Core Website Performance Metrics for a Fast-Loading Website

As the digital space becomes more competitive, paying attention to what really makes a difference can be crucial to a business’s success. In the current digital landscape, attracting new visitors and retaining existing ones is undoubtedly one of the major challenges. But how can you make sure your site distinguishes from the others?

A key differentiator in enhancing the website user experience and setting it apart from the competitors is the speed. To put it in simple words, the slower the website loads, the faster visitors abandon it. This is when website performance metrics come into play.

What Is Site Speed?

Site speed refers to how long it takes for your site to fully load the content to the users. It measures the time elapsed from clicking on it until the content shows up, and the user can interact with it. For a fast-loading website, you need the right tools that allow you to measure or improve its overall responsiveness. 

One of the most efficient ways to get valuable insights into how fast your website performs is to monitor and improve website performance metrics. Over the past several years, these metrics have become increasingly popular due to their essential role in enhancing online performance, including speed. A quick website improves user satisfaction and retains visitors, which is the first step to online success.

You can test your page loading speed with tools specially designed for measurements. Using such a tool, you will be able to identify what is causing delays on your website and find solutions for fixing the issues.

What Are Performance Metrics?

Performance metrics are indicators used to assess how well the website performs, including how fast it loads. They offer valuable insights that ensure the site fulfills its intended purpose. There are a wide variety of metrics and tools that help you evaluate and improve your website’s efficiency and speed, including Google metrics that adhere to Google’s guidelines for web performance and SEO.

Using these metrics you will be able to:

• continuously monitor and optimize your website pages.
• enhance user experience.
• increase website speed.
• achieve high ranking in search results.
• evaluate the success of your content delivery strategies.
• stand out from competitors.
• attract users and convert them to customers.

Some speed performance indicator examples include Interaction to Next Point (INP), Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Time to First Byte (TTFB), First Contentful Paint (FCP), Total Blocking Time (TBT), and more.  

Which Website Performance Metrics to Track to Increase Site Speed?

Using specific website performance metrics to evaluate website speed, monitor the overall progress, and optimize various aspects related to this matter will help you achieve your short-term as well as long-term objectives in terms of success. 

Here are the most important benchmarks to consider, organized by their capacity to improve loading speed. They will help you eliminate users’ frustration and ensure a seamless experience.

Performance Metrics with Direct Impact on Site Speed

Core Web Vital Metrics

These metrics are related to how users perceive site speed. They measure loading performance and responsiveness, as well as loading times and visual stability. 

1. Interaction to Next Point (INP)
This Core Web Vital metric refers to responsiveness. It measures the speed at which the page responds to user interactions, like clicks, taps, and key presses. Google advises that INP should be under 200 milliseconds.

As of Spring of 2024, Google replaced First Input Delay (FID) with Interaction to Next Point (INP) as experts agree that INP provides a more accurate assessment of overall responsiveness. Therefore, Google removed the support for FID starting September 9th.

First Input Delay (FID) was a metric used to measure the time elapsed between the first interaction of the user with the webpage and the moment the browser begins to respond to the input.

2. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is another key website performance metric from Google used to detect the time needed for the largest element to become visible to the viewer. The element may refer to text, video, or image. Since it focuses on loading performance, the purpose of this metric is to make sure the visitors experience a fast loading time of the main content of the page.

Preferably, the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) should happen within 2.5 seconds after the page begins loading.

3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Measuring the visual stability of the page, this performance metric tracks the overall amount of unexpected layout shifts that occur while a page is loading. 

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is a Core Web Vital metric and it is highly important as unexpected layout shifts provide a poor UX. A good CLS score is 0.1 seconds or less. 

Display and Page Loading Events

With the help of these metrics, you will be able to measure how quickly the content is displayed to the users and when the page becomes available.

1. First Contentful Paint (FCP)

With this web performance metric, you will be able to measure the time it takes for the first piece of content to appear on the screen. The first piece of content refers to text, images, and graphics. A quick load, ideally, should be 1.8 seconds or less.

For this reason, a slow FCP requires immediate optimization otherwise it can negatively impact the user’s perception of the entire website. 

2. First Meaningful Paint (FMP)

FMP may seem pretty much the same as FCP but there’s a significant difference between the two metrics. While First Contentful Paint measures the first content that appears, meaningful or not, First Meaningful Paint focuses on the time when significant content is displayed to users. 

FMP occurs later than FCP and it transmits to the user that the content they are interested in is loaded. An FMP score ranging from 0 to 2 seconds is considered optimal.

For better results, experts advise using the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) speed metric. 

3. Time to Interactive (TTI)

The metric focuses on how much time it takes for the website to become interactive. When the page is fully loaded, the user can click without delay, allowing them to engage faster. 

Time to Interactive (TTI) is measured by initially tracking first contentful paint and then inspecting the moment when the web page starts responding to the user’s interaction. The results will help you develop optimization strategies that can efficiently speed up the overall loading time of the page.

Network Efficiency Metrics

Network metrics measure the speed at which resources load from the server.

1. Time to First Byte (TTFB)

Time to First Byte (TTFB) refers to the amount of time necessary for a user to get the first byte from a web server. Just like the page loading speed, you should aim for a fast server response.  

By learning more about how to improve TTFB, you can increase your overall website responsiveness and even get lower bounce rates. Typically, a time to the first byte exceeding 600 milliseconds is a warning sign.

2. Total Blocking Time (TBT)

This is a network metric that measures the total duration during which the main thread is blocked and therefore unresponsive to user interaction. When is the main thread blocked? Whenever a task running on the main threads exceeds 50 milliseconds. A good score includes a TBT of less than 200 milliseconds. 

Total Blocking Time (TBT) and Time to Interactive (TTI) are somehow related as usually, TBT is measured until TTI but it can also be tracked after the page is loading, which means after TTI.  

How to Make Your Website Faster

By using the above specific speed metrics you can make your website faster. But how exactly? Here are the steps to follow:

1. Identify the metrics that matter for your business’ goals: there are many metrics that can help you track the effectiveness of your website’s performance, so the key is to determine the right combination of metrics that tell you how your website performs in terms of speed and help you identify the areas that require improvement. 
2. Gather data using different types of tools: use specific tools like Lighthouse from Chrome User Experience Report, PageSpeed Insights, and Google Search Console from Google, or tools that automate reports and monitorization such as Wattspeed. These types of tools collect data for each of the metrics you want to monitor and provide you with a full evaluation report of the speed of your website pages.  
3. Examine the data and identify the issues: after collecting the data, you need to identify the problems and analyze their impact on users. Issues like slow page loading speed, or large page sizes can affect user experience, loading speed, and SEO.   
4. Make the required improvements to boost performance: the analysis will help you make the necessary improvements and start the optimization process. This may include minimizing page size or reducing page loading time.  
5. Keep monitoring the changes and their further impact on the page: ensure that the changes you implement genuinely improve your website’s speed. Continue monitoring these metrics along with all other relevant key website performance metrics for your site to discover other potential issues in the future.

So, what is the most practical way to make your website faster without too much fuss? By using the right tool. Instead of spending time manually measuring speed metrics and figuring out which tools to use, you can opt for a practical solution like Wattspeed, which makes it so much easier.

Wattspeed is a website performance monitoring tool that analyzes speed metrics, offering solutions on how to improve them. The tool uses both real user data (RUM monitoring) as well as automated synthetic monitoring for a comprehensive understanding of how your site performs. It integrates Lighthouse and CrUX data which make it so complex yet easy to use. Wattspeed addresses website owners, small agencies, as well as SEO experts. 

Getting started and tracking speed with Wattspeed is very simple:

• Add the web pages or domains you want to monitor: just copy and paste the URLs, import your sitemap, or add them from your Google Search Console account. 

• Automate your monitoring as you desire: choose location, update frequency, devices, authentication, and Crux Data if you need access to real user data history over the past 12 months.

• Go to Homepage and view combined information for all your tracked domains: here you can see performance distribution by URLs and devices, web vital signals for Origins, uptime, robots.txt status, average number of errors, and warnings per page. 

• Track performance of the domain: by accessing performance, you will be able to see insights into the efficiency of that particular domain. The report contains the domain-orientated statistics and URL information.   

• Use the monitoring section to track the information stored over a period of time: this gives you access to the history report of a wide range of data as well as the issues report that gathers the problems that affect the site performance. 

• Access the Lighthouse report, Page source, and more: learn about the issues found for all your monitor locations and see which are the most viable solutions to fix them. Use Page source for SEO and technical analysis for more helpful data. 

• Compare snapshots for in-depth analysis: you can compare the report of one page on different dates or different pages. In this section, you have access to various metrics by simply switching between Lighthouse, Page source Snapshot, and Security.

• Get notified by email or Slack: choose the speed metrics you want to monitor and let Watspeed tell you about the issues found as soon as possible. Share them with your team and find a quick solution to fix them.  

Setting Up Wattspeed RUM for Real-Time Core Web Vitals

With a Wattspeed account, you gain access to real-time core web vitals quickly and easily. Here is how: 

1. Log into your Wattspeed account: once signed in, access the Realtime report section.
2. Add the domains you want to monitor. 
3. Configure your domain by following the provided steps: insert the generated JS script either manually or integrate it via Google Tag Manager. You can configure one or more domains. 
4. Access the available performance reports: once the script is live, Wattspeed starts capturing core web vitals from users interacting with your site in real-time. You have access to various reports that show:
   • real-time data about current online users.
   • core web vitals as users engage with your website (LCP, FID, INP, CLS).
   • the top 5 countries with the highest number of visits, along with their visit history and Core Web Vitals performance status. 
   • a breakdown of performance metrics by location.
   • insights into the best and worst parts of the domain through the Top Page widget.
     
5. Analyze the history report: use the History Report to track how your website’s performance has evolved. The available filters let you explore:
   • user experience history by showing the visit’s history for the entire domain.
   • core web vitals status distribution.
   • the worst-performing pages by specific metrics.
   • the top pages display all pages that have received at least one visit within the selected date range. You can also use sorting and filtering to find the lowest performing pages.
     

By identifying, collecting, and examining data, as well as making changes and constantly monitoring your website, you will be able to methodically enhance your website’s speed to achieve the desired outcomes.

Measuring Loading Time: Speed Monitoring Methods to Use

When it comes to reliable speed monitoring methods, both RUM (Real User Monitoring) and synthetic monitoring are used to provide meaningful insights. While both types of performance monitoring are essential for tracking and improving site speed and efficiency, they use different measurements to gather website performance metrics.

In short, tracking and optimizing speed website metrics is essential to maintaining a fast-loading website. Core Web Vital metrics, Display, and Page Loading Events metrics, as well as Network Efficiency Metrics are key indicators of how well your site performs. Using a tool like Wattspeed simplifies the process of improving these metrics by offering real-time insights and meaningful data. Wattspeed helps users track speed metrics easily and make quick adjustments, ensuring faster page load times and a smoother user experience with minimal effort.