ducks.org website review

19 images could be 6.0 MB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 4.8 s faster on a phone.

About 1.8 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 6.5 s faster on a phone.

27 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (1.1 MB).

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 1.1 s of main-thread work and 986 KiB 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 29. Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

A phone's processor spends 6.3 s on main-thread work while loading, 3.5 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, YouTube and Google/Doubleclick Ads and others), adding 3.7 MB and 2.8 s of main-thread time.

About 175 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.

YouTube costs a phone 466 ms of main-thread work and 990 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/Doubleclick Ads costs a phone 435 ms of main-thread work and 556 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.

20 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 406 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

4 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 300 ms.

Google Maps costs a phone 184 ms of main-thread work and 419 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.

Polyfills for old browsers add 47 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need.

13 KiB could be saved by minifying JavaScript.

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 7.9 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Your largest element takes 46.4 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the text “THE LEADER IN WETLANDS CONSERVATION Ducks Unlimited conserv…”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 48.9 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 10.4 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 1.8 s in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-31, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 137 ms to 289 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

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

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-31, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 1.9 s to 1.8 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 13.3 MB in 227 requests on a phone: images 8.4 MB (65), scripts 3.9 MB (63) and other files 605 KiB (75). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

3 images weigh 2.6 MB together. On a phone connection a single image that size takes seconds.

8 images are downloaded at several times the size a phone draws them, for example 20m_graph_h.png at 1,000 px wide, shown at 290 px. Resized copies would save about 1.0 MB.

13 images (4.0 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.

14 images further down the page (4.0 MB) 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 3.76 g of CO₂e: 451.5 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

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

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

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 20 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.

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

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

Elements with visible text labels do not have matching accessible names. (4 elements).

Your title is only 22 characters: “Home | Ducks Unlimited”. 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.

There are 2 <h1> headlines (“The Leader in Wetlands Conservation” and “Welcome to Ducks Unlimited”). One clear main headline is easier for people and search engines.

Your meta description is 258 characters; Google truncates after about 160, so the end of your pitch is cut.

2 links use generic text like “click here” or “learn more”, which tells Google nothing about the page behind them.

The homepage links to 273 pages on ducks.org and 40 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.

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.

/conservation, /conservation/where-we-work, /conservation/waterfowl-research-science and /conservation/land-protection use the same meta description. A description written for each page earns more clicks.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 88 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

2 images failed to load on a phone, for example https://jelly.mdhv.io/v1/star.gif?pid=VeyTa07IwUHIJHbvty1l6y9yE8BK&src=mh&evt=hi.

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

4 of 16 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

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

4 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “[object GeolocationPositionError]”.

Requests the geolocation permission on page load.

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

1 link to other sites is dead, for example https://volunteers.ducks.org/autologin/ (404).

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.

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.

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.

ducks.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.

ducks.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.

Social proof on the homepage: 3 trust badges. Pairing it with named testimonials or customer logos makes it far more convincing.

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 679 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 Analytics, Google Tag Manager, HubSpot and LinkedIn Insight and 6 mores (measured from a US location before any click). A consent tool (HubSpot cookie banner) is installed; check it blocks these until visitors agree where the law requires it.

Opening the homepage sets 29 cookies, 1 of them by other companies (measured from a US location before any click).

Loading the homepage contacts 60 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.