Digital acceleration and the increasingly complex path to purchase has led to more blurred responsibilities and roles within companies. Where website usability was once just a web developer issue, it’s now a top priority for marketers too.
30% of Czech and Slovak brands provide a positive mobile UX — meaning over two-thirds still have room for improvement
Customers won’t stand for slow
So why the change? A suboptimal or slow web page decreases the return on every cent invested in advertising. If a user has a negative experience while browsing, they are more likely to abandon a page or even the shopping cart, resulting in fewer conversions.
According to the Core Web Vitals metrics, just 30% of Czech and Slovak brands provide a positive mobile user experience (UX) — meaning over two-thirds still have room for improvement.
But how can we measure user satisfaction to see where improvements can be made? Google launched Web Vital — a tool that uses various metrics to measure and track mobile website performance — and identified three metrics that brands can’t overlook.
3 Core Web Vitals to measure UX
Core Web Vitals are the key performance metrics that directly impact a user’s experience. They’re not the only factors affecting experience, but they act as guardrails to help you understand how users are interacting with your webpage.
Here’s how we measure each of them.
1. Loading time
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures the loading speed of the largest visual element on a website.
Tip: Keep this below 2.5 seconds.
2. Interaction
First Input Delay (FID) measures the time from when a user first interacts with your web page after entering it (when they pressed on a link, clicked a button, etc.) to the time when the browser can start processing that interaction.
Tip: Keep below 0.1 seconds.
3. Visual stability
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures the visual stability of a page load. It shows how much of a page and how often there are unexpected shifts in a page layout. For example, it can be a real nuisance when buttons or links move just at the moment you want to click on them.
Tip: Keep CLS score below 0.
The brands paving the way in mobile experience
Alongside Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe (IAB Europe) and Mobile Marketing Association Europe (MMA Europe), we put together The Core Web Vitals Hall of Fame for mobile UX. And one finding was clear — e-commerce companies breaking down the silos between marketing and web development areas came out on top. Here are some of the Czech and Slovak Hall of Famers leading the way in mobile experience.
Online healthcare platform Lekarna.cz prioritises site speed as a key factor when it comes to UX. "Speed of Lekarna.cz and Mojalekaren.sk is a key KPI for us, which we monitor to enable our customers to be comfortable shopping and not let them wait for a long response or choppy display of products,” says Tomáš Bek, Head of IT at Pears Health Cyber.
Product discovery tribe lead at Europe’s largest online shopping advisor, Heureka Group said "We recognise that web speed is an important part of our success. With the recent launch of the new responsive Heureka, we are focusing primarily on Core Web Vitals metrics, which we believe best reflect a good user experience."
For a Czech fashion aggregator, Glami, encorporated regular monitoring of their website performance into the product development process. “We make sure that all of the newly introduced functionalities on our site are not affecting user experience. We regularly include technological improvements in the long-term plan,” states Ondřej Čech, software developer.
Core Web Vitals mobile UX Hall of Fame: the top Czech and Slovak performers
Three ways to optimise your mobile UX
- Find out if your site is user-centric according to Core Web Vitals and see which areas need improvement.
- Use the three Core Web Vitals to optimise and measure your web performance regularly. Accompany strong digital content with these three factors to improve user search results.
- Keep an eye on your site’s visual stability, large image and file sizes and ensuring clickable elements work properly. Discover how to keep a healthy site.
Methodology
Hall of Fame: Using data from SimilarWeb (December 2020, Mobile Web Traffic), the 50 most-visited mobile websites in the E-commerce industry in the Czech Republic and Slovakia were identified and evaluated on mobile using the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) (as of December 2020) for the Czech Republic and Slovakia based on a 4G Internet connection. CrUX maps anonymized and aggregated user experiences of Chrome users of popular domains. The "Core Web Vitals Hall of Fame'' uses three user-centric metrics Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift. Websites that perform well in the 75th percentile in all 3 metrics at the time measured are named in the Hall of Fame.
In the chart, the websites are sorted alphabetically. It should be noted that comparisons with other datasets, metrics or tools, such as Lighthouse or TestMySite, will yield different results due to different test environments, time periods or test setups.
Country Statistics: CrUX data (as of December 2020) based on 3G & 4G internet connection/mobile was used to analyse Core Web Vitals at the country level.
