alterbrewing.com website review

About 350 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 1.8 s faster on a phone.

Your mobile performance score is 30 (desktop: 42). Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

About 149 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 750 ms faster on a phone.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, Facebook and Clarity and others), adding 948 KiB and 765 ms of main-thread time.

11 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (246 KiB).

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 439 ms of main-thread work and 525 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.

3 images could be 110 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 300 ms faster on a phone.

Polyfills for old browsers add 31 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 300 ms faster on a phone.

9 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 294 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

A phone's processor spends 2.6 s on main-thread work while loading, 1.1 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

Web fonts hide text while they load. Setting font-display: swap shows text immediately (about 50 ms).

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

Scripts make the browser recalculate the layout repeatedly while the page loads, which wastes processor time on phones.

Real Chrome users on phones do not pass Google's Core Web Vitals on this page (28-day field data from the Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab)). Google uses this in ranking.

Your largest element takes 12.0 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the text “Video Player Media error: Format(s) not supported or source…”.

The layout shifts by 0.709 while loading, so content jumps under the reader's thumb. Good is under 0.1.

The page becomes fully interactive after 12.8 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

The first text or image appears after 3.9 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

For real visitors the layout shifts by 0.22 (75th percentile). Good is under 0.1.

Visually, the page fills in at 5.5 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 397 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

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

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-17, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 138 ms to 154 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-17, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 1.3 s to 1.5 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 4.4 MB in 78 requests on a phone: media 2.6 MB (1), scripts 1.1 MB (30) and fonts 253 KiB (7). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

1 image (42 KiB) is 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 1.24 g of CO₂e: 149.1 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

ARIA dialog and alertdialog nodes should have an accessible name: 1 element on the page fails 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.

Form elements should have a visible label: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated serious by axe-core.

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 20 elements on the page fail this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

The viewport tag blocks pinch-zoom, which low-vision visitors rely on.

5 visible links have no text or label, so screen readers cannot say where they go.

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

Headings skip levels (h1 → h3), which makes the page harder to scan with a screen reader.

There are 2 <h1> headlines (“We Bring People Together” and “Our Beers”). One clear main headline is easier for people and search engines.

No Open Graph image, so links shared on LinkedIn, Slack or Facebook show no preview picture.

The homepage links to 42 pages on alterbrewing.com and 10 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.

/locations is marked noindex but linked from your homepage. If it is meant to be found, remove the noindex.

/locations, /locations/downers-grove-taproom, /locations/downers-grove-taproom/downers-grove-menu, /locations/oak-brook-brewery-kitchen/oak-brook-menu, /locations/st-charles-brewery-kitchen/st-charles-menu and /downers-grove-taproom all use the title “Downers Grove Brewery Taproom | Alter Brewing”, and 1 other title repeat too. Search engines can't tell which page to show for a search, so each competes with the others.

/locations, /locations/downers-grove-taproom/downers-grove-menu, /locations/oak-brook-brewery-kitchen/oak-brook-menu and /locations/st-charles-brewery-kitchen/st-charles-menu use the same meta description. A description written for each page earns more clicks.

Your homepage links to 2 pages by a URL that isn't their canonical one, for example /downers-grove-taproom, whose canonical is /locations/downers-grove-taproom. Linking straight to the canonical URL saves crawlers a detour and keeps ranking signals on one address.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 23 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

3 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Failed to load resource: net::ERR_FAILED”.

HSTS is set, but max-age is 180 days; one year is the recommended minimum.

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.

alterbrewing.com 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.

alterbrewing.com'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.

On a phone, there is no call to action on the first screen: visitors have to scroll to find out what to do next.

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: 1 trust badge. 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.

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 444 words of visible text.

DMARC is set to p=none, so mail pretending to be alterbrewing.com is still delivered. Add a report address, check the reports, then move to quarantine.

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, Google Tag Manager, Meta Pixel and Microsoft Clarity (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 10 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 20 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.