Choosing the right cookie banner for your WordPress website can significantly influence user experience and page performance. We recently conducted an analysis comparing Banner 1 and Banner 2 Lighthouse scores of our Beautiful Cookie Banner Plugin.
How we test
We used a script to calculate the median lighthouse metric.
We installed our Plugins in an freshly installed WordPress Blog 6.8.1.
Our Plugins (Main and Add-on) where the only plugins installed. The configuration was the default one. For banner 1 we choose Differentiated Consent – 2 Buttons with save as compliance type.
We run 100 individual tests for each banner.
The Results
Both Beautiful Cookie Banner 1 and Beautiful Cookie Banner 2 showed exceptional performance, achieving identical median Lighthouse performance scores of 99.0. However, digging deeper into specific metrics reveals subtle but meaningful differences.
| Metric | Banner 1 | Banner 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Performance | 99.0 | 99.0 |
| First Contentful Paint | 1560 ms | 1560 ms |
| Speed Index | 2164 ms | 1560 ms |
| Largest Contentful Paint | 1560 ms | 1710 ms |
| Total Blocking Time | 0 ms | 0 ms |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | 0.000 | 0.000 |
While both banners have similar results, Banner 2 slightly edges out Banner 1 with a superior Speed Index score, meaning content becomes visually complete faster for users. On the other hand, Banner 1 demonstrates a marginal advantage in Largest Contentful Paint.
Conclusion
Both banners deliver excellent overall performance, but Banner 2 may provide a slight edge in user-perceived loading speed due to its better Speed Index. Results show that most websites owners can pick the banner they like, as differences are marginal.
They might even get more marginal for WordPress set ups with a lot other plugins. We will continue the tests and update this article accordingly.