ncu.edu website review

About 821 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.

7 images could be 483 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 1.4 s faster on a phone.

10 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 1.5 s.

Your mobile performance score is 42 (desktop: 50). Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

A phone's processor spends 4.8 s on main-thread work while loading, 2.7 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, Facebook and FullStory and others), adding 1.9 MB and 1.3 s of main-thread time.

49 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (715 KiB).

About 172 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 600 ms faster on a phone.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 549 ms of main-thread work and 699 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.

Facebook costs a phone 240 ms of main-thread work and 338 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 2,666 HTML elements. Above 1,500, rendering and every interaction get slower on phones.

Polyfills for old browsers add 51 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 150 ms faster on a phone.

12 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 163 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

23 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.

Your largest element takes 11.7 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the text “Supporting the Whole You Balance Life WhileEarning Your Deg…”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 32.6 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 11.8 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

The first text or image appears after 4.4 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 610 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Real visitors wait 229 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' tap response (inp) went from 196 ms to 245 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

10 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' largest content (lcp) went from 1.8 s to 2.0 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 4.6 MB in 277 requests on a phone: scripts 2.5 MB (95), images 1.2 MB (57) and other files 367 KiB (102). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

2 images further down the page (218 KiB) download before anyone scrolls to them. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

1 image (58 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.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 1.31 g of CO₂e: 156.6 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

Images must have alternative text: 2 elements on the page fail this check, rated critical by axe-core.

1 dropdown has no label.

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

Scrollable region must have keyboard access: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated serious by axe-core.

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 5 elements on the page fail this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

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

5 form fields have no label, so screen readers announce an empty box and autofill guesses.

Your title is 98 characters, so Google will cut it off around 60: “National University I Earn Your Degree Online | Private College with Flexible, Accredited…”.

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

1 link has no real href, so search engines can't follow it.

The homepage links to 284 pages on ncu.edu and 29 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.nu.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.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 174 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

6 images failed to load on a phone, for example https://info.nu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/quotation-mark.svg.

7 of 21 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

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

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

Large scripts ship without source maps.

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.

Your longest form asks for 27 fields (8 required). Every extra field lowers completion.

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 819 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Amazon Ads, FullStory, Google Ads, Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager and 6 mores (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 36 cookies (measured from a US location before any click).

Loading the homepage contacts 72 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.