mut.ac.za website review

91 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (1.9 MB).

43 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 3.6 s.

About 1.1 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 1.5 s faster on a phone.

Web fonts hide text while they load. Setting font-display: swap shows text immediately (about 1.2 s).

5 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, iono.fm and Clarity and others), adding 864 KiB and 1.1 s of main-thread time.

Your mobile performance score is 55. Pages that score under 90 lose visitors before the first paint.

15 images could be 763 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 589 ms of main-thread work and 365 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 3.9 s on main-thread work while loading, 2.1 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

iono.fm costs a phone 308 ms of main-thread work and 439 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.

About 40 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.

The page has 1,571 HTML elements. Above 1,500, rendering and every interaction get slower on phones.

16 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 183 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

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.

Real visitors wait 4.2 s for the largest content to appear (75th percentile). Good is under 2.5 s.

Real visitors see the first content after 4.0 s (75th percentile). Good is under 1.8 s.

Real visitors wait 2.8 s for your server to start answering (75th percentile). Good is under 800 ms.

The page becomes fully interactive after 15.0 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 8.1 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Your largest element takes 4.6 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the text “We are a township located University, one of only six unive…”. Most of its time is element render delay (2.8 s).

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 679 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Real visitors wait 223 ms for the page to respond to a tap (75th percentile). Good is under 200 ms.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 3.4 s to 5.0 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

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

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 256 ms to 267 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 6.2 MB in 137 requests on a phone: images 3.5 MB (37), scripts 2.0 MB (42) and fonts 527 KiB (8). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

1 image (33 KiB) is 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.

1 image further down the page (75 KiB) download before anyone scrolls to it. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 1.76 g of CO₂e: 211.7 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

4 text elements don'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.

Contentinfo landmark should not be contained in another landmark: 2 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.

Document should not have more than one contentinfo landmark: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

Page should contain a level-one heading: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

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

ARIA role should be appropriate for the element: 8 elements on the page fail this check, rated minor by axe-core.

No meta description, so Google writes its own snippet from whatever text it finds.

There is no <h1>, so neither visitors nor Google get a clear main headline.

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

6 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.

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

The homepage links to 252 pages on mut.ac.za and 24 external pages.

Your homepage links to https://www.mut.ac.za/media/publications-2, which answers with an error. Visitors hit a dead end and search engines drop it.

https://www.mut.ac.za/alumni, https://www.mut.ac.za/mut-events, https://www.mut.ac.za/student-portal, https://www.mut.ac.za/vacancies, https://www.mut.ac.za/about-mut/our-story and https://www.mut.ac.za/about-mut/leadership-and-governance and 3 others have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

https://www.mut.ac.za/alumni, https://www.mut.ac.za/mut-events, https://www.mut.ac.za/library-services and https://www.mut.ac.za/about-mut/our-story have no <h1> headline, so visitors and search engines get no clear main topic.

https://www.mut.ac.za/annual-reports, https://www.mut.ac.za/vc-research-vlog-series and https://www.mut.ac.za/about-mut/stakeholder-analysis took over 3 s to send their HTML from our server.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 95 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

The page uses 1 deprecated browser API that will stop working in future browsers (“Unload event listeners are deprecated and will be removed.”).

1 third-party cookie is set on load; browsers are restricting these, so whatever relies on them breaks.

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

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

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: 1 customer or partner logo. 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.

Your phone number appears as text but isn't a tel: link, so phone visitors can't tap to call.

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 602 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and Microsoft Clarity (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 4 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 11 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.