nzherald.co.nz

Readiness by lane

Green: nzherald.co.nz. Thin bar: News & Media peer median.

Priority fixes for nzherald.co.nz

Ordered by impact and by how common each practice is among peers.

1. Priority 1 · Accelerate

   Modern image formats in use

   Observed: The homepage had 71 images and none used WebP or AVIF.

   Why it matters: WebP and AVIF are typically much smaller than JPEG or PNG at similar quality, and images are often the heaviest part of a page.

   What to do: Serve WebP or AVIF with a JPEG or PNG fallback, either through an image CDN or by generating both formats at build time.

   44% of News & Media peers do this. Limit: Based on the homepage HTML delivered to an automated client; scripts that run later were not executed.

   Guide: AVIF, WebP, JPEG, and PNG: Choose the Right Image Format

2. Priority 2 · Accelerate

   Offscreen images lazy-loaded

   Observed: The homepage had 71 images and none used loading="lazy".

   What to do: Add loading="lazy" to images below the fold. Do not lazy-load the main hero image, because that delays the largest visible element.

   72% of News & Media peers do this.

   Guide: Lazy Loading Without Broken Pages

3. Priority 3 · Accelerate

   No render-blocking scripts in <head>

   Observed: The homepage <head> loaded 3 external scripts without async or defer.

   What to do: Add defer to scripts that need the DOM, async to independent ones such as analytics, or move them to the end of the body.

   42% of News & Media peers do this.

   Guide: Control Third-Party Scripts Before They Control Your Page

4. Priority 4 · Enable

   Structured data present

   Observed: The homepage had no JSON-LD structured data.

   What to do: Add JSON-LD for your organization and main content types, then test it with Google's Rich Results Test.

   76% of News & Media peers do this.

   Guide: Structured Data Basics for Website Owners

What nzherald.co.nz already does well

Practices fewer than half of News & Media peers use.

• Content Security Policy presentContent-Security-Policy present.29% of peers
• HSTS kept for at least a yearHSTS with a 365-day max-age.35% of peers
• DMARC policy enforces quarantine or rejectDMARC policy p=reject.37% of peers

What we saw

Homepage checked

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/

Homepage response

HTTP 200

TLS

TLSv1.3, HTTP/2

Certificate

Let's Encrypt, 89-day validity, expiring 2026-11-09

CDN or edge

Akamai

DNS operators

NS1

HSTS

max-age 365 days

DMARC policy

p=reject

Homepage HTML

1,951 KB, gzip

Images on homepage

71 (png 65, jpg 12, svg 5)

Limits: homepage only, one location, one moment. Header checks reflect the homepage response; other pages may differ.

Stack and providers

Seen in the homepage response, certificate and DNS. Provider pages compare how their customers configure the same checks.

All 31 checks

Select a gap for the method and fix. How each check works

Compare with other News & Media sites

• notthebee.com73
• nrc.nl73
• nrz.de73
• obozrevatel.com73
• okaz.com.sa73

News & Media readiness benchmark