How fast is Norfolk’s web? We ran our own Website Performance Report tool over 33 of the county’s best-known websites and ranked them in a league table. Fourteen of the thirty-three scored under 50/100 for performance, and the average homepage needed 9.1 seconds before its main content appeared. Google’s bar for “good” is 2.5 seconds.
Why a speed league?
Because claims are cheap. Every web developer says they build fast websites; almost nobody publishes the evidence. So we did the opposite of a testimonial: we picked the most recognisable websites in Norfolk, audited them all the same way on the same morning, and published every result, including our own.
Yes, our own site is in the table. Entering ourselves felt like the only honest option: if we’re going to hand out scores, we should be willing to receive one.
How we tested
Each site was audited with our own Website Performance Report tool on a standard desktop profile with simulated connection throttling. Each site was tested three times and the table reports the median run, so one fluke result can’t swing a ranking. Every site got exactly the same test. The table ranks sites by Performance score out of 100, with an Overall score (the average of Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices and SEO) alongside as the wider health check.
Scores wobble a point or three between runs, so treat near-neighbours in the table as effectively tied.
The Norfolk Website Speed League, September 2026
| # | Site | Performance | Overall | Load (LCP) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Norfolk Gin | 97 | 86 | 2.3 s |
| 2 | Trippnology | 93 | 96 | 2.8 s |
| 3 | Roarr! Dinosaur Adventure | 87 | 94 | 3.7 s |
| 4 | Banham Zoo | 82 | 86 | 3.5 s |
| 5 | Norwich University of the Arts | 74 | 92 | 4.2 s |
| 6 | Wroxham Barns | 73 | 88 | 3.5 s |
| 7 | Colman’s | 71 | 90 | 4.2 s |
| 8 | Norwich School | 65 | 81 | 3.7 s |
| 9 | Norwich City FC | 62 | 84 | 5.9 s |
| 10 | Kettle Foods | 60 | 86 | 8.9 s |
| 11 | Pensthorpe Natural Park | 60 | 85 | 6.1 s |
| 12 | Norfolk County Cricket Club | 60 | 81 | 5.3 s |
| 13 | Norwich Airport | 59 | 74 | 6.4 s |
| 14 | Maids Head Hotel | 58 | 81 | 4.6 s |
| 15 | Bewilderwood | 57 | 88 | 3.4 s |
| 16 | Fat Cat Brewery | 57 | 87 | 4.1 s |
| 17 | English Whisky Co. | 57 | 87 | 14.3 s |
| 18 | Norfolk Lavender | 56 | 84 | 15.0 s |
| 19 | Roys of Wroxham | 51 | 78 | 7.0 s |
| 20 | Jarrold | 47 | 83 | 5.9 s |
| 21 | Future Radio | 46 | 76 | 11.9 s |
| 22 | Norwich Evening News | 45 | 83 | 5.0 s |
| 23 | Eastern Daily Press | 44 | 82 | 4.7 s |
| 24 | Chantry Place | 44 | 78 | 13.2 s |
| 25 | Woodforde’s Brewery | 41 | 78 | 14.2 s |
| 26 | Sandringham Estate | 40 | 77 | 11.0 s |
| 27 | Norwich Cathedral | 36 | 82 | 15.7 s |
| 28 | Norwich Theatre Royal | 36 | 80 | 13.3 s |
| 29 | Holkham Estate | 36 | 76 | 22.0 s |
| 30 | Hughes | 36 | 71 | 23.1 s |
| 31 | Lotus Cars | 34 | 75 | 19.3 s |
| 32 | Lacons | 33 | 77 | 21.0 s |
| 33 | Visit Norfolk | 31 | 78 | 10.0 s |
| County average | 55 | 83 | 9.1 s |
What the table says
The top of the league
- 🥇 Norfolk Gin
- 🥈 Roarr! Dinosaur Adventure
- 🥉 Banham Zoo
Full credit to Norfolk Gin: 97 for performance, gold medal, and the only site in the table that meets Google’s 2.5-second “good” bar for loading. They’re a small team on a modest budget, and they built the fastest site in the county. It can be done. (One footnote: their accessibility score, 56, is the lowest in the table. Fast alone isn’t the whole job.)
Silver and bronze go to Roarr! Dinosaur Adventure (87) and Banham Zoo (82): two family attractions, quick on their feet. Strictly speaking we’re 2nd in the table ourselves, but awarding your own studio a medal is bad form, so ours stays in the results, but out of the prizes.
The wrong end
Down at the bottom, each slow site has its own story:
- Hughes posts the slowest load in the table at 23.1 seconds – almost long enough for the kettle you were shopping for, to boil.
- Lacons needs 21 seconds, most of it an age gate. You could prove your age in person at the brewery quicker.
- Lotus Cars makes some of the quickest machines on the road; its homepage takes 19 seconds to show you one.
- Norwich Cathedral has stood since the eleventh century, so we’re confident it will outlast the 15.7 seconds its homepage needs.
- Chantry Place needs 13.2 seconds to show its main content. You could walk the length of the shopping centre faster.
- And Visit Norfolk, the body whose job is convincing people Norfolk is worth the trip, scores 31 with a suitably leisurely 10-second welcome.
We’re ribbing the websites here, not the organisations. Every site in that list was built by someone who cared about something else more, usually the design or the launch deadline. Speed lost out. It usually does, quietly, until someone measures it.
The pattern
Tourism and heritage sites cluster at the slow end: these are the sites whose visitors are most likely to be on a phone in a car park, deciding where to spend money that afternoon. The fast end is a gin distillery and a web studio. Make of that what you will.
Where we placed (and why we’re not celebrating)
Trippnology came 2nd on performance with 93, and posted the best Overall score in the table at 96: accessibility 96, best practices 96, SEO 100, main content in 2.8 seconds. We’re happy with that. Norfolk Gin still beats us by four performance points, and we’re openly chasing them. To be fair though, their homepage consists of very little content, with most “real” content on sub-pages, so it could be said that they’re cheating a little bit!
Why any of this matters
Loading speed isn’t a vanity metric. Google uses page experience, including Core Web Vitals like the LCP column above, as a ranking signal, so slow sites drift down the results. And people just leave: a homepage that hasn’t finished painting itself in ten seconds has already lost the visitor who was deciding between you and the competitor one tab over.
For the attractions, hotels and shops in this table, that lost visitor is a lost booking.
Is your site in the table?
If it is, anywhere in it, and you’d like to know why it loads the way it does, get in touch. We’ll run the full audit and walk you through what’s slow and what to do about it. It costs nothing, and we’ll keep the jargon out of it.
And if you’re a design or marketing agency whose client just asked why they’re not near the top: we do the technical performance work behind creative teams, quietly, and you keep the credit. Find out more about our agency partnerships and how we can work together.
Notes and small print
- Three runs per site; the table reports the median run. Scores still vary a little between test sessions, so treat close neighbours as tied.
- Lacons’ score includes the age gate, just as visitors meet it. We’re sure the beer is worth the wait.
- We plan to re-run the league from time to time and publish the movement: who’s gone up, who’s gone down, and whether anyone takes the title off Norfolk Gin.