applyboard.com website review

48 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 4.1 s.

About 512 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 2.2 s faster on a phone.

Your mobile performance score is 47 (desktop: 59). Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

The page has 4,055 HTML elements. Above 1,500, rendering and every interaction get slower on phones.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, cloudfront.net and Facebook and others), adding 2.2 MB and 1.4 s of main-thread time.

About 544 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 920 ms faster on a phone.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 475 ms of main-thread work and 673 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.

13 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (356 KiB).

cloudfront.net costs a phone 407 ms of main-thread work and 983 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.

A phone's processor spends 3.4 s on main-thread work while loading, 1.5 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

3 KiB could be saved by minifying JavaScript.

14 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 147 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

Polyfills for old browsers add 42 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need.

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.

Real visitors wait 4.6 s for the largest content to appear (75th percentile). Good is under 2.5 s.

Real visitors see the first content after 3.6 s (75th percentile). Good is under 1.8 s.

The first text or image appears after 10.3 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Your largest element takes 16.6 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the text “Your Future Goes Beyond Borders Explore 1,500+ global unive…”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 25.8 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 10.3 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Real visitors wait 291 ms for the page to respond to a tap (75th percentile). Good is under 200 ms.

Real visitors wait 1.6 s for your server to start answering (75th percentile). Good is under 800 ms.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 362 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Your homepage downloads 3.7 MB in 132 requests on a phone: scripts 1.6 MB (51), HTML 1.2 MB (1) and stylesheets 608 KiB (50). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 1.05 g of CO₂e: 126.3 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

1 dropdown has no label.

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

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 24 elements on the page fail this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

Landmarks should have a unique role or role/label/title (i.e. accessible name) combination: 3 elements on the page fail this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

Contentinfo landmark should not be contained in another landmark: 2 elements on the page fail this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

Banner landmark should not be contained in another landmark: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

Document should not have more than one banner landmark: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

Document should not have more than one contentinfo landmark: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

The page has no <main> landmark, so screen-reader users cannot jump straight to the content.

Page should contain a level-one heading: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

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

1 form field has no label, so screen readers announce an empty box and autofill guesses.

Elements with visible text labels do not have matching accessible names. (1 element).

There is no <h1>, so neither visitors nor Google get a clear main headline.

1 link use generic text like “click here” or “learn more”, which tells Google nothing about the page behind it.

The homepage links to 85 pages on applyboard.com and 4 external pages.

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.

/recommended_programs/onboarding has no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

/studyabroad, /australia, /canada, /ireland, /germany and /malaysia and 8 others have no <h1> headline, so visitors and search engines get no clear main topic.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 28 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

2 of 9 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

4 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “wp is not defined”.

1 image is displayed at the wrong aspect ratio, so it looks stretched or squashed.

1 link to other sites is dead, for example https://accounts.applyboard.com/ (404).

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

1 link go through two or more redirects, for example https://www.applyboard.com/register.

There is no /.well-known/security.txt telling researchers how to report a security problem to you.

applyboard.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.

No phone number or email link on the homepage, so ready-to-buy visitors have one fewer way to reach you.

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

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 629 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, Google Tag Manager, HubSpot and Meta Pixel (measured from a US location before any click). A consent tool (OneTrust) is installed; check it blocks these until visitors agree where the law requires it.

Opening the homepage sets 11 cookies (measured from a US location before any click).

Loading the homepage contacts 25 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.