nj.gov website review

48 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (1.3 MB).

8 images could be 1.3 MB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 5.0 s faster on a phone.

13 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 4.5 s.

About 1.7 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 2.3 s faster on a phone.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 3.0 s of main-thread work and 3.9 MB 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 30 (desktop: 43). Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

A phone's processor spends 6.1 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, Facebook and Other Google APIs/SDKs and others), adding 4.4 MB and 3.2 s of main-thread time.

About 72 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 610 ms faster on a phone.

Web fonts hide text while they load. Setting font-display: swap shows text immediately (about 350 ms).

20 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 269 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

Polyfills for old browsers add 12 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need.

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.

2 KiB could be saved by minifying CSS.

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.

The first text or image appears after 8.4 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Your largest element takes 26.3 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image “Photo of Trenton, capitol”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 42.7 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 11.4 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 1.4 s in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Real visitors wait 251 ms for the page to respond to a tap (75th percentile). Good is under 200 ms.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-03, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 181 ms to 231 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

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

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-03, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 1.4 s to 1.5 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 7.8 MB in 161 requests on a phone: scripts 4.9 MB (62), images 2.1 MB (32) and fonts 724 KiB (8). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

hero_statehouse_v2_1995x533.jpg weighs 555 KiB. On a phone connection a single image that size takes seconds.

5 images (895 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.

1 image is downloaded at several times the size a phone draws it, for example hero_statehouse_v2_1995x533.jpg at 1,995 px wide, shown at 420 px. Resized copies would save about 334 KiB.

2 images further down the page (136 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 2.21 g of CO₂e: 265.5 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

1 button has no accessible name, so screen readers announce just “button”.

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

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

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

Users should be able to zoom and scale the text up to 500%: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated minor by axe-core.

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

Your meta description is only 56 characters: “Home of the Official website of the State of New Jersey.”. 70 to 160 characters is enough to sell the click.

There are 2 <h1> headlines (“NJ.gov” and “Find what you need”). One clear main headline is easier for people and search engines.

No XML sitemap at https://nj.gov/sitemap.xml, so Google discovers your pages only by following links.

No favicon is declared in the HTML, so browser tabs and Google's mobile results may show a generic icon.

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

No twitter:card tag. X falls back to Open Graph, which is set, so this is minor.

The homepage links to 78 pages on nj.gov and 39 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://nj.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.

/ and https://nj.gov/nj all use the title “The Official Web Site for The State of New Jersey”. Search engines can't tell which page to show for a search, so each competes with the others.

Your homepage links to 3 pages by a URL that isn't their canonical one, for example https://nj.gov/governor, whose canonical is https://nj.gov/governor/homepage.shtml. Linking straight to the canonical URL saves crawlers a detour and keeps ranking signals on one address.

https://nj.gov/nj/gov/deptserv/alphaserv.shtml has no <h1> headline, so visitors and search engines get no clear main topic.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 47 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

16 of 22 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

2 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 403 ()”.

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

Large scripts ship without source maps.

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

Social proof on the homepage: 2 customer or partner logos. Pairing it with named testimonials or customer logos makes it far more convincing.

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 452 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager 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 20 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 18 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.