Winning the Core Web Vitals Battle: How Overfuel Fixes the Vendors Dragging Dealers Down
Douglas Karr September 22, 2025
Google’s Core Web Vitals (CWV) aren’t optional anymore. They define how fast, stable, and responsive a site feels to shoppers — and now, they directly impact search visibility, user engagement, and even the return on every ad dollar spent. Shift Digital’s 2025 Digital Automotive Shopping Pulse Report made it clear: if your site fails Core Web Vitals, you’re wasting $30 of every $100 in advertising spend.
That’s not a margin problem. That’s a business problem. And it’s one Overfuel was built to solve.
Technical Overview: How Overfuel Wins the Speed Game
Overfuel websites are engineered for performance. By optimizing both first-party code and third-party integrations, we reduced load times by 90% compared to legacy vendors. Our platform doesn’t just pass Google’s Core Web Vitals — it consistently dominates them across mobile and desktop, site-wide.
We Optimize Every Step of the Experience
Dealership sites shouldn’t sacrifice speed for functionality. Overfuel streamlines both first-party elements and heavy third-party plugins, ensuring fast and seamless shopping experiences without compromise.
Milliseconds Matter
Most website vendors allow third-party scripts, such as analytics, chat widgets, or tag managers, to block performance. Overfuel doesn’t. Our FuelScript technology offloads these scripts into dedicated browser workers, keeping sites lightning-fast while preserving functionality.
Optimizing the Unoptimized
Vendors rarely write modern, performant code. Overfuel fills the gap. From caching and compression to deferred loading, our SOPs enable tools like 360° video and live chat to work efficiently without compromising performance.
Consolidating Excess
It’s common for dealers to unknowingly stack up 10+ analytics or ad tags, each adding unnecessary weight. Overfuel audits and cleans them up. On average, consolidating every three tags reduces a full second of load time.
First Principles Approach
Instead of chasing gimmicks, Overfuel applies fundamentals: lossless WEBP compression, still images in place of auto-play video, and properly defined image dimensions. The result? Over 90% reductions in load times and bandwidth demand — especially critical on mobile.
Core Web Vitals in Action: Fixing Real Dealer Problems
Core Web Vitals are comprised of three key metrics: CLS, INP, and LCP. Most failures occur due to third-party vendors, not the dealer. Overfuel has systematically fixed them.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
CLS measures the amount of content that shifts during loading. Common culprits? Vendor CTAs and chat bubbles that appear late and jumble layouts. Overfuel solves this by applying placeholders and stabilizing the design so pages don’t “jump” as they load.
Interaction to Next Paint (INP)
INP tracks the delay between a user click and what happens next. Cookie banners and chat bubbles are notorious offenders — often waiting for analytics scripts to fire before responding. Overfuel rewrites these flows so visual feedback to the shopper comes first, eliminating lag and keeping sites responsive.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
LCP measures how long it takes for the largest content element on a page to become visible. Often, this is a large image or hero banner. Many vendors embed oversized images or auto-play videos without optimization, delaying how quickly shoppers see the main content. Overfuel optimizes these elements with proper compression, lazy loading, and dimension definitions, ensuring the most important content loads instantly.
Case Study: Jay Wolfe Honda
Jay Wolfe Honda’s site was weighed down by multiple third-party integrations: CRM Live Chat, ComplyAuto Banner, Darwin Digital Retailing, and JD Power Analytics. The result? Hundreds of URLs flagged as Poor in Google’s Core Web Vitals reports.
After Overfuel’s optimization:
- 7/14: ~220 Poor URLs
- 8/11: 255 Good URLs
And most importantly:
- Passed Core Web Vitals site-wide, in Origin Mode — the strictest measurement available.
In less than a month, Jay Wolfe Honda turned failing performance into measurable dominance.
Appendix: The Vendors We’ve Fixed
Dealers often ask: “But what about my vendors?” The truth is, almost every tool in automotive retail ships with broken code that fails Core Web Vitals. Overfuel has built fixes for them all.
Here’s a snapshot:
| Vendor(s) | Problem | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Capital One | CTAs inject after load, failing CLS | Applied minimum-height containers until load |
| ComplyAuto | Cookie banner “Accept” fails INP | Switched to compact banner |
| Gubagoo | Chat bubble animates on click, failing INP | Applied CSS animation: none; |
| Kenect | Chat bubble fires analytics before opening, failing INP | Moved analytics after chat opens |
| Matador Chat | Animated icon expands into text button, failing CLS | Applied global min. width/height |
| Podium Chat | Same as Matador — fails CLS | Applied global min. width/height |
| Prodigy / Upstart | CTAs load dynamically after page load, failing CLS | Added minimum-height placeholders |
| Glo3D, Impel (SpinCar), YouTube, LESA, Dealer Video Pro | Walkaround plugins overload bandwidth by 900% | Embedded only when needed via lazy-loaded iFrame |
The Bigger Picture: Budgets, Not Benchmarks
This isn’t about chasing arbitrary metrics. It’s about protecting marketing dollars. Every Core Web Vitals failure bleeds money: higher bounce rates, weaker engagement, lower quality scores, and wasted ad spend.
Shift Digital proved it: $30 of every $100 in ad spend is wasted on failing sites. Overfuel fixes that waste.
When performance comes first, everything else follows — higher organic visibility, stronger engagement, and lower cost-per-lead. That’s the difference between being invisible online and owning your market.
👉 Ready to see what Overfuel can do for your dealership? Book a demo today and start turning wasted spend into real growth.
