INP is the new speed — and guests feel it
Load time was only half the story. The metric that now decides whether a site feels fast is how quickly it responds to a tap — and guests judge it in milliseconds.
For years, "fast" meant how quickly a page appeared. Now it also means how quickly it answers — the delay between a tap and something happening. Google measures this as INP (Interaction to Next Paint), and guests feel it long before they'd ever name it.
Do Core Web Vitals actually affect rankings and conversions?
Yes — on both sides. Core Web Vitals are a confirmed ranking signal, and the business case is sharper still: a good INP sits under 200ms, 53% of mobile users abandon a page that takes over three seconds, and shaving even 0.1s off load time has been linked to an 8% lift in conversions. Speed isn't a technical nicety; it's revenue.
Why a slow response feels cheap
A tap that hangs — even for a fraction of a second — reads as unreliable. The guest doesn't think "high INP"; they think "this feels off," and a little trust leaks out. On a premium brand, that gap between touch and response is the difference between effortless and clunky.
Guests can't measure milliseconds, but they can feel them. Responsiveness is a luxury signal.
This is the deeper cut of speed as SEO nobody can fake: you can't fake a fast response with a nicer photo. It's engineered in — and it's felt in every single interaction.