One of Google’s few featured ecommerce INP improvement case studies showcases how it improved the metrics by 50% but only achieved a 1% improvement uplift on the click-through rate.
This may leave people skeptical of improving the INP metric, as the benefits of doing so for a particular hard-to-improve metric, can be low.
However, one key factor from the case study might change this perception, as in reality, it went from bad to bad INP metrics. That might affect the perceived improvements.
Why INP may be more important for Ecommerce
The idea is that a willing buyer is more likely to buy something when the interaction is faster, and maybe even more so than when the product page image(likely LCP) finishes loading.
The INP metric has been available on Crux since February 2022, although as a non-official Core Web Vital metric and with lots of changes, particularly removing alert() from counting as interaction.
Even with limitations, the metric has been tracking how users perceive a site’s interactivity for almost the past 3 years.
By looking closely at the Core Web Vitals metrics of ecommerce juggernauts, you can see that in the last year:
- Indifference with CLS from all.
- Steady improvement in LCP from all.
- Large improvements on INP from all.
Based on this sample, it’s safe to assume large e-commerce companies have, in some form attempted or improved their INP metric in the last year, after it was announced as the new Core Web Vitals metric.
Compared to travel sites, the same metrics are:
- Indifference with CLS from most.
- Steady improvement in LCP.
- Steady improvement in INP. But not one reaching green metrics.
Stripe which hands 52% of all internet payments, has been seemingly pursuing the 100ms threshold that it’s been told to be “the sweet-spot for the best UX in response to user interaction”.
To add to the equation, when it comes to INP, the more popular the site, the worse its INP metrics are:
This means these efforts from large ecommerce companies to improve and fix INP are even more solid.
If you have an ecommerce site, you probably have INP issues. There’s a lot of info about how to fix it. But if you want a partner, send us a request.