FID, or First Input Delay, is an important factor on your website. By reducing this input delay as much as possible, you make surfing on your website a lot more pleasant. The First Input Delay indicates how quickly your website responds to the visitor’s input. Fortunately, there are several ways to improve the FID on your website.
FID: First Input Delay
This factor looks at the interaction between the page and the visitor in a critical way. For example, what happens if the visitor clicks on a menu item? What happens if, for example, the visitor clicks on a product? And what happens if the visitor clicks on the next slide from the slideshow?
The time measured between clicking and loading is the First Input Delay. It is desirable that this charging speed is less than 100 milliseconds:
- Perfect FID: A perfect FID is a charging speed of less than 100 milliseconds. If you achieve this speed, the visitor will surf on your website in a pleasant way.
- Moderate FID: A moderate FID is a loading speed of 100 milliseconds to 300 milliseconds. At such a loading speed, the visitor has the idea that he / she has not clicked properly. Or that the website crashes for a while.
- Bad FID: A bad FID is a loading speed of 300 milliseconds or more. With such a loading speed, your website responds very slowly, so that the visitor (probably) clicks your website away. This will cost you a lot of visitors and therefore potential revenues.
For several reasons, it is important that you get the FID as soon as possible. This is very nice / important for a visitor. If a visitor clicks on something on your website, he/she wants something to happen immediately. Is that not the case? Then there is a chance that the visitor will become irritated. Your website simply has to do what it has to do and also has to do this quickly. The average internet user is nowadays in any case very critical.
Furthermore, a good FID is also essential for your ranking within google’s search engine. A bad or moderate FID adversely affects your ranking. If your website has a perfect FID, this will of course have a positive influence on your ranking.
How can you measure and optimize the First Input Delay?
To measure the FID, you can use various tools. Lighthouse, among others, is able to measure the First Input Delay quickly and accurately. After this tool has measured the First Input Delay, you can get started right away. Get started with optimizing the speed of your website.
According to experts, the cause can often be found in running a JavaScript. Especially if this is a heavy JavaScript, this has a major influence on the loading and response speed of your website.
To solve this, you can modify the JavaScript code. You can also choose to load the JavaScript partially instead of completely. To make such changes, you would have to have technical knowledge.
Another option is to improve total blocking time. That is one of the other Vitals that Google attaches more and more value to. The Total Blocking Time indicates how the blockage of a page takes when loading. The longer this blockage is present, the longer the First Input Delay is.
Google advises the following about this:
- Keep the number of requests on your website as low as possible
- Keep file transfers as small as possible
- Reduce the impact of third-party code
- Make adjustments to JavaScript
Other Core Vitals
In 2021, Google came up with the Core Web Vitals. This is a unique tool with which the user experience can be measured. This user experience is measured on the basis of the First Input Delay, but also on the basis of the following two factors:
- CLS: The CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) indicates the amount of shifts on your website. If a visitor scrolls through your website, the website shouldn’t shift. If this is the case, this is at the expense of the page experience. According to Google.
- LCP: the abbreviation LCP stands for Largest Contentful Paint. This factor looks at the loading speed of the largest element on your website. This can be a large text box, but can also be a large image or video. Since this is the biggest element, according to Google, this is also the most important element. Of course, this element should also load as quickly as possible.
Conclusion
The First Input Delay is a critical and essential part of your website. Reduce the response speed as much as possible, making your website a lot more user-friendly.
Could you use any help in this area? Feel free to contact us. We have all the tools, knowledge and techniques to substantially lower the FID for you.