Google Core Web Vitals: FID - First Input Delay

Google now tracks the user experience as a set of variables that will impact your website ranking in the search engines. Known as Core Web Vitals, they measure how quickly and easily users can gain access to your content, and also are focused on how fast your pages load. In short, Google is trying to make the web as user friendly as possible; and wants to display results in which they are confident the user will have a good experience. In this three-part series, we will explore what you need to know, and how to improve your website Core Web Vitals.

There are three important factors you need to monitor and adjust for improvement:

• LCP - Largest Contentful Paint
• FID - First Input Delay
• CLS - Cumulative Layout Shift

FID - First Input Delay

FID - measures usability - a score that is based on how quickly the page responds to the user's actions.  This is the time between a user first interacting with the page and the browser being able to start responding to the interaction.

• a low FID score ensure the page is usable
• a good user experience is an FID of 100 milliseconds or less

First Inputs may include:

• FID is a metric that measures a page's responsiveness during load.
• It only focuses on input events from discrete actions like clicks, taps, and key presses.
• FID doesn't measure animated actions, like scrolling and zooming.

You will want to continuously monitor this score for the pages of your website. An acceptable score, by Google’s standards is less than 0.1 seconds. Here are a few ideas for how to optimize and improve your FID score:

• Reduce the use of third party code on your website
• Use less JavaScript code on your website

If you need help improving your First Input Delay on your web pages – give Wendy a call 425-885-9976 – to schedule a free consultation!

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