We tested award-winning agency sites: most fail on mobile

We tested seven award-winning agency sites built on heavy animation and 3D graphics, plus our own, on the same day under the same conditions. The engine is the one behind Google PageSpeed Insights, with the same settings: a mid-range Android phone, a slow mobile connection and a server without a graphics processor. Each site ran three times and we took the median. Sites are shown by letter; the point is a measurable standard, not naming anyone.

Mobile score · desktop score · time to largest content · page weight:

• QANATONE architecture: 93 · 89 · 2.7 s · 0.9 MB
• Agency A: 83 · 71 · 2.9 s · 13.8 MB
• Agency B: 38 · 36 · 17.9 s · 11.6 MB
• Agency C: 37 · 57 · 18.1 s · 10.0 MB
• Agency D: 29 · 66 · 7.7 s · 10.8 MB
• Agency E: 28 · 64 · 3.3 s · 10.3 MB, with heavy layout shift while loading
• Agency F: 26 · 35 · 107.8 s · 23.2 MB
• Agency G: could not be measured, without a graphics processor it only shows "your browser is not supported"

Every animation on our site is on: the 3D drop, the fluid ink, the scroll-driven transitions. The difference is not how much motion there is, but how it is built.

A site can be beautiful enough to win awards and still trail in search. Google and AI agents judge a site by measurement, not by a design jury. The five things most often missed:

• The largest content should appear within 2.5 seconds. That is Google's Core Web Vitals limit; five of the sites we tested take over 7 seconds on mobile.
• The page should respond to touch at once. If animation blocks the main thread, a tap does nothing. On one site that blocking added up to 129 seconds on mobile.
• The page should not shift while loading. The limit is 0.1; one site reaches 1.59 on mobile.
• Page weight should be a budget. On a slow connection every megabyte costs seconds, and most award winners download over 10 MB up front.
• The site should load without a graphics processor. Google's test servers, many crawlers and AI agents run without one. A site that will not open there does not exist for them.

Speed alone does not decide rankings, but Core Web Vitals are one of Google's ranking signals and break ties between similar pages. In Google Ads, landing page experience feeds Quality Score, which sets cost per click, so a slow page makes every click dearer. AI search works the same way: content that can be read quickly and completely is more likely to be cited. Speed turns into money in both organic visibility and ad spend.

Details change per project, but the principles do not:

• Content first, motion second. Visitors see content in the first frame; motion starts once the page is readable.
• Heavy work never blocks the foreground. Drawing and computation run in the background so they never compete with a tap.
• Lower the cost, not the quality. A weak phone gets the same site running more efficiently, not a blurrier one.
• Every byte comes from a budget. Images, fonts and code get limits up front; whatever exceeds them does not ship.
• Nothing ships unmeasured. Every change is measured under the same conditions before release and must pass set thresholds.

Ask the agency behind your site three questions: what is the mobile PageSpeed score, how many megabytes is the page, and does it load without a graphics processor? Each answer should be a number, not a feeling. To check your own site, use the site check tool on our home page.