Website Conversion & Accessibility Audit — Sample Summary
The verdict
This is a well-built site with unusually clean fundamentals: not a single broken internal link, every image carries real alt text, text contrast passes WCAG AA ratios in every pair we computed, and keyboard focus is clearly visible. The problems are concentrated in three places. First, the homepage's two lead photos weigh about 2.5 MB combined, which slows the page down exactly where first-time mobile visitors decide whether to stay. Second, the newsletter — the site's only way to turn a one-time visitor into a returning reader — is hard to reach: the signup button starts on an insecure http:// link and bounces through two redirects, and the signup block exists only on the homepage, not on the articles people actually land on. Third, there is no direct way to contact the newsroom: no email address and no form, only public YouTube comments. The fix order below tackles those three first, then the quick wins.
Issues at a glance
| Severity | Count | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Top findings | 5 | The biggest measured problems, detailed first below — led by the largest single saving we measured |
| Quick wins | 6 | Small fixes, minutes to an hour each |
| Total findings | 11 | |
| Checks passed with no issue | 10 | Listed below — these are genuinely fine |
Top findings
1. The two lead photos weigh ~2.5 MB combined — the largest single saving we measured
The homepage's two lead images measure 1,509,392 bytes (1.5 MB) and 961,790 bytes (0.96 MB) — roughly 2.5 MB of imagery loaded before a new visitor reads a single headline, while a well-optimized news photo at this display size should be 100–200 KB. News readers arrive mostly on phones, many on mid-range devices and metered data; every extra megabyte delays the moment the page becomes readable and increases the share who leave before the top story appears.
The fix: re-encode both photos at a maximum width of 1200 px and JPEG quality ~80 (or WebP), targeting ≤200 KB per hero image, keep the existing width/height attributes, and add a smaller srcset variant for phones. Expected saving: about 2.1–2.3 MB per homepage visit.
2. Internal links use two different URL styles — 29 homepage links take a needless redirect detour
Every article exists at a clean canonical URL, but the "Listen" links point to old-style .html addresses that the server 308-redirects, and all 22 country links in the homepage's browse-by-country row point to search.html?q=…, which also redirects. Each detour adds delay to a click — including clicks on "Listen," one of the site's signature features — and splits internal link signals between two versions of the same address.
The fix: emit only canonical URLs in the templates (no .html), then rebuild. No content changes needed.
3. The newsletter signup button starts on http:// and bounces through two redirects
The site's main conversion button links to a plain-HTTP shortlink. Following it takes two redirects — an HTTP→HTTPS upgrade, then the shortlink redirect — before landing on the actual signup form (which itself loads correctly). An automated fetch of the http:// address is refused outright (403), which is what some corporate networks and security tools will also do — on the one button whose entire job is to collect email addresses, where trust matters most.
The fix: point the button's href at the HTTPS address directly, or at the final signup-form URL. One-line change; removes both detours.
4. The newsletter block exists only on the homepage — articles and section pages have no signup at all
A text search for "newsletter / subscribe" returns zero matches on article and section pages; the only signup on the whole site is the homepage block. But almost nobody discovers a news site through its homepage — they land on a specific story from search or social shares, read it, and leave. Those article readers are the warmest audience the site has, and it gives them no way to subscribe at the moment they are most impressed.
The fix: add the same newsletter block to the article template (below the article body) and to section page templates, keeping the honest double opt-in wording the homepage already uses.
5. There is no direct way to contact the newsroom — no email address, no form
The Contact page contains no mailto link and no form; its own text says the fastest way to reach the newsroom is through YouTube comments. Corrections and story tips — the page's two stated purposes — must be posted as public comments under YouTube videos. A reader who spots an error, or a source with a private tip, will mostly not bother — and for a news brand, a reachable newsroom is a trust signal.
The fix: create one newsroom inbox and publish it on the Contact page as a plain mailto link, keeping the existing anti-impersonation warning alongside it.
Plus 6 quick wins
- Homepage H1 is the site logo rather than a descriptive headline — a logo H1 is acceptable and common; it's noted only because a descriptive H1 can help clarity for search engines and screen readers.
- Article topic chips are ~27 px tall — above the WCAG minimum but well below the ~44 px comfort size; easy to mis-tap on phones.
- The "key figures" data table has no small-screen safety wrapper — columns squeeze on a 360 px phone; an overflow wrapper is cheap insurance.
- The font stylesheet is a render-blocking request to a third-party origin on every page — modest gain; polish, not a leak.
- The Video page embeds only one video; the rest send readers away to YouTube, where they compete with everyone else's recommendations.
- HTML is served with
Cache-Control: max-age=0— every repeat visit revalidates every page; a short shared cache would keep freshness and skip the round-trip.
Fix order — the 5 to do first
- Compress the two hero photos — ~15 minutes in any image tool, saves ~2.2 MB on the homepage and both top articles. Largest single saving in the report.
- Point Subscribe straight at the HTTPS signup URL — one-line edit; removes two redirects from the only conversion button.
- Add the newsletter block to article and section templates — one template edit that puts a signup in front of the audience the site actually has.
- Standardize internal links on canonical URLs — one generator pass; removes 29+ redirect detours from the homepage and every Listen click site-wide.
- Publish a newsroom email on the Contact page — needs one inbox to be created; closes the trust gap and gives corrections and tips a private channel.
Estimated total effort for all five: roughly half a day of developer time, most of it in Finding 4's template work.
Checked — no issue found
These were tested during the audit and are genuinely fine:
- Broken links: 93 links from the homepage and 49 from a top article were requested individually. Zero internal links returned an error.
- Image alt text: every image on the homepage, article pages, and the video page carries a meaningful alt description.
- Form labels: the site's only form (site search) has a proper visible label correctly tied to its input.
- Keyboard focus: a clearly visible focus indicator is defined site-wide, and a skip-to-content link is present.
- Text contrast: every stylesheet text/background colour pair we computed passes WCAG AA contrast ratios (computed from the site's CSS values; not a full accessibility certification). The weakest pair we computed still passes at 4.92:1.
- Heading structure on articles: single H1 (the headline), followed by a logical H2/H3 order.
- Social sharing tags: articles use their own story photo as the share image with correct og:type.
- Video and audio players: the embedded player has a descriptive title and lazy loading; the audio player uses native keyboard-operable controls and never preloads.
- Basics: correct lang="en", mobile viewport tag, Brotli compression, and image dimensions declared (no layout shift from images).
Scope and honesty note
This report is a pre-check: a combination of automated checks (link requests, markup and stylesheet analysis, measured file sizes and contrast ratios) and a manual review of the homepage, a top article, the search, contact, and video pages. It is not a full legal accessibility-compliance certification. As the W3C itself notes, automated tools alone cannot establish that a website fully complies with accessibility law — a complete compliance audit additionally requires testing with assistive technologies and disabled users, which this service does not claim to provide. What this report does guarantee: every issue listed above was reproduced during the audit, and nothing was added to make the list look longer.
One verification limit: the external source links in articles' "Sources" sections refused automated requests (403 bot protection on those news sites). They could not be confirmed from here and are not counted as broken — a 30-second manual spot-check in a normal browser is recommended.
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