ithaka.org website review

10 images could be 6.7 MB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 11.6 s faster on a phone.

Your mobile performance score is 59. Pages that score under 90 lose visitors before the first paint.

About 202 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 600 ms faster on a phone.

10 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 750 ms.

9 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (84 KiB).

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 269 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.

5 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, Optanon and Google Analytics and others), adding 676 KiB and 430 ms of main-thread time.

About 63 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 150 ms faster on a phone.

3 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 150 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

6 KiB could be saved by minifying CSS.

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

Polyfills for old browsers add 9 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.

Your largest element takes 23.4 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the element shown below.

The page becomes fully interactive after 23.4 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 11.0 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

The first text or image appears after 3.1 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Real visitors see the first content after 2.2 s (75th percentile). Good is under 1.8 s.

Real visitors wait 927 ms for your server to start answering (75th percentile). Good is under 800 ms.

5 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 99 ms to 124 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 1.7 s to 2.1 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 15.5 MB in 63 requests on a phone: images 8.1 MB (15), media 6.3 MB (2) and scripts 592 KiB (15). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

5 images weigh 3.1 MB together. On a phone connection a single image that size takes seconds.

5 images (3.1 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.

4 images further down the page (2.3 MB) download before anyone scrolls to them. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

5 images are downloaded at several times the size a phone draws them, for example whatwedo_knowledge990x660.jpg at 990 px wide, shown at 320 px. Resized copies would save about 188 KiB.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 4.40 g of CO₂e: 527.9 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

1 element use ARIA attributes their role does not allow, which confuses screen readers.

Certain ARIA roles must contain particular children: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated critical by axe-core.

ARIA attributes must conform to valid values: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated critical by axe-core.

2 text elements don't have enough contrast against the background to read easily, especially outdoors on a phone.

Some list items are not inside a list.

ARIA input fields must have an accessible name: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated serious by axe-core.

Interactive controls must not be nested: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated serious by axe-core.

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

Elements marked as presentational should be consistently ignored: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated minor by axe-core.

Your title is only 13 characters: “Home - ITHAKA”. Between 30 and 65 characters leaves room to say what you do and for whom.

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

The homepage links to 38 pages on ithaka.org and 11 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.

/cookies, /news/ithaka-fall-2026-community-letter-ai-at-jstor, /news/service/ithaka and /news/service/portico have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

/contact-us has 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 19 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

2 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Error with Permissions-Policy header: Parse of permissions policy failed because of errors reported by structured heade…”.

X-XSS-Protection is set to “1; mode=block”; the header is deprecated and can introduce bugs. Use 0 or remove it.

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

ithaka.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.

ithaka.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.

No testimonials, customer logos, ratings or customer counts on the homepage: nothing tells a new visitor that others already trust you.

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 588 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 Analytics, Google Tag Manager and LinkedIn Insight (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 5 cookies (measured from a US location before any click).

Loading the homepage contacts 8 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.