normandale.edu website review

67 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (10.2 MB).

36 images could be 8.7 MB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 12.8 s faster on a phone.

About 599 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 3.5 s faster on a phone.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 1.1 s of main-thread work and 1.1 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.

15 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 1.1 s.

Your mobile performance score is 37. Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, Facebook and TikTok and others), adding 1.8 MB and 1.8 s of main-thread time.

About 74 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 430 ms faster on a phone.

A phone's processor spends 3.3 s on main-thread work while loading, 1.8 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

Facebook costs a phone 299 ms of main-thread work and 336 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.

Polyfills for old browsers add 22 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 200 ms faster on a phone.

14 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 216 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

5 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.

Your largest element takes 39.9 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image.

The page becomes fully interactive after 41.0 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

The first text or image appears after 5.6 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 944 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Visually, the page fills in at 7.1 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-31, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 128 ms to 181 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-31, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 1.1 s to 1.3 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 12.1 MB in 154 requests on a phone: images 9.8 MB (49), scripts 1.9 MB (40) and fonts 258 KiB (8). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

4 images weigh 3.9 MB together. On a phone connection a single image that size takes seconds.

3 images are downloaded at several times the size a phone draws them, for example Hero_Drone-Still_1800x800.png at 1,800 px wide, shown at 390 px. Resized copies would save about 1.7 MB.

10 images (4.3 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.

Hero_Drone-Still_1800x800.png 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).

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 3.43 g of CO₂e: 411.5 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

1 dropdown has no label.

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

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

Headings skip levels (h1 → h5), which makes the page harder to scan with a screen reader.

Elements with visible text labels do not have matching accessible names. (4 elements).

Your title is 93 characters, so Google will cut it off around 60: “Affordable Degrees in Minnesota | Normandale Community College | Normandale Community Col…”.

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

No canonical URL, so duplicate versions of the homepage (with or without www, with tracking parameters) can split ranking signals.

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

The homepage links to 75 pages on normandale.edu and 71 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.normandale.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.normandale.edu/email and https://www.normandale.edu/directory/index.html have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

https://www.normandale.edu/alumni/index.html, https://www.normandale.edu/admissions/apply/index.html, https://www.normandale.edu/admissions/visit-information-sessions.html, https://www.normandale.edu/why-normandale/foundation/index.html, https://www.normandale.edu/email and https://www.normandale.edu/why-normandale/index.html and 4 others have no <h1> headline, so visitors and search engines get no clear main topic.

https://www.normandale.edu/email took over 3 s to send its HTML from our server.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 45 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

11 of 27 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

1 third-party cookie is set on load; browsers are restricting these, so whatever relies on them breaks.

4 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “$(...).fancybox is not a function”.

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

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.

Social proof on the homepage: 1 trust badge. Pairing it with named testimonials or customer logos makes it far more convincing.

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 448 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Meta Pixel and Snap 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 17 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 33 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.