FRONTEND PERFORMANCE AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TO THE USER’S MACROECONOMIC «COST OF WAITING»

The article examines the impact of frontend performance of web applications on user behavior and its macroeconomic consequences through the prism of the “cost of waiting” concept. The author analyzes key performance metrics (LCP, INP, CLS, etc.) that determine the speed of rendering and interactivity of interfaces, and demonstrates their relationship with user metrics — conversion, bounces, session depth. Based on empirical data from A/B tests, reports from large IT companies and scientific research, the economic feasibility of investing in optimizing the client side of web applications is substantiated. Particular attention is paid to the aggregation of individual time losses of users and their extrapolation at the macroeconomic level using theories of the alternative cost of time and search costs. The article proposes a methodology for calculating the economic effects of improving frontend indicators and provides recommendations for the implementation of optimization practices. The work demonstrates that even a slight reduction in interface delays can lead to a significant economic effect both at the level of an individual business and on the scale of the digital economy as a whole.