skift.com website review

Your mobile performance score is 43. Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

A phone's processor spends 5.3 s on main-thread work while loading, 3.6 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 Facebook and others), adding 2.4 MB and 2.0 s of main-thread time.

51 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (921 KiB).

About 955 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 590 ms faster on a phone.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 864 ms of main-thread work and 875 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.

11 images could be 435 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 300 ms faster on a phone.

Google/Doubleclick Ads costs a phone 556 ms of main-thread work and 888 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.

7 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 450 ms.

20 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 243 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

Polyfills for old browsers add 43 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need.

About 24 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 10 ms faster on a phone.

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 32.7 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 13.5 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Your largest element takes 7.0 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the text “The Decision Engine for the Business of Travel Skift now ru…”.

The first text or image appears after 4.2 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 640 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Real visitors wait 2.9 s for the largest content to appear (75th percentile). Good is under 2.5 s.

Real visitors see the first content after 2.5 s (75th percentile). Good is under 1.8 s.

Real visitors wait 1.8 s for your server to start answering (75th percentile). Good is under 800 ms.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 125 ms to 146 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 2.2 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

4 images weigh 45.7 MB together. On a phone connection a single image that size takes seconds.

4 images are downloaded at several times the size a phone draws them, for example f18992049478587781892da7e6a6e271.png at 3,000 px wide, shown at 56 px. Resized copies would save about 45.6 MB.

Your homepage downloads 15.6 MB in 295 requests on a phone: images 12.2 MB (63), scripts 2.7 MB (81) and fonts 360 KiB (6). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

4 images (45.7 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.

4 images further down the page (45.7 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 4.42 g of CO₂e: 530.0 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

Certain ARIA roles must contain particular children: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated critical by axe-core.

Certain ARIA roles must be contained by particular parents: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated critical by axe-core.

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

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 2 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.

ARIA role should be appropriate for the element: 2 elements on the page fail this check, rated minor by axe-core.

Elements marked as presentational should be consistently ignored: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated minor by axe-core.

The homepage links to 148 pages on skift.com and 100 external pages.

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.

robots.txt blocks GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended and CCBot, which collect pages to train models. That's a legitimate choice and doesn't by itself stop the site appearing in AI answers, which the crawlers above handle.

/subscribe has no <h1> headline, so visitors and search engines get no clear main topic.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 56 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

1 image failed to load on a phone, for example https://bat.bing.com/action/0?ti=187035889&tm=gtm002&Ver=2&mid=72b0419c-1901-4f92-a445-43da09dcbebf&bo=1&sid=911ce6b0d31411f194fceb8e2dd1578b&vid=911cef40d31411f18e311b92e9171ab3&vids=1&msclkid=N&gtm_.

10 of 34 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

4 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'addEventListener')”.

X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff is missing, so browsers may guess file types.

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.

skift.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.

No testimonials, customer logos, ratings or customer counts on the homepage: nothing tells a new visitor that others already trust you.

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

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 1,589 words of visible text.

Your SPF record doesn't end in -all or ~all, so it doesn't stop other servers sending as you: “v=spf1 include:449646.spf03.hubspotemail.net include:_spf.google.com”.

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, Hotjar and HubSpot and 8 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 31 cookies (measured from a US location before any click).

Loading the homepage contacts 69 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.