absa.co.za website review

16 images could be 2.4 MB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 10.3 s faster on a phone.

About 801 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 3.9 s faster on a phone.

11 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 4.6 s.

17 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (540 KiB).

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 1.1 s of main-thread work and 1.1 MB of downloads while your page loads. That alone is enough to make taps feel slow. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

Your mobile performance score is 28 (desktop: 46). Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, Adobe Tag Manager and Facebook and others), adding 1.7 MB and 1.6 s of main-thread time.

135 KiB could be saved by minifying JavaScript.

About 169 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 600 ms faster on a phone.

Polyfills for old browsers add 30 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 500 ms faster on a phone.

A phone's processor spends 3.0 s on main-thread work while loading, 1.9 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

The page has 2,116 HTML elements. Above 1,500, rendering and every interaction get slower on phones.

14 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 235 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

41 KiB could be saved by minifying CSS.

Web fonts hide text while they load. Setting font-display: swap shows text immediately (about 50 ms).

Critical files load one after another instead of in parallel (3 chains). Preconnecting to key origins and preloading the hero image shortens the chain.

Scripts make the browser recalculate the layout repeatedly while the page loads, which wastes processor time on phones.

Real Chrome users on phones do not pass Google's Core Web Vitals on this page (28-day field data from the Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab)). Google uses this in ranking.

The first text or image appears after 7.8 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Your largest element takes 32.3 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image “Banner | Ultimate Banking”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 33.4 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 10.2 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 738 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Real visitors wait 2.9 s for the largest content to appear (75th percentile). Good is under 2.5 s.

Real visitors wait 270 ms for the page to respond to a tap (75th percentile). Good is under 200 ms.

For real visitors the layout shifts by 0.12 (75th percentile). Good is under 0.1.

Real visitors see the first content after 2.3 s (75th percentile). Good is under 1.8 s.

The layout shifts by 0.202 while loading, so content jumps under the reader's thumb. Good is under 0.1.

8 images have no width and height attributes, so the layout jumps as each one loads.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 272 ms to 286 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 4.1 s to 4.2 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 5.8 MB in 148 requests on a phone: images 3.0 MB (65), scripts 2.1 MB (35) and fonts 438 KiB (4). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

easy-equities-hero-tilev2.png.rendition.480.480.png weighs 1.7 MB. On a phone connection a single image that size takes seconds.

2 images are downloaded at several times the size a phone draws them, for example easy-equities-hero-tilev2.png.rendition.480.480.png at 2,560 px wide, shown at 390 px. Resized copies would save about 1.3 MB.

17 images (2.8 MB) are JPEG, PNG or GIF. The same pictures as WebP or AVIF are usually much smaller at the same quality, and every current browser shows them.

3 images further down the page (339 KiB) download before anyone scrolls to them. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 1.64 g of CO₂e: 196.7 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

9 text elements don't have enough contrast against the background to read easily, especially outdoors on a phone.

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 57 elements on the page fail this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

The page has no <main> landmark, so screen-reader users cannot jump straight to the content.

4 form fields have no label, so screen readers announce an empty box and autofill guesses.

Alternative text of images should not be repeated as text: 7 elements on the page fail this check, rated minor by axe-core.

Headings skip levels (h1 → h3 and h3 → h5), which makes the page harder to scan with a screen reader.

The homepage links to 57 pages on absa.co.za and 21 external pages.

There is no /llms.txt, a short Markdown guide to your key pages for AI tools (llmstxt.org). It is optional and few AI tools read it yet, so treat it as a cheap extra.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 36 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

1 image failed to load on a phone, for example https://bat.bing.com/action/0?ti=343071567&Ver=2&mid=f39a9c0f-6f5c-4856-b59a-a73bf0b2fa96&bo=1&sid=e241ce40d1ff11f1be01f11dadfb969e&vid=e241fda0d1ff11f1b93a9d0dbcf88b6a&vids=1&msclkid=N&pi=918639831&l.

11 of 25 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

2 third-party cookies are set on load; browsers are restricting these, so whatever relies on them breaks.

The page uses 1 deprecated browser API that will stop working in future browsers (“Unload event listeners are deprecated and will be removed.”).

1 error was logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Unexpected identifier 'Object'”.

Chrome logged issues while loading the page (“Cookie”).

Large scripts ship without source maps.

http://absa.co.za does not redirect to https, so some visitors land on the insecure version.

HSTS is set, but max-age is 182 days; one year is the recommended minimum.

Opening https://absa.co.za goes through 3 redirects before the homepage loads.

No Permissions-Policy header to switch off camera, microphone and location for embedded content.

X-XSS-Protection is set to “1; mode=block”; the header is deprecated and can introduce bugs. Use 0 or remove it.

There is no /.well-known/security.txt telling researchers how to report a security problem to you.

absa.co.za has no CAA record, so any certificate authority may issue a certificate for it. A CAA record naming your provider (for example letsencrypt.org) closes that door.

Your homepage shows a street address but no LocalBusiness JSON-LD, so Google and AI assistants have to guess your address, hours and phone from the page text.

Social proof on the homepage: 5 trust badges. Pairing it with named testimonials or customer logos makes it far more convincing.

No analytics or tag manager detected in the HTML, so you can't measure whether any of these fixes work.

The homepage shows no opening hours. If customers visit or call, show when.

Your phone number appears as text but isn't a tel: link, so phone visitors can't tap to call.

There is no link to Google or Apple Maps. A directions link is one tap for a phone visitor.

No guarantee or risk reducer (money-back, free trial, no credit card) is mentioned, which is often what tips a hesitant visitor.

The homepage carries about 464 words of visible text.

Email authentication: SPF record 25 points, plus 15 when it ends in -all (10 for ~all); DMARC record 25, plus 25 for a reject policy (15 for quarantine); a DKIM key on a common selector 10.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Ads, Google Tag Manager, LinkedIn Insight, Meta Pixel and Microsoft Ads and 2 mores (measured from a US location before any click). No consent tool was detected. Visitors from the EU, UK and several US states must be asked first.

Opening the homepage sets 24 cookies (measured from a US location before any click).

No known cookie consent tool loads with the page. Some sites build their own banner, and some only show one to visitors from the EU.

Loading the homepage contacts 24 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.