rootcandles.com website review

41 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (3.2 MB).

6 images could be 1.1 MB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 5.8 s faster on a phone.

14 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 2.2 s.

Your mobile performance score is 64 (desktop: 49). Pages that score under 90 lose visitors before the first paint.

7 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, Facebook and Bigcommerce and others), adding 3.5 MB and 410 ms of main-thread time.

Bigcommerce costs a phone 69 ms of main-thread work and 3.0 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.

About 174 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 150 ms faster on a phone.

3 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 171 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 23 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need.

12 KiB could be saved by minifying JavaScript.

About 10 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.

Scripts make the browser recalculate the layout repeatedly while the page loads, which wastes processor time on phones.

5 KiB could be saved by minifying CSS.

Your largest element takes 10.4 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image “2026-summercollection-slider.jpg”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 10.4 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

The first text or image appears after 3.7 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 3.7 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

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

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-17, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 60 ms to 58 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-17, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 1.3 s to 1.2 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

2 images weigh 1.5 MB together. On a phone connection a single image that size takes seconds.

Your homepage downloads 3.7 MB in 58 requests on a phone: images 2.9 MB (13), scripts 567 KiB (24) and fonts 147 KiB (5). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

5 images (1.1 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.

1 image is downloaded at several times the size a phone draws it, for example mobile_logo.jpg at 1,500 px wide, shown at 80 px. Resized copies would save about 142 KiB.

1 image further down the page (30 KiB) download before anyone scrolls to it. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 1.04 g of CO₂e: 124.8 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

1 button has no accessible name, so screen readers announce just “button”.

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

Form elements should have a visible label: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated serious by axe-core.

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

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 27 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.

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

Page should contain a level-one heading: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

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

The <html> element has no lang attribute, so screen readers may read the page in the wrong voice and accent.

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

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

Your title is 79 characters, so Google will cut it off around 60: “Root Candles/The A. I. Root Company - American Made Candles Since 1869 © 2020 <”.

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

No Open Graph image (also missing: og:title, og:description), so links shared on LinkedIn, Slack or Facebook show no preview picture.

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

1 link has no real href, so search engines can't follow it.

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

No twitter:card tag. X falls back to Open Graph, which is incomplete here.

The homepage links to 354 pages on rootcandles.com and 12 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.

/company-info, /helen-keller-story, /wright-brothers-story, /over-150-years-craftsmanship, /customer-service and /terms and 1 other have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 170 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

On a 390 px-wide phone the page scrolls sideways, a sign that something is wider than the screen.

7 of 30 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

3 images are displayed at the wrong aspect ratio, so they look stretched or squashed.

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.

HSTS is set, but max-age is 0 days; one year is the recommended minimum.

1 link go through two or more redirects, for example http://www.beeculture.com/.

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.

rootcandles.com 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.

rootcandles.com'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.

We found no call-to-action buttons or links (such as “Book a demo” or “Get a quote”) anywhere on the homepage.

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 has only about 51 words of visible text; thin pages give Google and first-time buyers little to go on.

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.

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 and Meta Pixel (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 16 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 15 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.