jcsu.edu website review

20 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (698 KiB).

About 656 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 2.7 s faster on a phone.

12 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 1.6 s.

Your mobile performance score is 45. Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

3 images could be 991 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 600 ms faster on a phone.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (eventscalendar.co, Google Tag Manager and Facebook and others), adding 1.5 MB and 1.1 s of main-thread time.

About 197 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 900 ms faster on a phone.

eventscalendar.co costs a phone 405 ms of main-thread work and 407 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 329 ms of main-thread work and 451 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 2.9 s on main-thread work while loading, 1.1 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

9 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 255 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

The page has 1,808 HTML elements. Above 1,500, rendering and every interaction get slower on phones.

Polyfills for old browsers add 57 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 150 ms faster on a phone.

7 KiB could be saved by minifying CSS.

13 KiB could be saved by minifying JavaScript.

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.

Your largest element takes 21.1 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the text “Background video”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 22.5 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 6.4 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 590 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

The first text or image appears after 2.6 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

The layout shifts by 0.148 while loading, so content jumps under the reader's thumb. Good is under 0.1.

6 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 84 ms to 99 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 0.9 s to 0.9 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 5.0 MB in 119 requests on a phone: images 2.6 MB (40), scripts 1.4 MB (25) and fonts 563 KiB (11). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

Fall Open House (5)_0.png weighs 781 KiB. On a phone connection a single image that size takes seconds.

23 images (2.5 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.

7 images further down the page (1.6 MB) download before anyone scrolls to them. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 1.41 g of CO₂e: 168.8 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

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

1 element hidden from screen readers can still receive keyboard focus.

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

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 3 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: 2 elements on the page fail this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

ARIA role should be appropriate for the element: 21 elements on the page fail this check, rated minor by axe-core.

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

Headings should not be empty: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated minor by axe-core.

Your title is only 27 characters: “Johnson C. Smith University”. Between 30 and 65 characters leaves room to say what you do and for whom.

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

Your meta description is only 48 characters: “Charlotte's Premier Independent Urban University”. 70 to 160 characters is enough to sell the click.

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

No Open Graph image (also missing: og:title, og:description), so links shared on LinkedIn, Slack or Facebook show no preview picture.

There is no robots.txt at jcsu.edu/robots.txt, the first file search crawlers ask for.

No twitter:card tag. X falls back to Open Graph, which is incomplete here.

The homepage links to 220 pages on jcsu.edu and 55 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 https://www.jcsu.edu/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.

https://www.jcsu.edu/who-we-are/vision-mission-and-values, https://www.jcsu.edu/who-we-are/president-and-leadership, https://www.jcsu.edu/who-we-are/our-history, https://www.jcsu.edu/who-we-are/diversity-and-inclusion, https://www.jcsu.edu/who-we-are/campus-map and https://www.jcsu.edu/who-we-are/golden-blueprint have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

Your homepage links to 2 pages by a URL that isn't their canonical one, for example https://www.jcsu.edu/give, whose canonical is https://www.jcsu.edu/give-jcsu. 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 102 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

7 of 23 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

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

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

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: 3 testimonial or review blocks. 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.

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 845 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and Meta Pixel (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 7 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 25 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.