monocle.com website review

19 images could be 2.1 MB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 1.3 s faster on a phone.

11 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 1.3 s.

The page has 4,882 HTML elements. Above 1,500, rendering and every interaction get slower on phones.

A phone's processor spends 4.0 s on main-thread work while loading, 1.6 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, Google/Doubleclick Ads and Cookiebot and others), adding 2.0 MB and 900 ms of main-thread time.

Your mobile performance score is 59. Pages that score under 90 lose visitors before the first paint.

About 771 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page.

17 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (401 KiB).

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 318 ms of main-thread work and 582 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 277 ms of main-thread work and 560 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.

Cookiebot costs a phone 129 ms of main-thread work and 456 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.

Klaviyo costs a phone 101 ms of main-thread work and 313 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.

About 64 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 260 ms faster on a phone.

14 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 143 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

Web fonts hide text while they load. Setting font-display: swap shows text immediately (about 100 ms).

Polyfills for old browsers add 27 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.

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 page becomes fully interactive after 29.5 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 11.6 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Your largest element takes 6.0 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image “Where ideas have room to breathe: Ten creatives on the pers…”.

Real visitors wait 1.1 s for your server to start answering (75th percentile). Good is under 800 ms.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 385 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

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

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 104 ms to 113 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 1.9 s to 1.9 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 7.1 MB in 195 requests on a phone: images 4.5 MB (58), scripts 2.2 MB (76) and fonts 214 KiB (7). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

22 images are downloaded at several times the size a phone draws them, for example 20260603_MONOCLE_eCOM_30_Shinto_Hand towel set_Charcoal_033. at 1,296 px wide, shown at 134 px. Resized copies would save about 2.0 MB.

23 images further down the page (2.3 MB) download before anyone scrolls to them. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

00HERO-JoanaAbreu-AbuDhabi-08_07207-PhotobyAllIsAmazing.jpg is on the first screen but marked loading="lazy", so the browser waits before fetching it and the page looks finished later. Load it eagerly (and give it fetchpriority="high" if it is the main image).

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 2.01 g of CO₂e: 240.8 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

1 text element doesn't have enough contrast against the background to read easily, especially outdoors on a phone.

1 image has no alt text, which hurts accessibility and image search.

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 3 elements on the page fail this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

Landmarks should have a unique role or role/label/title (i.e. accessible name) combination: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

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. (1 element).

Structured data found (BreadcrumbList, Organization, WebPage and WebSite) but with 1 problem, for example “WebPage: keywords is an empty list”.

The homepage links to 275 pages on monocle.com and 7 external pages.

There is no https://monocle.com/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 180 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

38 of 75 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.”).

1 error was logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Location fetch error: [object GeolocationPositionError]”.

Requests the geolocation permission on page load.

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 1,790 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and Klaviyo (measured from a US location before any click). A consent tool (Cookiebot) is installed; check it blocks these until visitors agree where the law requires it.

Opening the homepage sets 25 cookies (measured from a US location before any click).

Loading the homepage contacts 32 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.