rbo.org.uk website review

36 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (2.0 MB).

About 1.5 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 7.3 s faster on a phone.

Your mobile performance score is 41. 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, Google Analytics and Pinterest and others), adding 1.2 MB and 769 ms of main-thread time.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 613 ms of main-thread work and 882 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.

9 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 311 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

A phone's processor spends 2.8 s on main-thread work while loading, 1.6 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

The page has 2,336 HTML elements. Above 1,500, rendering and every interaction get slower on phones.

12 images could be 237 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 150 ms faster on a phone.

Polyfills for old browsers add 46 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 150 ms faster on a phone.

5 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 150 ms.

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

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.

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

Your largest element takes 22.5 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image “An open view of the interior of a house with two floors whi…”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 24.2 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 10.0 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Real visitors wait 2.6 s for the largest content to appear (75th percentile). Good is under 2.5 s.

Real visitors wait 203 ms for the page to respond to a tap (75th percentile). Good is under 200 ms.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-31, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 205 ms to 277 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Real visitors see the first content after 2.4 s (75th percentile). Good is under 1.8 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 597 ms 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' largest content (lcp) went from 2.2 s to 2.6 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 4.3 MB in 119 requests on a phone: scripts 2.8 MB (31), images 1.2 MB (52) and fonts 323 KiB (7). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

18 images further down the page (648 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 1.23 g of CO₂e: 147.1 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

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

1 form field has no label, so screen readers announce an empty box and autofill guesses.

There is no <h1>, so neither visitors nor Google get a clear main headline.

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

Your title is only 22 characters: “Royal Ballet and Opera”. 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 48 characters: “New worlds await with the Royal Ballet and Opera”. 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 Open Graph image, so links shared on LinkedIn, Slack or Facebook show no preview picture.

The homepage links to 181 pages on rbo.org.uk and 34 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 https://www.rbo.org.uk/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://www.rbo.org.uk/tickets-and-events/spotlight-on...-joseph-sissens-digital, https://www.rbo.org.uk/tickets-and-events/spotlight-on...-calvin-richardson-digital and https://www.rbo.org.uk/tickets-and-events/spotlight-on-melissa-hamilton-digital have no <title>, so Google invents the link text in results.

https://www.rbo.org.uk/tickets-and-events/spotlight-on...-joseph-sissens-digital, https://www.rbo.org.uk/tickets-and-events/spotlight-on...-calvin-richardson-digital and https://www.rbo.org.uk/tickets-and-events/spotlight-on-melissa-hamilton-digital have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

https://www.rbo.org.uk/tickets-and-events/spotlight-on...-joseph-sissens-digital, https://www.rbo.org.uk/tickets-and-events/spotlight-on...-calvin-richardson-digital and https://www.rbo.org.uk/tickets-and-events/spotlight-on-melissa-hamilton-digital have no <h1> headline, so visitors and search engines get no clear main topic.

https://www.rbo.org.uk/tickets-and-events/spotlight-on...-joseph-sissens-digital, https://www.rbo.org.uk/tickets-and-events/spotlight-on...-calvin-richardson-digital and https://www.rbo.org.uk/tickets-and-events/spotlight-on-melissa-hamilton-digital have under 150 words in the HTML. Thin pages rarely rank; if the text loads with JavaScript, crawlers that don't run it see even less.

https://www.rbo.org.uk/production/the-nutcracker-peter-wright, https://www.rbo.org.uk/production/the-magic-flute-david-mcvicar, https://www.rbo.org.uk/production/gotterdammerung-barrie-kosky, https://www.rbo.org.uk/production/cosi-fan-tutte-netia-jones, https://www.rbo.org.uk/production/swan-lake-marius-petipa and https://www.rbo.org.uk/production/tosca-oliver-mears and 4 others took over 3 s to send their HTML from our server.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 44 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

6 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Access to manifest at 'https://static.roh.org.uk/images/favicons_rbo/site.webmanifest' from origin 'https://www.rbo.org…”.

Social proof on the homepage: 4 trust badges. 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.

The homepage carries about 3,007 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and Pinterest Tag (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 6 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 17 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.