nd.gov website review

21 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (2.0 MB).

7 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 7.8 s.

About 890 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 4.2 s faster on a phone.

About 388 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 1.9 s faster on a phone.

Your mobile performance score is 57 (desktop: 74). Pages that score under 90 lose visitors before the first paint.

7 images could be 185 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.

Web fonts hide text while they load. Setting font-display: swap shows text immediately (about 150 ms).

The HTML itself could arrive sooner: redirects, a slow server response or missing compression delay everything after it.

4 third-party services load with your homepage (VWO, monsido.com and JSDelivr CDN and others), adding 139 KiB and 5 ms of main-thread time.

Critical files load one after another instead of in parallel (3 chains). Preconnecting to key origins and preloading the hero image shortens the chain.

The first text or image appears after 8.6 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Your largest element takes 12.6 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the text “Whether you crave the rugged outdoors or thrive in urban se…”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 12.6 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 8.6 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 77 ms to 82 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 1.6 s to 1.6 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 2.3 MB in 30 requests on a phone: stylesheets 953 KiB (5), scripts 507 KiB (7) and images 404 KiB (12). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

No4BestState_2026_Header02.jpg is on the first screen but marked loading="lazy", so the browser waits before fetching it and the page looks finished later. Load it eagerly (and give it fetchpriority="high" if it is the main image).

1 image is downloaded at several times the size a phone draws it, for example Dakota.png at 271 px wide, shown at 64 px. Resized copies would save about 37 KiB.

7 images (358 KiB) 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 (238 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 0.65 g of CO₂e: 77.7 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

Links must have discernible text: 2 elements on the page fail this check, rated serious by axe-core.

Banner landmark should not be contained in another landmark: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

Document should not have more than one banner landmark: 1 element on the page fails 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.

ARIA role should be appropriate for the element: 4 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.

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

Open Graph is missing og:description, so shared links fall back to guesses.

The homepage links to 113 pages on nd.gov and 26 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.nd.gov/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.nd.gov/north-dakotas-celebration-americas-250th, https://www.nd.gov/contact, https://www.nd.gov/social-media, https://www.nd.gov/living-nd, https://www.nd.gov/living-nd/arts-culture and https://www.nd.gov/living-nd/cost-living and 9 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 56 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

5 of 19 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

1 image is served at too low a resolution for sharp phone screens.

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

No testimonials, customer logos, ratings or customer counts on the homepage: nothing tells a new visitor that others already trust you.

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.

A local customer looking to call finds no phone number on the homepage. Add one, ideally as a tap-to-call link.

No analytics or tag manager detected in the HTML, so you can't measure whether any of these fixes work.

No phone number or email link on the homepage, so ready-to-buy visitors have one fewer way to reach you.

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 360 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads 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 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 8 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.