Time To Interactive – How to Improve TTI

Improve Time to Interactive (TTI) by optimizing JavaScript, reducing render-blocking resources, and prioritizing critical content loading.
Time To Interactive
Time To Interactive
Time To Interactive – How to Improve TTI
Improve Time to Interactive (TTI) by optimizing JavaScript, reducing render-blocking resources, and prioritizing critical content loading.
Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Get Your Free Website Audit Limited Time Offer

If you know page speed insight test, you should have come across time to interactive (TTI). Despite not being a part of Core Web Vital, TTI has a crucial role in measuring the web performance.

In this article, we will break down each and every concepts associated with TTI.

What is Time to Interactive?

Time to Interactive(TTI) measures the time taken between the start of the page load till the sub-resources have loaded and becomes responsive to the users input.

TTI is a lab web metrics, and it carries around 10% weightage in overall web performance. It is an important lab data that measure load responsiveness.

In layman terms, TTI is the time taken between FCP (First contentful paint) to the last long-task (task that loads more than 50 ms) before the quiet window. The same is explained in detail with an image.

Time to Interactive - Process Diagram

Here are the steps to follow while calculating the TTI:

  1. Start calculating the time from FCP.
  2. Wait till 5 second of quiet window (where there is no long-tasks and no more than two in-flight network GET requests).
  3. Once you get the 5 seconds quiet window, find the last long-task in backward.
  4. Time between FCP and the last long-task before 5 seconds quiet window is the time to interactive (TTI).

Why is Time to Interactive Important?

When your website has server-side rendering (SSR), the web page appears more likely to be interactive with links or buttons visible to users.

In some case, those buttons or links might not work and affect the user interactivity. The reasons could be because

  • main-thread is blocked, and
  • the JavaScript that is responsible for the interactive elements hasn’t loaded.

That’s the reason, you should know why TTI is important in great user experience.

When a web page has poor TTI score, it makes the web page to load slow, or page seems to be broken. So, it increases the chance of user quite page.

What Is a Good TTI Score?

What is the Good Time to interactive (TTI)

To have an enhanced user interactivity, a web page should load in less than 3.8 seconds while loading from FCP to the last long-task.

Here are slabs of TTI score:

  • Good – less than 3.8 seconds
  • Needs improvement – 3.8 to 7.3 seconds
  • Poor – more than 7.3 seconds

How to Measure Time to Interactive?

Time to interactive (TTI) is a lab data, so it can be measured using the following tools:

  1. Page Speed Insight
  2. GTMetrix

Measuring TTI by Page Speed Insight

Page speed insight is a free tool, and it provides the details of TTI for every page within 60 seconds.

If you’re TTI is more than 3.8 seconds, you can find the diagnostics and opportunities that cause you poor TTI score.

Measuring TTI by Page Speed Insight

Measuring TTI by GTMetrix

GTmetrix is a free tool till auditing TTI of the desktop view, and you should purchase Pro version to check the TTI of the mobile version.

Measuring TTI by GTmetrix

How to Fix Time to Interactive?

Here are few important parameters you should fix in the website to keep the TTI under 3.8 seconds for better user interactivity.

Founder of 7 Eagles, Growth Marketer & SEO Expert

Ashkar Gomez is the Founder of 7 Eagles (a Growth Marketing & SEO Company). Ashkar started his career as a Sales Rep in 2013 and later shifted his career to SEO in 2014. He is one of the leading SEO experts in the industry with 8+ years of experience. He has worked on 200+ projects across 20+ industries in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, UAE, Australia, South Africa, and India. Besides SEO and Digital Marketing, he is passionate about Data Analytics, Personal Financial Planning, and Content Writing.
Discover How 7 Eagles Help Your Business

Founder of 7Eagles, Growth Marketer & SEO Expert

Ashkar Gomez is the Founder of 7 Eagles (a Growth Marketing & SEO Company). Ashkar started his career as a Sales Rep in 2013 and later shifted his career to SEO in 2014. He is one of the leading SEO experts in the industry with 8+ years of experience. He has worked on 200+ projects across 20+ industries in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, UAE, Australia, South Africa, and India. Besides SEO and Digital Marketing, he is passionate about Data Analytics, Personal Financial Planning, and Content Writing.
Recent Post
Get Your Free Website Audit Limited Time Offer

Your Business
Growth
Starts Here

Let’s Have a Cup of Digital Tea

Request Your Free Quote

Book Your Free Marketing Consultation

Your Monthly ads spend
Convenient Time To Call