ljsmith.com website review

About 1.6 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 8.3 s faster on a phone.

48 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 9.4 s.

Your mobile performance score is 47 (desktop: 58). Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (Squarespace, YouTube and Google Tag Manager and others), adding 4.8 MB and 1.4 s of main-thread time.

16 images could be 784 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 650 ms faster on a phone.

About 202 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 910 ms faster on a phone.

Squarespace costs a phone 731 ms of main-thread work and 1.2 MB 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.

Polyfills for old browsers add 88 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 400 ms faster on a phone.

YouTube costs a phone 327 ms of main-thread work and 972 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, 1.7 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 267 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 182 ms of main-thread work and 484 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.

bc0a.com costs a phone 32 ms of main-thread work and 1.6 MB 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.

sqspcdn.com costs a phone 55 ms of main-thread work and 381 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.

10 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (26 KiB).

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

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.

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 18.9 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Your largest element takes 31.3 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image “High Point Historic Collection”.

Visually, the page fills in at 18.9 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

The page becomes fully interactive after 31.4 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Real visitors wait 2.7 s for the largest content to appear (75th percentile). Good is under 2.5 s.

Real visitors see the first content after 2.0 s (75th percentile). Good is under 1.8 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 357 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 371 ms to 337 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 2.1 s to 2.0 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 5.6 MB in 154 requests on a phone: scripts 2.9 MB (62), images 1.7 MB (30) and fonts 522 KiB (15). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

4 images further down the page (208 KiB) 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 1.58 g of CO₂e: 189.9 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

13 buttons have no accessible name, so screen readers announce just “button”.

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

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

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 31 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: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

4 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.

Your title is only 24 characters: “L.J. Smith Stair Systems”. Between 30 and 65 characters leaves room to say what you do and for whom.

Structured data found (LocalBusiness, Organization and WebSite) but with 2 problems, for example “WebSite: image is not an absolute URL ("//images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60eb48a70423516ca6e…”.

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

The homepage links to 103 pages on ljsmith.com and 19 external pages.

Your Organization JSON-LD is missing name, url, logo and description. These are the facts AI assistants use to describe a business and to tell it apart from others with a similar name.

There is no https://www.ljsmith.com/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.ljsmith.com/careers, https://www.ljsmith.com/blog, https://www.ljsmith.com/history, https://www.ljsmith.com/why-lj, https://www.ljsmith.com/contact and https://www.ljsmith.com/all-products and 5 others have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 41 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

5 third-party cookies are set on load; browsers are restricting these, so whatever relies on them breaks.

The page uses 1 deprecated browser API that will stop working in future browsers (“Synchronous `XMLHttpRequest` on the main thread is deprecated because of its detrimental effects to…”).

6 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 401 ()”.

Chrome logged issues while loading the page (“Cookie”).

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 386 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Ads, Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager (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 2 cookies, 1 of them by other companies (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 24 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.