Almost all SEO experts are familiar with SEO analysis tools such as Google Lighthouse . After the update of Google's central core known as core web vitals on May 5, 2020, this website updated its criteria after about 10 years, and in the meantime, in addition to introducing the main Google core criteria such as; FCP , LCP and CLS also introduced other important measures such as TTI or interactive time as one of the important measures of the website that needs to be optimized on its website.
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?What is Time to Interactive (TTI)
Time to Interactive (TTI) is a performance metric that measures how long a page takes to respond to user interactions. Basically, this measure shows how much time the website needs to process input and user requests. TTI is a kind of complement to another characteristic called Speed Index , this measure focuses on the speed of displaying content visually, in a way, it examines the user experience. But we need to consider interaction with our content in addition to visibility.
The difference between TTI and Speed Index
There are many methods to determine page load time, many of these methods such as Time to first byte are not accurate at all because a site's JavaScript may have already been loaded but is not yet ready to process the user's request. For this reason, Time to interactive is used for the moment when the website is exactly available to the user, and speed index is used to consider the visible elements loaded on the page.
Just like Bounce Rate, which makes sense next to Time on site, TTI should also be checked with Speed Index so that its results can be analyzed. Interactivity duration is one of the six important criteria that is reported in the fifth version of speed insight and also in the performance section of Google Lighthouse.
Sources used to measure TTI
1) FCP metric
2) JavaScript as well as the most clicked elements of the site that are available to the user.
3) The response time of the site to the user
?What does Time to Interactive measure
TTI basically measures the time a page needs to respond and interact with the user, i.e. the time between FCP and the last element displayed. Meanwhile, TTI will show the time that your website is able to respond to the user's request under any condition.
TTI or duration of interaction
For example, we've all experienced situations where elements of a website are quickly visible, but nothing happens when we try to click on them. These scenarios are mostly created by third party scripts and will prevent the requested content from being displayed. This may frustrate your visitors and increase your bounce rate. Therefore, TTI optimization is very important to improve the user experience of the website, especially on mobile devices.
The TTI measure accounts for about 15% of your website's total performance score, which indicates its relatively high importance.
TTI optimization
Preload (preload) the main and important requests
Reduce the size of JavaScript files
Reduce JavaScript execution time
Delete unused JavaScript files
Reduce the number of requests
FCP optimization (direct effect on TTI)
Optimal score for TTI measurement
Important point: It should be said that TTI optimization depends on the type of site coding rather than the technical quality of the server. But it should be noted that TTI is measured almost between FCP and main-thread, so the more you optimize this criterion, naturally your TTI time will decrease.
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Conclusion
In this content, which was presented from the series of SEO training articles aimed at your service, I introduced one of the most important metrics of GTmetrix and Google Lighthouse called Time to interactive . As discussed in detail, this metric measures how long it takes your site to respond to user requests (user interactions). TTI optimization will improve the Performance score, increase the speed of the site and also improve the user experience of your site.