mbu.edu website review

34 images could be 9.2 MB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 3.4 s faster on a phone.

118 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (5.1 MB).

37 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 2.5 s.

About 232 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 1.1 s faster on a phone.

About 219 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 1.1 s faster on a phone.

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

A phone's processor spends 5.2 s on main-thread work while loading, 1.1 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

14 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 1.0 s. During a long task the page ignores taps.

7 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, Facebook and Cloudflare CDN and others), adding 542 KiB and 583 ms of main-thread time.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 317 ms of main-thread work and 310 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.

The page has 1,626 HTML elements. Above 1,500, rendering and every interaction get slower on phones.

Polyfills for old browsers add 13 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 150 ms faster on a phone.

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.

3 KiB could be saved by minifying CSS.

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 30.8 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the text “…”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 31.8 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 9.7 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

The first text or image appears after 4.8 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 1.5 s in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Real visitors wait 2.9 s for the largest content to appear (75th percentile). Good is under 2.5 s.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 3.1 s to 4.7 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

17 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 103 ms to 96 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 13.1 MB in 138 requests on a phone: images 11.4 MB (50), scripts 777 KiB (38) and fonts 630 KiB (8). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

2 images weigh 2.9 MB together. On a phone connection a single image that size takes seconds.

11 images are downloaded at several times the size a phone draws them, for example MBU_GLMF_Skys_SmallEventBanner.png at 1,440 px wide, shown at 312 px. Resized copies would save about 3.0 MB.

18 images (5.2 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.

6 images further down the page (3.7 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 3.72 g of CO₂e: 445.8 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

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

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

1 frame has no title, so screen-reader users cannot tell what it contains.

Form elements should have a visible label: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated serious by axe-core.

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 19 elements on the page fail this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

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

The viewport tag blocks pinch-zoom, which low-vision visitors rely on.

16 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.

Headings skip levels (h1 → h6, h1 → h5 and h2 → h5), which makes the page harder to scan with a screen reader.

Your title is 150 characters, so Google will cut it off around 60: “Maranatha Baptist University in Watertown, WI exists to develop leaders for ministry in t…”.

There are 6 <h1> headlines (“ONLINE GRADDEGREESSTART HERE”, “10” and “TOP 11%”). One clear main headline is easier for people and search engines.

No Open Graph image, so links shared on LinkedIn, Slack or Facebook show no preview picture.

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

3 links have no real href, so search engines can't follow them.

The homepage links to 248 pages on mbu.edu and 25 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.

https://www.mbu.edu/development/invest-for-eternity, https://www.mbu.edu/development/leadershipbreakfast, https://www.mbu.edu/development/golfclassic, https://www.mbu.edu/university/about/history and https://www.mbu.edu/university/about/consumer-information have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

https://www.mbu.edu/campus-life/on-campus/global-encounters and https://www.mbu.edu/development/golfclassic have no <h1> headline, so visitors and search engines get no clear main topic.

https://www.mbu.edu/alumni, https://www.mbu.edu/give, https://www.mbu.edu/thrive, https://www.mbu.edu/development/the-heritage-project and https://www.mbu.edu/university/about took over 3 s to send their HTML from our server.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 147 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

13 of 22 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 403 ()”.

On a phone, there is no call to action on the first screen: visitors have to scroll to find out what to do next.

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 trust badges. 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 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 824 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Ads, 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 3 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 12 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.