Esri is hiring a Sr. Web Strategist to drive "higher conversion rates" on esri.com, plus a content strategist and a digital-experience project manager. The front door works against them: real Chrome visitors wait 4.9 s for the homepage's main content, so it fails Google's Core Web Vitals and is rated "slow". The cause is visible in the HTML. The hero animation is a single 15.2 MB MP4, close to two-thirds of the page's 23.6 MB, and the banner image that PageSpeed names as the largest element is marked loading="lazy" with fetchpriority="low", so the browser fetches it last. A resized version from Esri's own image server is 29 KB.
First action
Re-encode the hero video and remove the lazy and low-priority attributes on the banner image.
How to measure it
Field LCP on the homepage
- Now
- –
- Target
- Under 2.5 s
- By
- 60 days
Steps
Measure the baseline
PageSpeed lab and field numbers, page weight by file.
Sr. Web Strategist, Digital Experience 1 day
Re-encode the video
Shorter loop, under 1.5 MB, with a poster frame.
Sr. Social Media Specialist 2 days
Fix the banner image
Eager, high priority, served at the right width.
Web development team 1 day
Defer the video
Start it after first paint; respect reduced-motion settings.
Web development team 1 day
Fix caching and blocking
Long cache lifetimes; defer non-critical tags.
Web development team 1 week
Check the template
Every page using the same hero component.
Sr. Project Manager - Digital Experience 1 week
Track conversion
Homepage click-through to products, trials and contact.
Sr. Web Strategist, Digital Experience monthly
Why it works
Replace the hero MP4 with a compressed, shorter loop (target under 1.5 MB, in WebM and MP4) with a poster frame, and load it only after the page has painted. Remove loading="lazy" and set fetchpriority="high" on the banner image, served through the image server at the right width for each screen. Then handle the other PageSpeed items: cache lifetimes, render-blocking tags and image sizes. Apply the same template check to the industry and product pages that reuse the hero component.
The homepage is the first page for many government and business buyers, and a 23.6 MB page on a phone or an agency network loses them before the message lands. The fix is a few attributes and one re-encoded file.
Ready to use
ChecklistHomepage hero fix list
[ ] Hero video re-encoded under 1.5 MB (WebM and MP4) with poster frame [ ] Video starts after first paint; reduced-motion respected [ ] Banner image: no loading="lazy", fetchpriority="high" [ ] Banner served from the image server with srcset widths [ ] Long cache lifetimes on static assets [ ] Non-critical tags deferred [ ] Re-test lab and field data after 28 days
Risks and how to handle them
The animation is part of the brand
Keep it, compressed, after the page has painted.
Template used across many pages
Ship the fix in the shared component and test the top 20 pages.
Evidence
- HiringDigital experience hiring: a Sr. Web Strategist, Digital Experience (posted July 8, 2026) for "optimizing customer journeys for Esri's priority audiences, driving higher conversion rates" and "content strategy that serves both human users and AI-driven discovery"; a Sr. Content Marketing Strategist, Web, to "ensure our content is visible to target audiences across search platforms, including AI"; a Sr. Project Manager - Digital Experience; and a Web Content Coordinator (posted September 2).Source
- Google PageSpeedHomepage (en-us/home), mobile: performance 56; lab largest paint 35.4 s. Real Chrome visitors: largest paint 4.9 s and interaction delay 205 ms, so it fails Core Web Vitals on both (rated "slow"). The page downloads 23.6 MB in 220 requests from 41 third parties; caching would save about 6.6 s, render-blocking requests about 4 s, image delivery about 2.5 s.Source
- Your websiteHomepage HTML (checked October 21, 2026): the hero animation is an MP4 file of 15.2 MB (about-arcgis-hero-video.mp4), close to two-thirds of the page's 23.6 MB. The banner background image, which PageSpeed names as the largest content element, is marked loading="lazy" and fetchpriority="low"; an 840-pixel version of it from Esri's image server is 29 KB.Source