Core Web Vitals metrics such as Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), and First Contentful Paint (FCP) are an important indicator that allow users to identify potential areas of improvement and ensure that their sites’ performance measures up to industry standards.
LCP measures how long it takes for the largest image or text block to load, FID measures the time it takes for the browser to respond to the user’s first interaction, CLS measures how much the layout shifts during page load, and FCP measures how long it takes for the first content to appear on the screen.
Unlike synthetics testing solutions such as Lighthouse, Real User Metrics are based on data from actual visitor interactions on your websites and to provide real-world feedback about how your site is performing across different device types.
Real User Metrics, now in Netlify Labs
With the release of our newest Real User Monitoring feature in Netlify Labs, you can now view Core Web Vitals metrics directly within the Netlify app!
This feature will allow users on our Pro plan and above to activate Real User Metrics for your websites in order to monitor Core Web Vitals metrics based on your visitors’ interactions, including:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
- First Input Delay (FID)
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
- First Contentful Paint (FCP)
To dig deeper into these performance aspects on your site, you can filter by device type (desktop and mobile).
Further, you can view these metrics across the 75th, 95th, and 99th percentiles of all of your site’s page loads, and by minimum, average, and maximum metric results.
For greater granularity, you can also zoom in on the charts to inspect performance across any timeframe of the collected data.
We also provide an overall “health” standing for each metric in order for you to see how your site’s performance measures up to these industry-standard metrics within the 75th percentile, and identify potential areas of improvement.
Getting started with Real User Metrics
The Real User Metrics feature has been enabled for all users in Labs. To activate RUM on your site, navigate to your site settings and select Analytics > Real User Metrics.
Please note that if you haven’t enabled Analytics yet for your site, you may be prompted to enable Analytics, but Analytics is not required to use Real User Metrics.
Select Enable Real User Metrics.
After you enable Real User Metrics for your site, data collection will start the next time your site is visited. Please note that it will take up to two hours before RUM data will be displayed.
For more information on this feature, please see our Real User Metrics docs.
Let us know what you think!
This is just the beginning. We have more functionality planned for this feature before moving it out of Labs and even more post-launch. We would love to hear what you think and how we can improve it for your use cases. Click here to take a quick 2-minute survey to let us know what you think of Real User Metrics.
