To get a handle on the terms INP, let’s reconstruct the chronology.
- Google started tracking page load speed in August 2016.
- From January 2018, they launched heavy artillery — started ranking websites based on Page Speed.
- And finally in May 2022 Google introduced the terms “The Core Web Vitals + three metrics (LCP, FID, CLS)”, and also announced the INP (Interaction to Next Paint) site interaction Page Speed estimation indicator, which made the developers’ work as complicated as possible, as now not only the page experience of individual pages is important, but even micro-actions: the time of receiving information already on the downloaded page.
It’s complicated, can you give me examples?
So, let’s break it down with examples.
First, this is the time from a click on the “Show all content” hover to the display of that content on the page. Second, it can be the time from the click on the “Add item to cart” button to the display of the message that the item has been added.
In simple words: if more than 0.2 seconds pass from clicking the “Add to cart” button to the message about successful addition of this product — this will affect organic traffic and price per click in Google Ads.
But for site owners, working with page speed has its advantages: speedy website — more organic traffic and more profitable Google Ads, better conversion to purchase, more income.
Why does Google need an INP site interaction rate score?
Google wants websites in the SERPs to be speedy, up-to-date, responsive to user interactions, and users to continue to use Google as a search engine.
Google has officially mailed to marketers and website owners that from March 2024 we will take into account the response time to INP interactions. So now everything is official and we should take the factor seriously.
INP is the Interaction to Next Paint page speed metric, which will take the place of the First Input Delay (FID) metric in March 2024. This change is not new, announced by web.dev in May 2022, Search Engine Journal wrote about it in July 2022, and it was updated on web.dev on June 28, 2023. Without going into technical parameters — it means that the website should respond up to 0.2 seconds to user actions.
Which websites are affected?
«У вашего сайта плохой показатель INP», «Обнаружены проблемы с показателем INP в Core Web Vitals» — такие письма получили маркетологи и владельцы бизнесов, сайты которых добавлены в Search Console, причем неважно, какая на сайте реальная скорость загрузки — Google донес всем.
“Your website has a poor INP score”, “Core Web Vitals INP issues detected on your site” — such emails were received by marketers and business owners whose sites in Search Console, and it does not matter what the actual pages speed — Google informed everyone.
Why did Google send out emails about INP?
One reason is to really alert website owners to the changes well in advance.
The second reason is to really share that this is an important metric that will play a role in ranking.
Usually Google constantly notifies about updates on web.dev — but the really important ones (as was the case with mobile first) — duplicated in emails.
What to do
Plan of action for cloud SaaS platform
If your partner is a cloud platform that cares about websites and page speed — don’t worry, they already know about the update and are working on it.
To site owners:
- Horoshop
- Shopify
- Wix
you can relax because the responsible people on the platforms are already aware of the updates and are researching these issues.
Plan of action for a popular CMS
To site owners:
- WordPress
- Opencart
- PrestaShop
- Magento
we recommend that you additionally follow plugins and news in your field, or solve manual tasks with developers.
For example, WordPress has several different page speed improvement plugins, and if you’re using them — there’s a good chance that they too will update and handle the INP indicator as well, but depending on the WordPress theme, technologies, additional customizations may also be necessary.
Important: before making any changes or testing plugins, make sure your hosting does automatic backups, and do an optional manual backup.
Marketing Link has a website just on WordPress, and while testing page speed plugins, Footer disappeared. At the moment, we solve most tasks without plugins, and manually in the code: longer, more expensive, but also less dependent on plugin glitches or the risk of their hacking.
A plan of action for a self-designed website where you have access to the code and the ability to manually solve the problem
It’s great to be able to change whatever you want to change yourself — Google has thrown up an out-of-the-box portion of the challenge ?.
Resources for developers
- developer.chrome.com/blog/inp-in-frameworks
- web.dev/inp
- web.dev/inp-cwv
- web.dev/optimize-inp
- chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lighthouse/blipmdconlkpinefehnmjammfjpmpbjk
- developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/05/introducing-inp#what-this-means-for-google-search-console
Speed and error checking resources
We recommend you solve other problems, and anything else you discover:
How to check
If you have been handed the work with the website as finished — we recommend that you check different types of pages separately, not only the main page, but also pages:
- categories or services;
- filter (for stores);
- product (for stores);
- blog or column;
- blog articles
📌 Read the article: How to calculate ROI, ROAS and ROMI. Calculator, computation and differences
Conclusions
Google is pushing website owners to improve them.
Page Speed, this is a really important metric, and not only for download pages, but also for user interaction.
Considering Google’s active email alerts, INP metric will play a role in search ranking algorithm as well as price per click in Google Eads.
A speedy website has better conversion rate and LTV for all traffic channels.
