newsela.com website review

About 501 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 1.6 s faster on a phone.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, website-files.com and intellimize.co and others), adding 1.5 MB and 1.0 s of main-thread time.

26 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (334 KiB).

Your mobile performance score is 56 (desktop: 78). Pages that score under 90 lose visitors before the first paint.

2 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 650 ms.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 545 ms of main-thread work and 587 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.

14 images could be 271 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 300 ms faster on a phone.

About 43 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.

A phone's processor spends 2.4 s on main-thread work while loading, 937 ms of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

website-files.com costs a phone 176 ms of main-thread work and 675 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 1,808 HTML elements. Above 1,500, rendering and every interaction get slower on phones.

Polyfills for old browsers add 12 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 150 ms faster on a phone.

9 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 160 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.

3 KiB could be saved by minifying JavaScript.

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 9.4 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the text “Accelerate student growth through the power of connected in…”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 11.1 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

The first text or image appears after 3.1 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Real visitors wait 3.2 s for the largest content to appear (75th percentile). Good is under 2.5 s.

Real visitors see the first content after 2.9 s (75th percentile). Good is under 1.8 s.

Real visitors wait 1.6 s for your server to start answering (75th percentile). Good is under 800 ms.

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

Visually, the page fills in at 5.2 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 392 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 3.2 s to 2.9 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

1 image (30 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 0.47 g of CO₂e: 56.5 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

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

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

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

Headings skip levels (h2 → h4), which makes the page harder to scan with a screen reader.

There are 3 <h1> headlines (“Accelerate student growth through the power of co…”, “Accelerate student growth through the power of co…” and “Trusted by District Leaders, Loved by Educators”). 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.

1 link use generic text like “click here” or “learn more”, which tells Google nothing about the page behind it.

The homepage links to 108 pages on newsela.com and 30 external pages.

https://newsela.com/resource-center/webinars and https://newsela.com/resource-center/guides all use the title “Newsela”. Search engines can't tell which page to show for a search, so each competes with the others.

https://newsela.com/states, https://newsela.com/products/threads-and-themes, https://newsela.com/luna, https://newsela.com/resource-center, https://newsela.com/resource-center/webinars and https://newsela.com/resource-center/guides have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

https://newsela.com/getting-started has no <h1> headline, so visitors and search engines get no clear main topic.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 37 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

18 images are displayed at the wrong aspect ratio, so they look stretched or squashed.

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

Your longest form asks for 18 fields (16 required). Every extra field lowers completion.

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

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 2,684 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, LinkedIn Insight 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 10 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 22 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.