👍Improve Your Site: Transition from FID to INP

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Read time: 5 minutesHey, SEO enthusiasts!Google Chrome has officially phased out First Input Delay (FID) as a Core Web Vital, replacing it with a more comprehensive metric called Interaction to Next Paint (INP). This shift highlights Google’s focus on improving user experience by analyzing how websites respond to user interactions over time. In this newsletter issue, we'll explain what this change means for website performance, why INP is a superior metric, and how to optimize your site for it.

What you’ll find in this week’s newsletter:

• Why Google dropped support for FID

• How to optimize your website for INP

• This week’s featured tool

• New on the blog

Why did Google drop support for FID and switch to INP?

What Happened?In September 2024, Google Chrome officially dropped support for the First Input Delay (FID) metric, which measured the initial delay between a user’s input and the browser's response.Rick Viscomi, who leads web performance developer relations for the Chrome team, has confirmed that INP (Interaction to Next Paint) will now be the primary metric for evaluating how responsive websites are to user interactions.

They replaced FID with Interaction to Next Paint (INP) to provide a more complete measurement of user interaction responsiveness.But before we continue further, what are FID and INP exactly?What is First Input Delay (FID)? 

First Input Delay was a Core Web Vital that focused on how quickly a webpage responded to a user’s first interaction, such as a click, tap, or keystroke.While useful, it only captured part of the user experience, missing delays that could occur later on the same page, especially on dynamic or content-heavy websites. FID served as an early indicator of page responsiveness but lacked depth in assessing how the page behaved during the entire user journey.What is Interaction to Next Paint (INP)?

Interaction to Next Paint (INP) replaces FID to offer a more comprehensive evaluation of page responsiveness. Instead of just focusing on the first interaction, INP measures the delay between every user interaction and the visual response that follows. It looks at the full interaction lifecycle, from clicks to visual updates.A good INP score is 200 milliseconds or less, meaning your website should respond quickly to user inputs consistently throughout the session, not just at the beginning.The Key Difference Between FID and INPThe key difference between FID and INP is the scope of what they measure.FID only captures the initial delay between the first interaction and the browser's response. Once that’s measured, FID stops tracking. On the other hand, INP takes into account all interactions on a page, including clicks, taps, and typing, until the next visual update is rendered.This makes INP a more holistic metric, allowing webmasters to address all interaction delays, not just the first.

Why Did Google Drop Support for FID? The reason behind the shift from FID to INP lies in the limitations of FID, which created gaps in understanding how responsive a web page truly is. INP, which measures the full lifecycle of user interactions, is better suited for measuring today's more interactive and dynamic web experiences.

Shane’s Tips on How to Optimize Your Website for INP 

To ensure your website performs well with this new metric, here are some steps to optimize it for the INP metric:1. Track INP Scores Regularly Ensure your content showcases real-world experience and expertise. Include credentials, customer reviews, and hands-on examples to boost trustworthiness.

2. Reduce Long TasksIf your site’s scripts are causing delays in rendering visual updates, minimize long tasks by breaking them down or using lazy loading to prioritize important interactions first.3. Optimize Event Handling Unexpected layout shifts can increase INP scores. Avoid them by optimizing your site’s CSS and JavaScript, ensuring the content loads in a stable and predictable way.4. Minimize Layout ShiftsUnexpected layout shifts can increase INP scores. Avoid them by optimizing your site’s CSS and JavaScript, ensuring the content loads in a stable and predictable way.5. Compress and Cache ResourcesUse image compression, minified JavaScript, and caching to reduce the overall page size, which improves the INP score. The faster your site loads, the quicker it can respond to user interactions.Google’s move from FID to INP reflects the increasing complexity of web interactions and the need for a more detailed understanding of page responsiveness.Optimizing for INP will help you create a smoother, faster user experience, ultimately leading to better engagement and search rankings. Take the time to audit your website’s performance under this new metric and make the necessary changes to stay ahead.