commonlit.org website review

3 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 4.7 s.

About 778 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 3.4 s faster on a phone.

17 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (386 KiB).

Your mobile performance score is 31 (desktop: 90). Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (website-files.com, Google Tag Manager and Hubspot and others), adding 1.7 MB and 801 ms of main-thread time.

Polyfills for old browsers add 69 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 650 ms faster on a phone.

A phone's processor spends 3.5 s on main-thread work while loading, 2.1 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

About 43 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 300 ms faster on a phone.

website-files.com costs a phone 221 ms of main-thread work and 668 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.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 220 ms of main-thread work and 446 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.

4 images could be 225 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen.

15 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 122 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

11 KiB JavaScript is shipped twice across bundles.

Desktop scores 90 but mobile only 31. 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.

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.

The first text or image appears after 7.7 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Your largest element takes 15.4 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image.

The page becomes fully interactive after 16.8 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

The layout shifts by 0.45 while loading, so content jumps under the reader's thumb. Good is under 0.1.

Visually, the page fills in at 7.8 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

For real visitors the layout shifts by 0.23 (75th percentile). Good is under 0.1.

Real visitors see the first content after 2.5 s (75th percentile). Good is under 1.8 s.

Real visitors wait 921 ms for your server to start answering (75th percentile). Good is under 800 ms.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 297 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

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

Your homepage downloads 2.3 MB in 87 requests on a phone: scripts 1.7 MB (37), images 272 KiB (12) and fonts 213 KiB (4). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

69cd7d4e99212b1898892ffb_IMG_9562 (2)-p-500.avif is on the first screen but marked loading="lazy", so the browser waits before fetching it and the page looks finished later. Load it eagerly (and give it fetchpriority="high" if it is the main image).

1 image is downloaded at several times the size a phone draws it, for example [email protected] at 451 px wide, shown at 144 px. Resized copies would save about 6 KiB.

2 images (116 KiB) 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 0.66 g of CO₂e: 79.5 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

Interactive controls must not be nested: 4 elements on the page fail this check, rated serious by axe-core.

4 tap targets are too small or too close together to hit reliably with a finger.

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 2 elements on the page fail this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

Headings skip levels (h2 → h4 and h2 → h5), which makes the page harder to scan with a screen reader.

Elements with visible text labels do not have matching accessible names. (3 elements).

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

No XML sitemap at https://cdn.commonlit.org/sitemap.xml.gz, so Google discovers your pages only by following links.

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

The homepage links to 102 pages on commonlit.org and 14 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.

/enroll has no <title>, so Google invents the link text in results.

/en declares the homepage as its canonical URL, which tells Google it is a copy of the homepage and keeps it out of search results. A site-wide template setting usually causes this.

/ and /en all use the title “CommonLit | A Full ELA Program”. Search engines can't tell which page to show for a search, so each competes with the others.

/enroll and /lessons have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

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

/enroll and /lessons 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 70 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

3 of 11 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

1 error was logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 400 ()”.

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

No Referrer-Policy header, so full URLs can leak to the sites you link to.

Your security.txt expired on 2025-12-31, so researchers may not trust its contact details.

No Permissions-Policy header to switch off camera, microphone and location for embedded content.

commonlit.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.

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 846 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 Tag Manager, HubSpot, LinkedIn Insight and Reddit Pixel (measured from a US location before any click). A consent tool (HubSpot cookie banner) is installed; check it blocks these until visitors agree where the law requires it.

Opening the homepage sets 7 cookies (measured from a US location before any click).

Loading the homepage contacts 29 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.