neiu.edu website review

12 images could be 2.0 MB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 7.7 s faster on a phone.

About 1.2 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 1.8 s faster on a phone.

31 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (559 KiB).

33 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 1.9 s.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 1.7 s of main-thread work and 839 KiB of downloads while your page loads. That alone is enough to make taps feel slow. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

Your mobile performance score is 29 (desktop: 69). Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

A phone's processor spends 8.4 s on main-thread work while loading, 4.3 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, botpress.cloud and TikTok and others), adding 2.6 MB and 4.1 s of main-thread time.

botpress.cloud costs a phone 566 ms of main-thread work and 708 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.

TikTok costs a phone 521 ms of main-thread work and 280 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 489 ms of main-thread work and 307 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.

20 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 469 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

About 123 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.

weglot.com costs a phone 281 ms of main-thread work and 155 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.

35 KiB could be saved by minifying JavaScript.

Polyfills for old browsers add 31 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need.

25 KiB could be saved by minifying CSS.

Desktop scores 69 but mobile only 29. A gap that wide usually means heavy scripts and images that hit phones hardest.

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.

Your largest element takes 18.4 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image “Continue Your Education banner with 3 students smiling”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 32.0 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 12.9 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 2.5 s in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

The first text or image appears after 3.7 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 168 ms to 217 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

1 image have no width and height attributes, so the layout jumps as each one loads.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 1.3 s to 1.3 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 5.4 MB in 212 requests on a phone: scripts 2.7 MB (59), images 2.4 MB (46) and stylesheets 132 KiB (41). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

6 images (2.0 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.

5 images further down the page (1.9 MB) download before anyone scrolls to them. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

26_Website3.webp 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 northeastern-illinois-university-147776-icon at 325 px wide, shown at 60 px. Resized copies would save about 36 KiB.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 1.52 g of CO₂e: 182.3 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

6 elements hidden from screen readers can still receive keyboard focus.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your meta description is 165 characters; Google truncates after about 160, so the end of your pitch is cut.

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

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

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

The homepage links to 179 pages on neiu.edu and 16 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.neiu.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.

https://www.neiu.edu/academics/programs, https://www.neiu.edu/mosaic, https://www.neiu.edu/continue and https://www.neiu.edu/one-stop-center have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

Your homepage links to 4 pages by a URL that isn't their canonical one, for example https://www.neiu.edu/admissions/your-success, whose canonical is https://www.neiu.edu/admissions/student-services-and-support. Linking straight to the canonical URL saves crawlers a detour and keeps ranking signals on one address.

https://www.neiu.edu/admissions/visit and https://www.neiu.edu/one-stop-center have no <h1> headline, so visitors and search engines get no clear main topic.

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

135 of 150 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

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

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

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.

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.

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 1,648 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, LinkedIn Insight and Meta Pixel and 3 mores (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 18 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 43 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.