aca.org website review

About 230 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 1.6 s faster on a phone.

24 images could be 2.1 MB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 500 ms faster on a phone.

12 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (705 KiB).

Your mobile performance score is 54 (desktop: 92). Pages that score under 90 lose visitors before the first paint.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, Other Google APIs/SDKs and Adobe Tag Manager and others), adding 1.5 MB and 406 ms of main-thread time.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 181 ms of main-thread work and 323 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.

prismic.io costs a phone 12 ms of main-thread work and 1.0 MB 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.

6 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 166 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

Polyfills for old browsers add 11 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 150 ms faster on a phone.

2 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 150 ms.

Desktop scores 92 but mobile only 54. A gap that wide usually means heavy scripts and images that hit phones hardest.

Critical files load one after another instead of in parallel (3 chains). Preconnecting to key origins and preloading the hero image shortens the chain.

Your largest element takes 17.4 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the text “The American Correctional Association (ACA) stands as a lea…”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 17.7 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

The first text or image appears after 5.7 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 9.2 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

10 images have no width and height attributes, so the layout jumps as each one loads.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 138 ms to 121 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 1.4 s to 1.6 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 4.2 MB in 114 requests on a phone: images 2.8 MB (39), scripts 762 KiB (28) and fonts 581 KiB (10). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

9 images are downloaded at several times the size a phone draws them, for example 1792437999320 at 1,187 px wide, shown at 232 px. Resized copies would save about 1,012 KiB.

17 images further down the page (1.9 MB) download before anyone scrolls to them. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

9 images (1.7 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.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 1.18 g of CO₂e: 141.5 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

Links must have discernible text: 22 elements on the page fail this check, rated serious by axe-core.

Interactive controls must not be nested: 9 elements on the page fail this check, rated serious by axe-core.

1 text element doesn't have enough contrast against the background to read easily, especially outdoors on a phone.

21 images have no alt text, which hurts accessibility and image search.

5 form fields have no label, so screen readers announce an empty box and autofill guesses.

No structured data (JSON-LD), so Google can't show rich results such as your logo, ratings or FAQs.

No canonical URL, so duplicate versions of the homepage (with or without www, with tracking parameters) can split ranking signals.

3 links use generic text like “click here” or “learn more”, which tells Google nothing about the page behind them.

The homepage links to 39 pages on aca.org and 17 external pages.

There is no Organization (or LocalBusiness) JSON-LD, so search engines and AI assistants have no machine-readable facts about who runs the site: its name, logo, profiles and contact details.

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.

/ and /sponsors-and-partners all use the title “ACA - American Correctional Association”. Search engines can't tell which page to show for a search, so each competes with the others.

/reach-our-team, /departments, /conferences, /standards, /certifications-and-accreditation and /certifications-and-accreditation/correctional-certification and 1 other have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

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

/departments, /contact and /marketplace have under 150 words in the HTML. Thin pages rarely rank; if the text loads with JavaScript, crawlers that don't run it see even less.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 18 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

1 image failed to load on a phone, for example https://idgraph-pixel.stagwellmarketingcloud.io/img?trid=812&page={{PAGE_NAME}}.

25 third-party cookies are set on load; browsers are restricting these, so whatever relies on them breaks.

Chrome logged issues while loading the page (“Cookie”).

No Content-Security-Policy header, the main browser-side defence against injected scripts.

Neither X-Frame-Options nor a CSP frame-ancestors policy is set, so any site can embed yours in a frame.

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

4 links go through two or more redirects, for example https://www.aca.org/departments/publications/newsletter-archive.

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.

aca.org has no CAA record, so any certificate authority may issue a certificate for it. A CAA record naming your provider (for example letsencrypt.org) closes that door.

aca.org'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.

Your homepage shows a street address but no LocalBusiness JSON-LD, so Google and AI assistants have to guess your address, hours and phone from the page text.

Social proof on the homepage: 4 trust badges. Pairing it with named testimonials or customer logos makes it far more convincing.

The homepage shows no opening hours. If customers visit or call, show when.

Your phone number appears as text but isn't a tel: link, so phone visitors can't tap to call.

There is no form on the homepage, so every lead has to click through to another page first.

There is no link to Google or Apple Maps. A directions link is one tap for a phone visitor.

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 441 words of visible text.

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 and Google Tag Manager (measured from a US location before any click). No consent tool was detected. Visitors from the EU, UK and several US states must be asked first.

Opening the homepage sets 12 cookies (measured from a US location before any click).

No known cookie consent tool loads with the page. Some sites build their own banner, and some only show one to visitors from the EU.

Loading the homepage contacts 24 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.