Lately I’ve been thinking about what web performance measures, what it could measure, what it should measure…
Why load time metrics?
Well, for one, that’s all websites used to do! But since then, the Web has grown to do so much more.
Are we stuck in the past?
I don’t think so. There’s plenty of discussion—especially with Core Web Vitals—about whether we’re measuring the right things, and what we should be measuring instead. This is good! Take Philip Tellis’s recent post about The metrics game:
In my opinion, [CrUX] should also include measures like rage clicks, missed, and dead clicks, jank while scrolling, CPU busy-ness, battery drain, etc. Metrics that only come into play while a user is interacting with the site, and that affect or reflect how frustrating the experience may be.
We’ve only scratched the surface.
At the same time, how do we avoid “metric burnout”? After all, that was one of the big problems Core Web Vitals set out to solve: to simplify the metric landscape. “What should I pay attention to?”
The Web is only getting more complex. What should our message be to developers facing that ever-growing complexity? More metrics? More tools? Or…?
Separately, when people are gaming metrics, how do we shift the game so it actually helps people? How can we turn “private vices into public benefits”?
We run the risk of “teaching to the test”, training developers to optimize without understanding. How do we teach performance beyond metrics and rewards? To recognize a website’s true factors for success?