Quantifying Your User Experience with Core Web Vitals

Your digital experience can make or break your company — especially on the mobile web, where Google reports, 70% of people will abandon a purchase immediately if it seems too difficult. Small tweaks and improvements — especially to load speed — can make big differences, but how do you objectively measure the user experience you are providing?

Google has launched the Web Vital Initiative to address this question. This initiative is “intended to support a differentiated view of the loading speed of a page” — focusing on three metrics that have a lasting effect on whether or not visitors to your site have a positive user experience:

• Loading time measures when the main element of a page is loaded — so that it is visible to the user. Loading this element should not take more than 2.5 seconds.
• Interaction measures how quickly elements such as search fields and buttons on the website become functional and clickable on the first interaction. Users will tolerate up to 100 milliseconds.
• Stability shows how big the shifts of the elements are during the page layout, such as buttons that jump when you want to click them. Strive to keep this number at 0.1.

And there is some good news for German companies. Research finds that 32% of German websites already achieve good values ​​in the Core Web Vitals. However, that leaves lots of room for improvement as nearly 73% of sites haven’t quite mastered these elements yet. “A fast mobile user experience is the essential basis for a company to be digitally successful. We support Google’s efforts to make the mobile-first experience of users visible and measurable and to provide companies and developers with the appropriate tools to improve the mobile web experience with clear recommendations for action,” said Mark Wächter, Chair MMA Germany and Chairman of the Mobile Focus Group, BVDW.

Together, BVDW and MMA Germany helped Google put together a Core Web Vitals Hall of Fame for Germany, calling out the companies who have mastered the mobile user experience.

To learn more about optimizing Core Web Vitals, read Google’s post here.