Enhancing User Engagement Towards Subsequent Paint (INP) through Google's Fresh Core Web Vitals Metric

Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that measure the real-world user experience of a web page. They are:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This measures the time it takes for the largest image or text block on a page to become visible.
• First Input Delay (FID): This measures the time it takes for a page to become interactive after it has loaded.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): This measures the amount of visual change that occurs between the initial rendering of a page and when the page is fully loaded.

Core Web Vitals are important because they measure the aspects of a web page that have the biggest impact on user satisfaction. A good Core Web Vitals score means that a page will load quickly, be responsive, and have a stable layout.

Google has announced that Core Web Vitals will be used as a ranking factor in Google Search starting in May 2023. This implies that websites that possess favorable Core Web Vitals scores have a greater likelihood of achieving higher rankings in search results.

Interaction to Next Paint (INP)

INP is a new Core Web Vitals metric that will replace First Input Delay (FID) in March 2024. INP measures the time it takes for a website to respond to a user interaction after the initial load. A low INP means that the page is able to respond quickly to user input, which provides a better user experience.

There are a number of things you can do to improve your website's INP score:

• Reduce the size of your page assets: This will help your page load faster, which will reduce the time it takes for the browser to start painting the page.
• Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN): A CDN can help to deliver your page assets from servers that are closer to your users, which will also help to reduce the time it takes for the page to load.
• Minify your JavaScript and CSS: Minifying your JavaScript and CSS will reduce the amount of time it takes for the browser to parse and execute these files.
• Defer non-critical JavaScript: You can defer non-critical JavaScript, which means that the browser will not execute this code until it is needed. This can help to improve INP score by reducing the amount of time it takes for the page to become interactive.
• Use lazy loading: Lazy loading is a technique that delays the loading of images and other resources until they are needed. This can help to improve INP score by reducing the amount of time it takes for the page to become interactive.

You can use PageSpeed Insights or Chrome DevTools to measure your website's INP score. If your INP score is not meeting the recommended threshold of 200 milliseconds, you can use the tips above to improve it.

You can see here some additional resources that you may find helpful:

• Google's INP documentation: https://web.dev/inp/
• PageSpeed Insights: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
• Chrome DevTools: https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/