I think it’s worth clarifying a couple of points about Web performance in general, and how Google intends to measure it, and also about the performance efforts at Wix in particular:
I like to say that improving performance is a journey, not a destination. Theoretically our work will be done once every Wix website has good performance. But realistically that’s never going to happen, if for no other reason that it will always be possible to construct Websites with poor performance on any platform, including Wix. Moreover, as we keep releasing new features and capabilities, there will always be some combinations that have poorer performance than others. Accidental performance degradations are also a possibility, although we’ve put significant infrastructure in place in order to prevent this from happening, as much as possible.
We started this performance journey a couple of years ago, before Google even announced their intention to use page performance as a ranking signal. And it will definitely continue after August.
Another important point is that this journey is not just comprised of huge steps, but also many small and medium ones. One of the big advantages of an online service such as Wix is that we can deploy such improvements literally on a daily basis. We can improve the performance of your site without you needing to do anything about it! As a result, we are seeing constant improvements in the performance of all Wix websites, and we expect to see this trend continuing until August and beyond. This means that some Wix websites will get the SEO boot immediately, and some will get it a bit later on.
Regarding the performance ranking boost, recently at its Google I/O conference, Google provided some clarifications about how it’s going to use CWV for SEO. Here is the gist of it:
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Initially, the performance SEO boost will be only for mobile. Desktop support will be added later on (no timeframe was provided)
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It’s only a boost, not a degrading factor. That said, page rank could go down if its competitors get a boost and it doesn’t
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Content is still king, and will always be. Content quality, and authority, have a much higher ranking impact than performance
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Performance boost is calculated only from the CWV field data, as is aggregated in the Google CrUX database. Lab data, such as Google PSI, has no impact on ranking
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You don’t need to get good scores for all three CWV in order to get the performance ranking boost: each metric will contribute a boost independently
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You don’t need to get a good (green) score for any CWV to get a boost: you get zero boost for a poor (red) metric score. It then starts increasing gradually in the yellow zone, and plateaus when it reaches green
For more information, I recommend watching this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWm6WNkHs90
Finally, while the ranking boost is a strong incentive for improving performance, increased engagement and reduced bounce rate are even more important, in my opinion. Having good performance has always been beneficial for a page’s success, and will continue to be so going forward.