northpark.edu website review

9 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 2.6 s.

Your mobile performance score is 24. Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

10 images could be 12.4 MB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 150 ms faster on a phone.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (rlets.com, Google Tag Manager and Facebook and others), adding 1.7 MB and 1.6 s of main-thread time.

29 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (757 KiB).

About 535 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 300 ms faster on a phone.

About 100 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 600 ms faster on a phone.

rlets.com costs a phone 594 ms of main-thread work and 351 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.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 499 ms of main-thread work and 680 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.

A phone's processor spends 3.6 s on main-thread work while loading, 2.3 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

15 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 224 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

Polyfills for old browsers add 44 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.

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

The layout shifts by 1.005 while loading, so content jumps under the reader's thumb. Good is under 0.1.

The page becomes fully interactive after 18.7 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 749 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Real visitors wait 3.0 s for the largest content to appear (75th percentile). Good is under 2.5 s.

For real visitors the layout shifts by 0.18 (75th percentile). Good is under 0.1.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 1.5 s to 2.2 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Real visitors see the first content after 2.2 s (75th percentile). Good is under 1.8 s.

Real visitors wait 1.7 s for your server to start answering (75th percentile). Good is under 800 ms.

The first text or image appears after 2.7 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

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

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

Your homepage downloads 18.8 MB in 144 requests on a phone: images 16.6 MB (32), scripts 1.9 MB (47) and stylesheets 106 KiB (6). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

5 images weigh 7.8 MB together. On a phone connection a single image that size takes seconds.

6 images are downloaded at several times the size a phone draws them, for example 210922_NPU_StagedStudnetsFall21-8292.jpeg at 1,920 px wide, shown at 390 px. Resized copies would save about 5.5 MB.

6 images (8.1 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.

JasonLindsey-NorthPark-Fall2026_DSC2227-3575-scaled.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).

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 5.32 g of CO₂e: 638.1 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”.

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

1 image has no alt text, which hurts accessibility and image search.

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

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

Headings skip levels (h2 → h4, h2 → h4 and h3 → h5), which makes the page harder to scan with a screen reader.

There are 4 <h1> headlines (“Apply by November 1.”, “2027–28 FAFSA is open.” and “Your support. Their success.”). 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 83 pages on northpark.edu and 21 external pages.

There is no https://www.northpark.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.northpark.edu/giving/ways-to-give/give, https://www.northpark.edu/mynpu, https://www.northpark.edu/academics/all-majors-programs, https://www.northpark.edu/academics/academic-calendar, https://www.northpark.edu/admissions-aid/prospective-first-year-students and https://www.northpark.edu/admissions-aid/transfer-students and 1 other have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

https://www.northpark.edu/admissions-aid/visit, https://www.northpark.edu/admissions-aid/apply, https://www.northpark.edu/giving/ways-to-give/give, https://www.northpark.edu/mynpu, https://www.northpark.edu/admissions-aid/transfer-students and https://www.northpark.edu/admissions-aid/international-admissions have no <h1> headline, so visitors and search engines get no clear main topic.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 59 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

1 image failed to load on a phone, for example https://bat.bing.com/action/0?ti=16000911&Ver=2&mid=98311f35-8159-4f78-8831-3123b0ed30f2&bo=1&sid=0d674d50d44a11f1a2234743b9fb9942&vid=0d676160d44a11f1901a19936c07b807&vids=1&msclkid=N&pi=918639831&lg.

11 of 23 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

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

2 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Access to XMLHttpRequest at 'https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Inter:wght@400,600&display=swap' from origin 'htt…”.

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: 9 testimonial or review blocks. 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.

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 595 words of visible text.

The page uses urgency cues (a countdown or limited-time wording).

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, LinkedIn Insight and Meta Pixel and 2 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 40 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.