Shipping Animated Sites That Still Pass Core Web Vitals
Motion and performance are not enemies. You just have to be deliberate about where the work happens.
Clients often assume a rich, animated site has to be slow. It doesn't. The trick is spending your performance budget where users notice and saving it everywhere they don't.
Start with the largest contentful paint. Hero text and key visuals should render server-side and appear almost instantly. Animation can layer in afterward without blocking that first paint.
Lazy-load heavy motion libraries so they only fetch on routes that need them. A marketing homepage with GSAP shouldn't ship that bundle to a simple contact page.
Convert imagery to AVIF and WebP, use SVG or Lottie over raster GIFs, and reserve space for media to keep cumulative layout shift near zero. With discipline, sub-1.2s LCP and fluid 60fps motion coexist happily.