Beyond Core Web Vitals: Report from performance.now() 2024

For the third time, I ventured to visit the most prestigious conference on "web speed" held in Europe.

The conference took place for the fifth time in Amsterdam, in the space of the former Zuiderkerk church. The place is simply incredible. The atmosphere alone makes your brain cells buzz.

The organizers handled everything with absolute finesse. Everything went like clockwork, and the program had the right drive.

Some presentations were so packed that I watched them with bated breath. I tried to give live reports to my colleagues at PageSpeed.ONE, and at times, it was a challenge to keep up.

What did the fifth year offer us?#

Thanks to diligent note-taking, I’ve compiled a list of what I consider the best presentations.

Tammy Everts - The Web Performance Landscape in 2024#

There’s hardly a better format to kick off a web speed conference than this. Tammy summarizes the current state of web speed and offers intriguing insights and global statistics. She also opened a topic that resonated throughout the conference. Everyone perceives speed differently. Younger generations are generally becoming more impatient because they live in an era of fast internet.

Harry Roberts - Site-Speed That Sticks#

Anyone who has seen Harry present knows it's a guarantee of quality. This time, Harry chose a different format than we’ve seen from him at, say, Webexpo.

The presentation was based on his experience as a consultant. He often battles with clients whose websites slow down again after six months. Harry is working on a framework aimed at setting the right web performance culture. From my perspective, it was very inspiring.

Paul Calvano - Performance Mistakes#

With new features and APIs in browsers, tuning speed is becoming easier. Yet, despite these advancements, developers often misimplement new features, leading to performance loss.

Paul presented 17 common mistakes using data extracted from the HTTP Archive. For instance, he found that 50% of websites prefetch third-party domains without using the crossorigin attribute.

Human patience is now a big topic. Our expectations are set by what is our normal standard. Once we've been exposed to a new standard for a while, we quickly get used to it and don’t want to go back.
Thus, tuning speed becomes an endless race.

Jack Franklin - DevTools Deep Dive#

The Performance panel in Chrome DevTools is an invaluable tool for diagnosing and optimizing the performance of web pages. This presentation offers a deep dive into its features and introduces updates that will delight developers.

The new Insights sidebar, for example, can help with tuning the LCP metric. All consultants will appreciate the "annotations" that can be added to graphs.

Erwin Hofman, Karlijn Löwik - INP Case Studies#

The year 2024 was groundbreaking for the Interaction to Next Paint (INP) metric. In March, it was officially included in Core Web Vitals.

The share of websites with the metric in the green zone increased by 10% over the year. The presentation showcased a wealth of practical statistical information.

Perhaps the most interesting finding for me was that HotJar is one of the slowest third parties and that 50% of INP occurs after 10 seconds spent on the site.

Annie Sullivan - Aiming for the Stars#

Just as Tammy brilliantly opened the conference, Annie closed it in grand style.

Annie Sullivan is a personality who has been pushing the web platform forward for 20 years, so I was very much looking forward to her presentation. She reminded us that tuning speed is an iterative process that must focus on real users and conversions.

Today, Google suspects that good Core Web Vitals limits and the 75th percentile are just a good start and reminded us that users will always be more demanding. She shared the perfetto tool, which Google uses when the performance timeline doesn’t provide enough information.

You can already watch all the presentations on YouTube.

If you're interested in the 2022 report, read Zuzana Šumlanská's notes.

Tags:Performance.now