Outhouse › Annoyance › Screen and sound

Layout shifting under you

Content that moves after the visitor has started reading or reaching for a button.

Why it matters

A stable page is a predictable page, and a predictable visitor clicks only what they meant to. Layout shift brings back chance. An advert loads late above the article, the text drops a few hundred pixels and the visitor's thumb lands on something new.

Search engines measure layout shift and call it a problem. They also sell the adverts that cause it, which suggests they understand its value.

How Outhouse measures it

Outhouse reads Cumulative Layout Shift from the browser's own layout-shift entries. 0.25 or more scores in full.

This audit counts towards Annoyance, with a weight of 2. A category is 75% its two highest-scoring audits and 25% all of its audits, weighted, so a site is judged mostly on what it does most and partly on how many things it does.

How to improve your score

Install Deferred Yield. Available on selected plans. See all products.

Related audits

• Screen covered by fixed elements: Headers, footers, bars and banners that stay on screen wherever the visitor scrolls.
• Autoplaying media: Video or audio that starts before anyone asked for it.
• Script bloat: Script loaded per word of content.