The Chrome UX Report: How to Use It to Improve Your Website UX
In the fast-paced world of web development and digital marketing, understanding how users interact with your website is crucial for success. Slow load times, unresponsive pages, and poor visual stability can quickly drive visitors away, negatively impacting your traffic, engagement, and ultimately, your bottom line.
But how can you get an accurate picture of your website‘s performance from the perspective of real users? Enter the Chrome UX Report (CrUX).
What is the Chrome UX Report?
The Chrome UX Report is a public dataset that contains real-world user experience data for millions of websites. The data is collected from opted-in users of Google Chrome, which as of 2024, accounts for over 65% of the global browser market share[^1]. This massive scale allows CrUX to provide a representative view of how websites are performing for users across different devices, connection types, and geographic regions.
[^1]: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Market Share. (2024). Retrieved from https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-shareCrUX anonymously aggregates user metrics for each website, ensuring that individual privacy is protected. The dataset currently includes data for over 18 million distinct websites[^2], making it an invaluable resource for web developers, designers, and marketers looking to optimize their site‘s user experience.
[^2]: Chrome UX Report. (2024). Retrieved from https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-user-experience-reportKey Metrics in the Chrome UX Report
At the heart of the Chrome UX Report are a set of key user experience metrics that provide a comprehensive view of how a website is performing. The most important of these are the Core Web Vitals.
Core Web Vitals
Introduced by Google in 2020 and incorporated into the page experience ranking factor in 2021[^3], Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that measure the real-world user experience of a web page in terms of loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. The three Core Web Vitals are:
[^3]: Evaluating page experience for a better web. (2020, May 28). Retrieved from https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2020/05/evaluating-page-experience- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures loading performance. LCP marks the point in the page load timeline when the page‘s main content has likely loaded. A fast LCP helps ensure a good user experience. To provide a good user experience, LCP should occur within 2.5 seconds of when the page first starts loading[^4].
- First Input Delay (FID): Measures interactivity. FID quantifies the experience users feel when trying to interact with unresponsive pages—a low FID helps ensure that the page is usable. To provide a good user experience, pages should have a FID of less than 100 milliseconds[^5].
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures visual stability. CLS quantifies the amount of unexpected layout shift of visible page content. A low CLS helps ensure that the page is delightful. To provide a good user experience, pages should maintain a CLS of less than 0.1[^6].
In addition to the Core Web Vitals, CrUX includes other important user experience metrics such as First Contentful Paint (FCP), which measures the time from navigation to the point when the browser renders the first bit of content from the DOM, and Time to First Byte (TTFB), which measures the responsiveness of a web server or other network resource[^7].
[^7]: User-centric performance metrics. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://web.dev/user-centric-performance-metrics/Accessing Chrome UX Report Data
One of the great things about the Chrome UX Report is that there are multiple ways to access the data, catering to different levels of technical expertise and use cases. Here‘s a rundown of the main methods:
PageSpeed Insights
If you‘re just getting started with CrUX data, PageSpeed Insights is the easiest way to dip your toes in. Simply enter a URL, and you‘ll get a report showing the Core Web Vitals and other key metrics for that specific page, based on real user data from CrUX.
Pros:
- Quick and easy to use
- No technical knowledge required
- Provides suggestions for improving page performance
Cons:
- Only provides data for individual pages, not entire sites
- Limited to a 28-day lookback window
- Doesn‘t allow for segmentation by device type or other dimensions
CrUX Dashboard
For a more comprehensive view of a website‘s CrUX data, Google offers a pre-built dashboard in Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio). The dashboard provides detailed visualizations of all the metrics included in the CrUX dataset, segmented by device type and connection type.
Pros:
- Provides a bird‘s eye view of a website‘s user experience
- Allows for easy comparison to industry benchmarks and competitors
- Includes historical data going back several months
- Highly customizable and shareable
Cons:
- Requires some familiarity with Looker Studio to fully leverage
- Data is updated monthly, so it may not reflect real-time changes
- Some metrics are only available at the origin level, not individual pages
CrUX API
For programmatic access to CrUX data, developers can use the CrUX API. The API allows for querying the dataset by origin, URL, or time period, and returns the data in JSON format.
Pros:
- Allows for integration of CrUX data into other tools and workflows
- Provides the most up-to-date data (updated daily)
- Offers flexibility in querying and filtering the data
Cons:
- Requires technical expertise to use effectively
- Has usage limits and may incur charges for high-volume users
BigQuery
For large-scale analysis of CrUX data, Google provides access to the full dataset through BigQuery, a cloud-based data warehouse. With BigQuery, you can write SQL queries to slice and dice the data however you want, and even join it with other datasets for deeper insights.
Pros:
- Provides full access to the raw CrUX data
- Allows for complex queries and data manipulation
- Can be integrated with other data sources for richer analysis
- Offers a free tier for smaller-scale usage
Cons:
- Requires a high level of technical expertise (SQL, data warehousing, etc.)
- Can become costly for querying and storing large amounts of data
- Has a steeper learning curve compared to the other methods
Here‘s a quick comparison of the different methods:
| Method | Ease of Use | Data Freshness | Granularity | Customization |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PageSpeed Insights | High | 28-day rolling | Page-level | Low |
| CrUX Dashboard | Medium | Monthly | Origin-level | Medium |
| CrUX API | Low | Daily | Page & origin-level | High |
| BigQuery | Very low | Monthly | Page & origin-level | Very high |
Analyzing CrUX Data to Improve User Experience
Now that we‘ve covered what the Chrome UX Report is and how to access the data, let‘s walk through an example of how to use CrUX insights to identify and fix user experience issues on a real website.
For this case study, we‘ll use the CrUX Dashboard to analyze the website of the popular outdoor clothing retailer Patagonia (www.patagonia.com).
Step 1: Check the Core Web Vitals overview
Upon entering the Patagonia origin URL into the CrUX Dashboard, we‘re taken to the overview page, which shows us the trend lines for each of the Core Web Vitals over the past several months.
Right away, we can see that Patagonia‘s performance on the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) metric is quite different between mobile and desktop devices. While over 75% of desktop users experience an LCP of under 2.5 seconds (the threshold for a "good" score), that figure drops to just 42% for mobile users.
This tells us that optimizing LCP on mobile should be a top priority for Patagonia‘s development team.
Step 2: Drill down into problematic metrics
To get a better understanding of what might be causing the slow LCP times on mobile, we can click into the detailed LCP report.
Here we see the full distribution of LCP times for Patagonia over the past 12 months, along with benchmarks comparing the site‘s performance to other sites in the same vertical.
While Patagonia is slightly ahead of the vertical average, it‘s still well below the "good" threshold. We can also see that the 75th percentile LCP for mobile is nearly a full second slower than for desktop (3.3s vs. 2.5s).
Step 3: Compare to competitors
Another useful feature of the CrUX Dashboard is the ability to compare a site‘s performance to that of key competitors. By clicking into the "Compare to competitors" tab and adding a few of Patagonia‘s main rivals in the outdoor apparel space, we get a clear view of how the company stacks up.
While Patagonia is ahead of the pack on desktop LCP, it lags behind competitors like The North Face and Columbia on mobile. This competitive benchmark helps make the case for prioritizing mobile LCP optimizations, as it shows there is room for Patagonia to gain an edge over rivals in this key user experience metric.
Step 4: Identify underperforming pages
So far, we‘ve been looking at origin-level data in the CrUX Dashboard, but we can also drill down to the performance of individual pages. Using the Search Console integration or Patagonia‘s own analytics data, the development team could identify specific pages that have high traffic but poor LCP scores, and prioritize those for optimization.
Some common causes of slow LCP that Patagonia‘s developers might look for include:
- Large, unoptimized images or video files
- Render-blocking JavaScript or CSS
- Slow server response times
- Inefficient caching or content delivery
By identifying and fixing these issues on high-value pages first, Patagonia can start to move the needle on its overall mobile LCP scores.
Step 5: Monitor and iterate
Improving Core Web Vitals and other UX metrics with CrUX data is an ongoing process, not a one-time fix. Patagonia‘s development team should continue monitoring the site‘s performance in the CrUX Dashboard on a regular basis, setting incremental targets and tracking progress over time.
As new features and content are added to the site, it‘s important to ensure that they don‘t negatively impact Core Web Vitals. CrUX data can serve as a key benchmark and alert system for catching performance regressions before they seriously impact the end user experience.
Using CrUX to Inform UX Design Decisions
While much of the discussion around CrUX data focuses on technical optimizations, it can also be a valuable input for UX and design teams. By understanding how real users are experiencing a website across different devices and network conditions, designers can make more informed choices about layout, content hierarchy, and interactive elements.
For example, a designer working on Patagonia‘s mobile product pages might use CrUX data showing that a significant portion of users are on slower 3G connections to justify streamlining the design, reducing the number of large images, and prioritizing key information and calls-to-action.
Similarly, CrUX data could be used to A/B test different design variants and measure their impact on Core Web Vitals. By making data-driven design decisions based on real user insights, UX teams can create experiences that are not only visually appealing but also performant and delightful to use.
The Future of CrUX and Web User Experience
As the importance of delivering a great user experience on the web continues to grow, tools like the Chrome UX Report are becoming increasingly critical for developers, designers, and marketers alike. By leveraging real-world user data to inform technical optimizations, design decisions, and competitive benchmarking, websites can stay ahead of the curve and deliver experiences that delight users and drive business results.
Looking ahead, we can expect the insights available through CrUX to become even richer and more actionable. Some potential developments on the horizon include:
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Integration with other Google tools: As Google continues to emphasize user experience across its products, it‘s likely that we‘ll see deeper integration of CrUX data into tools like Search Console, Google Analytics, and perhaps even Google Ads. This could provide a more holistic view of how user experience impacts key business metrics like traffic, conversions, and revenue.
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Expansion of metrics and dimensions: While the Core Web Vitals are a great starting point, there‘s always room to expand the set of user experience metrics tracked in CrUX. In the future, we may see the addition of more granular performance metrics, such as element-level LCP, as well as new categories of metrics around accessibility, user engagement, and more.
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Predictive insights and recommendations: As the CrUX dataset grows and machine learning techniques advance, it‘s not hard to imagine a future where the platform could proactively surface insights and recommendations to developers and designers. For example, CrUX might be able to predict the likely impact of a proposed design change on Core Web Vitals, or even automatically generate optimized code snippets based on a site‘s specific performance profile.
Of course, the future of web user experience goes beyond just technical optimizations. As user expectations continue to evolve and new technologies like AR, VR, and voice interfaces come into play, designers and developers will need to stay agile and adapt to new ways of thinking about UX.
But no matter what the future holds, one thing is certain: data-driven insights will be key to creating web experiences that meet users‘ needs and drive business success. And with tools like the Chrome UX Report putting real user data at our fingertips, we have everything we need to rise to the challenge.
Conclusion
In today‘s digital landscape, delivering a great user experience is no longer a nice-to-have—it‘s a business imperative. And with the Chrome UX Report, web developers, designers, and marketers have an invaluable tool for understanding how real users are experiencing their sites and identifying opportunities for improvement.
By leveraging CrUX data to inform technical optimizations, design decisions, and competitive benchmarks, websites can stay ahead of the curve and deliver experiences that delight users and drive results. Whether you‘re a seasoned performance expert or just getting started with user experience optimization, the insights available through CrUX are simply too powerful to ignore.
So what are you waiting for? Dive into the data, start experimenting, and see how you can use the Chrome UX Report to take your website‘s user experience to the next level. Your users (and your bottom line) will thank you.
