Core Web Vitals (CWVs) is a set of metrics that measure real-world user experience across all web pages. These are:

• Largest Contentful Paint (load speed)
• First Input Delay (how quickly a page becomes interactive)
• Cumulative Layout Shift (how visually stable a page is)

Introducing Interaction to Next Paint

Back in May 2022, we predicted an evolution of these CWVs to include new metrics based on Google’s comments in developer documentation. One year on, Interaction to Next Paint (INP) is a new metric that will replace First Input Delay (FID) in March 2024.

INP observes the latency of all interactions a user has made with a web page, and reports an overall value based on how a page responds. A low INP means the page responded quickly.

Improving on-site user experience

Achieving “good” across all three CWVs will improve online conversions from organic search and other digital channels.

As well as being a ranking factor, improving CWVs is a measurable way of enhancing the user experience on your site. For example, increasing page load speed by one second can improve conversion rates by 2%.

The introduction of INP, replacing of FID, may mean that previous “good” URLs are now classed as “needs improvement” or “poor”. This is due to the change in measurement from just the first interaction to all interactions. This will have an impact on rankings and will signify an opportunity to improve the user experience that may have previously been undiagnosed.

Next steps

INP is now reported within Google Search Console so you can assess your website’s performance at a broad level using field (real user) data.

We recommend capturing CWVs metrics within GA4 and creating a dashboard within Looker Studio to allow segmentation by device, sub-folder, CWV performance, and more. This will help to identify trends between user interactions and template types (also using field data).

If your website is not achieving “good” status, build enhancements to interactivity into your UX and development roadmaps.

INP can be assessed in test (lab) environments or on deployment (before gathering field data) by using Total Blocking Time as an indicator or a Chrome extension to prove the success of enhancements.

If you have any questions or need support, get in touch with our team.