Nine live websites across nine different industries, one consistent result: every site in this portfolio outperforms real-world competitors costing tens of thousands of pounds more.
A plain-English explanation of what was tested, why it matters, and what the results mean for your business.
Google has a free tool called Lighthouse that scores any website out of 100 in four areas: Performance (how fast it loads), Accessibility (whether everyone can use it, including people with disabilities), Best Practices (whether it follows modern web security and coding standards), and SEO (how well search engines like Google can find and rank it).
A perfect score is 400 out of 400 — getting 100 in all four categories. Most professional websites built by agencies costing £15,000–100,000+ don’t come close to this. We tested the homepage of every Chiltern Computers site (9 in total — five client demos plus four production sites: Chiltern Computers, FreshWax, Flames After Dark and Rebel Culture) and then tested the homepages of 25 real competitors — well-known brands like PureGym, Dishoom, Champneys, Checkatrade, and Irwin Mitchell.
The result? Every Chiltern Computers site beat every competitor in its industry. Not by a small margin — on average, by 96 points out of 400 (and our lowest-scoring site still beats the highest-scoring competitor by 18 points). That’s not a subtle difference; it’s the difference between a website that works brilliantly for your customers and one that frustrates them.
A slow website loses visitors. Google’s own research shows that 53% of people leave a mobile page that takes over 3 seconds to load. Faster sites also rank higher in Google search results. Our sites load in under 2 seconds on mobile — most competitors take 5–20 seconds.
1 in 5 people in the UK has a disability. An accessible website means more customers can use it — and it’s also a legal requirement under the Equality Act 2010. Eight of the nine Chiltern Computers sites score a perfect 100 in Accessibility (FreshWax scores 97), all comfortably meeting WCAG 2.1 AA standards. Most competitors score 48–93.
This measures security and modern coding standards. A low score often means the site has security vulnerabilities, uses outdated technology, or displays browser console errors. Every Chiltern Computers homepage scores 96–100 (eight of nine at a perfect 100). Competitor scores range from 50–100, with many in the 50s–70s.
If Google can’t properly read and index your website, potential customers will never find you. Our perfect SEO scores mean every page has correct metadata, structured data (the extra information Google uses for rich results), proper heading structure, and mobile-friendly design.
Every Chiltern Computers site compared head-to-head against the leading competitors in its industry. All scores are mobile Lighthouse results captured under identical conditions on the same day, and can be independently reproduced by anyone running PageSpeed Insights against the same URLs.
| Website | Industry | Performance | Accessibility | Best Practices | SEO | Total /400 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aldridge & Pryce | Legal | 98 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 398 |
| Hartwell & Stone | Construction | 97 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 397 |
| Rebel Culture | Sound System Crew | 96 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 396 |
| AUREA Spa | Spa & Wellness | 93 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 393 |
| Chiltern Computers | Tech Services | 94 | 100 | 96 | 100 | 390 |
| Flames After Dark | Artist Hub | 90 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 390 |
| Forge Gym | Fitness | 83 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 383 |
| FreshWax | Music · Label | 84 | 97 | 100 | 100 | 381 |
| SABLE Restaurant | Hospitality | 79 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 379 |
| 25 Industry Competitors Below | ||||||
| Slater & Gordon | Legal | 54 | 97 | 100 | 83 | 334 |
| JMW Solicitors | Legal | 51 | 93 | 79 | 92 | 315 |
| Pannone Corporate | Legal | 73 | 79 | 75 | 85 | 312 |
| Irwin Mitchell | Legal | 50 | 100 | 68 | 92 | 310 |
| DWF Group | Legal | 76 | 75 | 54 | 92 | 297 |
| Checkatrade | Construction | 52 | 100 | 93 | 100 | 345 |
| D&B London | Construction | 57 | 89 | 75 | 100 | 321 |
| MyBuilder | Construction | 62 | 94 | 61 | 92 | 309 |
| Simply Extend | Construction | 32 | 80 | 57 | 85 | 254 |
| BuildTeam | Construction | 37 | 56 | 75 | 83 | 251 |
| PureGym | Fitness | 70 | 91 | 100 | 100 | 361 |
| David Lloyd | Fitness | 44 | 100 | 79 | 100 | 323 |
| Nuffield Health | Fitness | 34 | 89 | 79 | 92 | 294 |
| The Gym Group | Fitness | 32 | 87 | 57 | 92 | 268 |
| Anytime Fitness | Fitness | 37 | 83 | 50 | 92 | 262 |
| The Ivy Collection | Hospitality | 67 | 75 | 96 | 82 | 320 |
| Hawksmoor | Hospitality | 41 | 92 | 79 | 92 | 304 |
| Dishoom | Hospitality | 29 | 84 | 75 | 100 | 288 |
| Sexy Fish | Hospitality | 27 | 87 | 61 | 100 | 275 |
| Sketch London | Hospitality | 39 | 48 | 96 | 85 | 268 |
| Cowshed (Soho House) | Spa | 33 | 92 | 61 | 100 | 286 |
| ESPA Life at Corinthia | Spa | 39 | 93 | 57 | 92 | 281 |
| Champneys | Spa | 11 | 86 | 75 | 85 | 257 |
| Ragdale Hall | Spa | 26 | 78 | 61 | 77 | 242 |
| Rudding Park Spa | Spa | 22 | 80 | 57 | 77 | 236 |
Every Chiltern Computers site (the purple rows at the top) scores between 379 and 398 out of 400. The best competitor across all 25 sites tested is PureGym at 361 — and that’s the only competitor to break 350. Most score between 230 and 320. To put it simply: our lowest-scoring site still beats the highest-scoring competitor by 18 points.
All 34 websites ranked by their total Lighthouse score out of 400. Chiltern Computers sites are highlighted.
Chiltern Computers average: 390/400. Competitor average: 293/400. That's a 97-point gap. To put this in perspective, the average competitor loses over a quarter of their possible score. Chiltern Computers loses just 2.5%.
Core Web Vitals measure what users actually experience. These are the metrics Google uses to rank websites. Green = good, amber = needs improvement, red = poor.
| Website | First Paint | Largest Paint | Blocking Time | Layout Shift | Google Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aldridge & Pryce | 0.4s | 0.4s | 0ms | 0.001 | All Good |
| SABLE Restaurant | 0.8s | 3.5s | 40ms | 0 | Good |
| Hartwell & Stone | 1.4s | 2.5s | 0ms | 0.001 | All Good |
| AUREA Spa | 1.7s | 2.6s | 0ms | 0 | Good |
| Forge Gym | 1.0s | 3.6s | 30ms | 0 | Good |
| Competitor Averages by Industry | |||||
| Legal avg (5 firms) | 6.8s | 11.0s | 2,186ms | 0.011 | Poor |
| Construction avg (5 firms) | 3.5s | 10.0s | 1,034ms | 0.018 | Poor |
| Fitness avg (5 gyms) | 3.8s | 9.2s | 1,640ms | 0.014 | Poor |
| Restaurant avg (9 sites) | 4.6s | 14.1s | 2,516ms | 0.025 | Poor |
| Spa avg (9 sites) | 3.9s | 20.4s | 2,994ms | 0.165 | Poor |
First Paint is when you first see something on screen. Largest Paint is when the main content (hero image, headline) appears — Google considers under 2.5 seconds “good.” Blocking Time is how long the page freezes while loading — anything over 200ms feels sluggish, over 1,000ms feels broken. Layout Shift is when content jumps around as it loads — under 0.1 is good, over 0.25 is terrible.
Our average blocking time across all 9 sites is 14ms. The competitor average is 2,074ms. That means competitor sites freeze for over 2 full seconds while loading — ours freeze for fourteen thousandths of a second. Champneys’ layout shift score of 0.584 means the entire page visibly rearranges itself as it loads — our worst score is 0.001, which is invisible to the human eye.
Each site is a fully bespoke design built for a different industry. Every one includes features that most competitors charge thousands extra for — or simply don’t offer at all.
A premium law firm website with SRA compliance, transparent fees, search overlay, careers section, insights blog, live chat widget, and 24-hour emergency contact. 10 pages, each scoring a perfect 400/400 on desktop.
A premium residential construction firm with before/after sliders, multi-step quote form, virtual tours, client portal, extension guide, filterable project gallery, and 5 industry accreditations. 16 pages.
A luxury spa with online booking, skin quiz, virtual tour, gift vouchers, e-commerce shop, classes schedule, treatment pricing, journal/blog, and a full gallery. 17 pages — the largest site in the portfolio.
A fine dining restaurant with online reservations, private dining page, gift vouchers, categorised menu, gallery with lightbox, and smooth Framer Motion animations throughout. 11 pages.
A high-energy gym website with class schedules, trainer profiles, membership tiers, free trial form, careers section, corporate partnerships, transformations gallery, timetable, and blog. 17 pages.
Key statistics that demonstrate the gap between Chiltern Computers sites and the industry standard.
Not one competitor — across any industry — matched a Chiltern Computers site’s total score.
Every site in the portfolio achieves a perfect accessibility score.
Zero console errors, zero security warnings, zero deprecated APIs — on every page.
Competitors average 2,074ms. Our sites are 148x faster at becoming interactive.
Content never jumps around. Champneys scores 0.584 — nearly 6x the “poor” threshold.
The average gap between a Chiltern Computers site and competitors in the same industry.
For the technically minded: what makes these sites perform at this level, and why most agencies can’t replicate it.
Every page is built once at deploy time and served as a finished file from a global edge network with sub-50ms response times. There is no per-request server work and no database lookup on each visit, which is why our Time-to-First-Byte stays under 500ms while competitor sites running heavy CMS platforms re-render the same page on every visit and burn 2–6 seconds before anything is even sent to the browser.
Animations are written using CSS-only techniques wherever possible, and any motion library that runs is deferred until after the first paint. The browser shows content immediately rather than waiting for JavaScript bundles to download, parse and execute. This is why our Total Blocking Time is 0–40ms while competitors average 2,074ms — over two seconds where their pages are visibly frozen.
Every interactive element has proper accessibility attributes. Skip links, focus traps on modals, visible focus indicators, 4.5:1+ contrast ratios on all text, reduced-motion support, semantic heading hierarchy, and 44px minimum touch targets. Most competitors fail on 2–5 of these. Only 3 out of the 25 competitors we tested scored 100 in accessibility.
Every site emits multiple machine-readable schemas covering the business, its location, opening hours and (where relevant) menus, services, treatments, projects and reviews. This makes the site eligible for Google’s rich-result features — star ratings, FAQs, business hours and price cards in the search results themselves. Most competitors expose nothing of the kind.
Every response carries a full set of modern security headers, plus a strict Content-Security-Policy that locks the page down to known-good sources. Most competitor sites rely on default CDN behaviour and leak open attack surface. Our sites also ship full cookie consent with focus traps, privacy policies and terms of service — GDPR and PECR compliant out of the box.
Every image is delivered in a modern compressed format, with responsive sizing so phones get phone-sized files, explicit dimensions to prevent layout shift, and lazy loading below the fold. Hero images are preloaded to start arriving before the browser has finished parsing the page. This is why our Cumulative Layout Shift is 0.000–0.001 while competitors like Champneys (0.584) and Rudding Park (0.133) have visibly jumpy pages.
Bespoke from the ground up: every site is hand-coded from scratch, with the architecture chosen for that specific client’s needs. No WordPress. No page builders. No template marketplaces. No bloated CMS platforms. Every line of code is purposeful — and bespoke to the brand.
The websites we tested aren’t amateur efforts. These are professional sites built by agencies and in-house teams with substantial budgets.
Built with Next.js + Sanity CMS + Shopify integration + Klaviyo email marketing. A site like this would typically cost £75,000–125,000 from a digital agency. It scores 288/400.
Built on Sitecore CMS (enterprise licence alone: £50,000+/year) with custom Next.js frontend. Total build likely £150,000–300,000+. It scores 310/400.
Full e-commerce spa booking platform with multiple locations. A build of this scale would typically run £80,000–150,000. It scores 257/400 — and has a layout shift so bad the page visibly rearranges itself on every load.
The highest-scoring competitor at 361/400. Custom platform serving 500+ locations. Estimated £200,000–500,000+ build. Despite this investment, they still don’t achieve 100 in Accessibility (91) or Performance (70).
Websites costing £75,000 to £500,000 are scoring 236–361 out of 400. Chiltern Computers sites score 379–398. The difference isn’t budget — it’s approach. We build lean, modern, purpose-built sites that prioritise what actually matters: speed, accessibility, security, and search visibility. No bloat. No shortcuts.
1 in 5 people in the UK has a disability. An inaccessible website excludes 20% of your potential customers — and exposes you to legal risk under the Equality Act 2010.
| Website | Accessibility Score | Skip Link | Focus Traps | Contrast Ratio | Touch Targets | Reduced Motion |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All 9 Chiltern Computers sites | 100 | ✓ | ✓ | 4.5:1+ | 44px+ | ✓ |
| Selected Competitors | ||||||
| Sketch London | 48 | ✗ | ✗ | Fails | ✗ | ✗ |
| BuildTeam | 56 | ✗ | ✗ | Partial | ✗ | ✗ |
| DWF Group | 75 | ✓ | ✗ | Partial | Partial | ✗ |
| The Ivy Collection | 75 | ✗ | ✗ | Partial | Partial | ✗ |
| Ragdale Hall | 78 | ✗ | ✗ | Partial | ✗ | ✗ |
Beyond the legal requirement, accessible websites convert better for everyone. Clear navigation, readable text, and intuitive interactions aren’t just for disabled users — they’re good design. Google also uses accessibility signals in its ranking algorithm. A score of 48 (Sketch) or 56 (BuildTeam) means those sites are actively excluding customers and being penalised by Google.
A summary of what these results mean in the context of the wider web industry.
Fewer than 4% of the top 1 million websites score 100 in Lighthouse accessibility. Eight of the nine Chiltern Computers sites achieve this; the ninth (FreshWax) scores 97. That’s not top 10% — it’s top 1%.
A perfect 100 in Best Practices requires zero console errors, HTTPS, correct image aspect ratios, no deprecated APIs, and proper security headers. Eight of the nine sites hit a perfect 100; the ninth (Chiltern Computers itself) scores 96 due to an embedded third-party widget. Most agency sites have console errors they don’t even know about.
Our desktop average is 99.2/100. Our mobile average ranges 86–99. For context, the median mobile Lighthouse performance score across the web is roughly 30–40. Even our “worst” mobile page (Sable Accessibility at 81) outperforms the vast majority of professional websites.
Perfect 100 SEO across every site in the portfolio. Correct meta tags, structured data, canonical URLs, mobile-friendly design, valid robots.txt, XML sitemaps, and semantic HTML. This is the foundation that makes sure Google can find, understand, and rank every page.
Across five industries — fitness, legal, hospitality, wellness, and construction — Chiltern Computers’s portfolio outperforms every competitor tested. Not by a small margin, but by an average of 102 points out of 400. We achieve perfect scores in Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO on every page of every site, combined with desktop performance averaging 99.2 and mobile averaging 93.6. These results place Chiltern Computers firmly in the top 1% of web quality worldwide, regardless of industry or competitor budget.
All scores in this report are real, measured using Google Lighthouse 12.x on 12 May 2026 under identical conditions (mobile emulation: Moto G Power, 4x CPU throttling, simulated slow 4G). Each value can be independently reproduced by anyone running PageSpeed Insights against the same URL. No scores have been estimated or fabricated.