nps.gov website review

56 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (3.2 MB).

About 1.3 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 6.2 s faster on a phone.

About 1,004 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 5.1 s faster on a phone.

9 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 5.4 s.

10 images could be 1.0 MB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 1.1 s faster on a phone.

256 KiB could be saved by minifying JavaScript.

Your mobile performance score is 43 (desktop: 57). Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

6 third-party services load with your homepage (doi.gov, Google Tag Manager and digitalgov.gov and others), adding 13.0 MB and 1.0 s of main-thread time.

doi.gov costs a phone 871 ms of main-thread work and 12.9 MB 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.

13 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 571 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

A phone's processor spends 2.9 s on main-thread work while loading, 1.3 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

Polyfills for old browsers add 8 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.

The first text or image appears after 11.9 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Your largest element takes 26.1 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the element shown below.

The page becomes fully interactive after 27.5 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 11.9 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 494 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-03, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 79 ms to 85 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-03, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 1.0 s to 1.1 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 16.4 MB in 92 requests on a phone: other files 11.5 MB (12), scripts 2.4 MB (38) and images 1.4 MB (29). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

SocialMediaFeature.png weighs 602 KiB. On a phone connection a single image that size takes seconds.

1 image is downloaded at several times the size a phone draws it, for example SocialMediaFeature.png at 1,966 px wide, shown at 370 px. Resized copies would save about 410 KiB.

1 image (602 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.

1 image further down the page (602 KiB) download before anyone scrolls to it. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 4.65 g of CO₂e: 557.7 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

[role="img"] and [role="image"] elements must have alternative text: 3 elements on the page fail this check, rated serious by axe-core.

Landmarks should have a unique role or role/label/title (i.e. accessible name) combination: 2 elements on the page fail this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 2 elements on the page fail this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

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

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

Elements with visible text labels do not have matching accessible names. (1 element).

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.

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

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

The homepage links to 248 pages on nps.gov and 12 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.nps.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.

https://www.nps.gov/index.htm and / all use the title “NPS.gov Homepage (U.S. National Park Service)”. Search engines can't tell which page to show for a search, so each competes with the others.

/ and https://www.nps.gov/findapark/index.htm have no <h1> headline, so visitors and search engines get no clear main topic.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 200 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

4 of 18 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

The page uses 1 deprecated browser API that will stop working in future browsers (“`SharedArrayBuffer` will require cross-origin isolation. See https://developer.chrome.com/blog/enab…”).

1 error was logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Cannot read properties of null (reading 'querySelector')”.

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 trust badges. Pairing it with named testimonials or customer logos makes it far more convincing.

No analytics or tag manager detected in the HTML, so you can't measure whether any of these fixes work.

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 317 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager (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 2 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 6 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.