dso.org website review

About 1,020 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 6.3 s faster on a phone.

Your mobile performance score is 37. 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, cloudfront.net and Google CDN and others), adding 2.3 MB and 1.8 s of main-thread time.

7 images could be 376 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 600 ms faster on a phone.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 814 ms of main-thread work and 878 KiB of downloads while your page loads. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

3 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 650 ms.

12 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (259 KiB).

cloudfront.net costs a phone 358 ms of main-thread work and 324 KiB of downloads while your page loads. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

Google CDN costs a phone 288 ms of main-thread work and 742 KiB of downloads while your page loads. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

A phone's processor spends 3.1 s on main-thread work while loading, 2.1 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

The page has 1,987 HTML elements. Above 1,500, rendering and every interaction get slower on phones.

About 85 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 150 ms faster on a phone.

17 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 224 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

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

Polyfills for old browsers add 20 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need.

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.

The first text or image appears after 9.9 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Your largest element takes 21.6 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the text “UPCOMING EVENTS”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 23.5 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 9.9 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 822 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

3 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 137 ms to 137 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 4.1 MB in 94 requests on a phone: scripts 2.2 MB (22), fonts 700 KiB (6) and images 593 KiB (19). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

1 image is downloaded at several times the size a phone draws it, for example tinytots1_halloween_eventpage at 1,000 px wide, shown at 315 px. Resized copies would save about 7 KiB.

4 images further down the page (150 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 1.17 g of CO₂e: 140.2 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

144 elements hidden from screen readers can still receive keyboard focus.

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

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

3 visible links have no text or label, so screen readers cannot say where they go.

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

Elements with visible text labels do not have matching accessible names. (1 element).

Your title is only 26 characters: “Detroit Symphony Orchestra”. Between 30 and 65 characters leaves room to say what you do and for whom.

No structured data (JSON-LD), so Google can't show rich results such as your logo, ratings or FAQs.

Your meta description is only 44 characters: “The most accessible orchestra on the planet.”. 70 to 160 characters is enough to sell the click.

No canonical URL, so duplicate versions of the homepage (with or without www, with tracking parameters) can split ranking signals.

No XML sitemap at https://www.dso.org/sitemap.xml, so Google discovers your pages only by following links.

There is no robots.txt at dso.org/robots.txt, the first file search crawlers ask for.

The homepage links to 99 pages on dso.org and 30 external pages.

There is no Organization (or LocalBusiness) JSON-LD, so search engines and AI assistants have no machine-readable facts about who runs the site: its name, logo, profiles and contact details.

The HTML your server sends has 639 of the 1,503 words a browser shows. AI crawlers don't run JavaScript, so they miss the rest.

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.

/events-and-tickets and /events-and-tickets/calendar all use the title “Events & Tickets | Detroit Symphony Orchestra”. Search engines can't tell which page to show for a search, so each competes with the others.

/events-and-tickets, /events-and-tickets/calendar, /events-and-tickets/2026-2027-dso-season, /events-and-tickets/explore-our-series, /events-and-tickets/special-offers-and-information and /events-and-tickets/accessibility-and-guest-services and 8 others have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

/about-the-dso took over 3 s to send its HTML from our server.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 50 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

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

3 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 404 ()”.

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

No Strict-Transport-Security header, so browsers may still try plain http first on a return visit.

No Content-Security-Policy header, the main browser-side defence against injected scripts.

Neither X-Frame-Options nor a CSP frame-ancestors policy is set, so any site can embed yours in a frame.

X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff is missing, so browsers may guess file types.

1 link go through two or more redirects, for example https://tickets.dso.org/secure/logout.

No Referrer-Policy header, so full URLs can leak to the sites you link to.

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

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

dso.org 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.

dso.org's DNS answers are not signed. DNSSEC stops attackers forging them to send visitors or email elsewhere; most registrars switch it on in a click, though most sites still run without it.

On a phone, there is no call to action on the first screen: visitors have to scroll to find out what to do next.

No testimonials, customer logos, ratings or customer counts on the homepage: nothing tells a new visitor that others already trust you.

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.

No phone number or email link on the homepage, so ready-to-buy visitors have one fewer way to reach you.

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

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 1,503 words of visible text.

DMARC is set to p=none, so mail pretending to be dso.org is still delivered. Reports are on, so moving to quarantine is the next step.

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 Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Meta Pixel and The Trade Desk (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 8 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 25 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.