nationalexpress.com website review

About 1.5 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 2.9 s faster on a phone.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 1.3 s of main-thread work and 1.3 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 32 (desktop: 42). Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

A phone's processor spends 5.9 s on main-thread work while loading, 3.4 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, distribusion.com and Gigya and others), adding 3.0 MB and 2.5 s of main-thread time.

distribusion.com costs a phone 696 ms of main-thread work and 1.1 MB 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 464 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

1 file blocks the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining it could save about 450 ms.

Gigya costs a phone 327 ms of main-thread work and 345 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.

18 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (358 KiB).

Polyfills for old browsers add 30 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 150 ms faster on a phone.

Web fonts hide text while they load. Setting font-display: swap shows text immediately (about 150 ms).

6 images could be 133 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen.

About 133 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page.

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

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.

Your largest element takes 12.9 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image “Travel with National Express: Cheap coach tickets nationwide”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 27.2 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 2.1 s in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Visually, the page fills in at 9.3 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

The first text or image appears after 3.4 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Real visitors wait 268 ms for the page to respond to a tap (75th percentile). Good is under 200 ms.

Your homepage downloads 4.3 MB in 136 requests on a phone: scripts 3.3 MB (53), images 291 KiB (36) and HTML 282 KiB (4). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

4 images further down the page (86 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 1.22 g of CO₂e: 146.2 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

2 buttons have no accessible name, so screen readers announce just “button”.

1 element use ARIA attributes their role does not allow, which confuses screen readers.

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

1 tap target is too small or too close together to hit reliably with a finger.

The viewport tag blocks pinch-zoom, which low-vision visitors rely on.

1 visible link has no text or label, so screen readers cannot say where it goes.

Headings skip levels (h2 → h4), which makes the page harder to scan with a screen reader.

Your canonical URL points to nationalexpress.com, not www2.nationalexpress.com, so Google may credit that host instead.

Structured data found (Organization and WebSite) but with 1 problem, for example “Organization: url points at a different host (https://www.nationalexpress.com/en)”.

No XML sitemap at https://www.nationalexpress.com/en/xml-sitemap, so Google discovers your pages only by following links.

1 link use generic text like “click here” or “learn more”, which tells Google nothing about the page behind it.

The homepage links to 127 pages on nationalexpress.com and 27 external pages.

There is no https://www2.nationalexpress.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.

https://www2.nationalexpress.com/en and / all use the title “UK Coach Travel & Airport Bus Transfers | National Express”. Search engines can't tell which page to show for a search, so each competes with the others.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 78 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

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

2 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Ignoring duplicate Content-Security-Policy directive 'form-action'.”.

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

Large scripts ship without source maps.

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: 2 customer or partner logos. Pairing it with named testimonials or customer logos makes it far more convincing.

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

There is no form on the homepage, so every lead has to click through to another page first.

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 446 words of visible text.

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

Opening the homepage sets 10 cookies, 2 of them by other companies (measured from a US location before any click).

Loading the homepage contacts 12 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.