating for a potential client that was built in GoDaddy.  While the overall design of the GoDaddy site isn't the best and their content could use some work, when I run the GoDaddy site through Google's Page Speed Insights, in the Performance category, it outranks the Squarespace site with a score of 90 to 43.  I'm embarrassed to say the least.  Two of the biggest issues seem to be "contentful paint" elements.  I'm not overly familiar with what those are so I need to research but can anyone point me in the right direction for some resources that might guide me through cleaning up some of the performance issues on the site?  

Hey everyone, 

Adding to this thread in the hopes that by providing a templated email (feel free to edit), the Squarespace Community can collectively use the Support Email feature to voice their frustrations. I've also found in past when I've had issues that taking to social media and tagging @Squarespce also prompts direct action from their customer support team. Hopefully, we can implement some real change by expressing our dissatisfaction, frustrations and lack of support to the C-Suite at Squarespace so they become aware of this and fix it as soon as possible!

TEMPLATE EMAIL:

I am writing to express my profound concern regarding the persistent issues surrounding Core Web Vitals, specifically Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), and the performance of your Content Delivery Network (CDN) that are adversely affecting our website's SEO rankings. This matter is not isolated but rather a widespread challenge that a significant portion of Squarespace users, including ourselves, are grappling with.

The absence of an option to upload images in the WEBP format further exacerbates this problem, leaving us without a viable solution to optimise our site's loading speed effectively. This limitation not only hinders our ability to enhance user experience but also our site's visibility on search engines, which is paramount.

I have come across a forum where numerous users share similar frustrations, indicating a critical need for Squarespace to escalate its efforts in addressing these SEO visibility impairments caused by unresolved Core Web Vitals issues. The discourse clearly illustrates a growing discontent among your clientele, who are considering alternative platforms for their website needs due to these ongoing shortcomings.

[Forum Reference: https://forum.squarespace.com/topic/169854-core-web-vitals/page/7/]

We seek concrete solutions and transparent communication from Squarespace on how you plan to address these critical issues. Specifically, we urge you to:

1. Implement functionality that allows users to upload and utilise WEBP images, enabling us to optimise our visual content more effectively for speed and performance.
2. Enhance the efficiency of your JavaScript and CSS loading, focusing on optimising site loading times, especially for mobile users, to meet the evolving standards of web performance.
3. Provide a clear and detailed roadmap outlining the steps Squarespace intends to take to ameliorate these Core Web Vitals issues. It is imperative that Squarespace acknowledges the impact these issues have on businesses' SEO rankings and demonstrates accountability through proactive communication and action.

Our objective is not to seek apologies but to obtain a definitive plan of action that will assist us and other Squarespace users in navigating these challenges effectively. The success of our businesses on the digital front is heavily reliant on these foundational aspects of web performance, and as such, we implore Squarespace to prioritize and expedite the resolution of these issues.

We look forward to your prompt response and are eager to see the steps Squarespace will take to address these critical concerns. Your commitment to improving user experience and SEO performance is crucial for us to continue leveraging your platform for our digital presence.

Thank you for your immediate attention to this matter.

Regards,

[Your Name] [Your Position] [Your Contact Information]

On 2/21/2024 at 2:24 AM, BreeEinfalt said:

Hey everyone, 

Adding to this thread in the hopes that by providing a templated email (feel free to edit), the Squarespace Community can collectively use the Support Email feature to voice their frustrations. I've also found in past when I've had issues that taking to social media and tagging @Squarespce also prompts direct action from their customer support team. Hopefully, we can implement some real change by expressing our dissatisfaction, frustrations and lack of support to the C-Suite at Squarespace so they become aware of this and fix it as soon as possible!

TEMPLATE EMAIL:

I am writing to express my profound concern regarding the persistent issues surrounding Core Web Vitals, specifically Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), and the performance of your Content Delivery Network (CDN) that are adversely affecting our website's SEO rankings. This matter is not isolated but rather a widespread challenge that a significant portion of Squarespace users, including ourselves, are grappling with.

The absence of an option to upload images in the WEBP format further exacerbates this problem, leaving us without a viable solution to optimise our site's loading speed effectively. This limitation not only hinders our ability to enhance user experience but also our site's visibility on search engines, which is paramount.

I have come across a forum where numerous users share similar frustrations, indicating a critical need for Squarespace to escalate its efforts in addressing these SEO visibility impairments caused by unresolved Core Web Vitals issues. The discourse clearly illustrates a growing discontent among your clientele, who are considering alternative platforms for their website needs due to these ongoing shortcomings.

[Forum Reference: https://forum.squarespace.com/topic/169854-core-web-vitals/page/7/]

We seek concrete solutions and transparent communication from Squarespace on how you plan to address these critical issues. Specifically, we urge you to:

1. Implement functionality that allows users to upload and utilise WEBP images, enabling us to optimise our visual content more effectively for speed and performance.
2. Enhance the efficiency of your JavaScript and CSS loading, focusing on optimising site loading times, especially for mobile users, to meet the evolving standards of web performance.
3. Provide a clear and detailed roadmap outlining the steps Squarespace intends to take to ameliorate these Core Web Vitals issues. It is imperative that Squarespace acknowledges the impact these issues have on businesses' SEO rankings and demonstrates accountability through proactive communication and action.

Our objective is not to seek apologies but to obtain a definitive plan of action that will assist us and other Squarespace users in navigating these challenges effectively. The success of our businesses on the digital front is heavily reliant on these foundational aspects of web performance, and as such, we implore Squarespace to prioritize and expedite the resolution of these issues.

We look forward to your prompt response and are eager to see the steps Squarespace will take to address these critical concerns. Your commitment to improving user experience and SEO performance is crucial for us to continue leveraging your platform for our digital presence.

Thank you for your immediate attention to this matter.

Regards,

[Your Name] [Your Position] [Your Contact Information]

Sent, thanks for the boilerplate

Well I guess Google is going to start taking this more seriously March 12th. https://web.dev/blog/inp-cwv-march-12.  Any advice on how to improve this? 

[Edit: thanks to whoever moved my post into this thread, which I hadn't seen before - I don't know if I'm more glad to know I'm not alone, or upset that it looks like there's nothing I can do]

Upon testing, my page performance is poor even for the absolutely most simple page on the website, which just has text and a few small images. 

Looking in the details, it's all due to Squarespace stuff (the third party stuff is Squarespace and Adobe typekit). I'm using template 7.0 Montauk. 

Is this affecting my Google rankings? (They are good for the main pages, but could improve for others.) And is there anything I can do to improve matters?  (Sorry if there's a place for this type of question - I did look but couldn't find anywhere that looked more appropriate.)

Also, I was hoping they'd do a migrate tool for Montauk (the site is WAY too big to do it manually) ... if they did, might moving to a more modern template help with this?

I am facing the same issue it's saying use images in next served formats like WebP but unfortunately we have to wait for the developers to allow the format to be used in Squarespace