Performance Budgets That Keep Designers and Engineers Aligned

Websites that look beautiful but load in eight seconds? Nobody has time for that in 2025. Performance budgets keep teams accountable. Here’s the framework we use on every CaptivArt build.

Set the Budget During Design

We define targets for Largest Contentful Paint, Total Blocking Time, and INP right after wireframes. Designers know how much “weight” they can use on the hero, how many videos we can feature, and where to lean on pure CSS instead of JavaScript.

Tie Every Component to a Budget

Component specs include expected kilobytes, skeleton states, and loading behaviour. If someone wants to add a new animation or library, they need to declare how they’ll offset the cost elsewhere.

Automate Checks in CI

We run Lighthouse CI and WebPageTest on pull requests. When metrics regress, the team gets notified in Slack with a diff of the change that caused the slowdown.

Monitor Post-Launch

GA4 and Vercel Analytics give us real user data. If we spot metrics dipping in specific regions or devices, we prioritise fixes in the iteration backlog.

Budgets aren’t a restriction—they’re how we ensure the experience stays fast long after launch.