nscad.ca website review

About 397 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 1.8 s faster on a phone.

3 images could be 337 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 1.6 s faster on a phone.

41 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 1.6 s.

4 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (191 KiB).

Your mobile performance score is 51 (desktop: 80). Pages that score under 90 lose visitors before the first paint.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, blackbaudcdn.net and Facebook and others), adding 868 KiB and 641 ms of main-thread time.

About 39 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 450 ms faster on a phone.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 319 ms of main-thread work and 321 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.

5 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 279 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

blackbaudcdn.net costs a phone 161 ms of main-thread work and 316 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 1,753 HTML elements. Above 1,500, rendering and every interaction get slower on phones.

2 KiB could be saved by minifying CSS.

Web fonts hide text while they load. Setting font-display: swap shows text immediately (about 100 ms).

23 KiB could be saved by minifying JavaScript.

Polyfills for old browsers add 19 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need.

Desktop scores 80 but mobile only 51. A gap that wide usually means heavy scripts and images that hit phones hardest.

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 7.8 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Your largest element takes 17.3 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the text “If You Believe That Creative Ideas Can Build A Better World…”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 17.3 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 7.8 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 293 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Your homepage downloads 9.7 MB in 120 requests on a phone: media 7.3 MB (1), scripts 1.1 MB (52) and fonts 684 KiB (5). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

3 images further down the page (312 KiB) download before anyone scrolls to them. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

1 image (93 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 2.74 g of CO₂e: 329.1 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

Certain ARIA roles must contain particular children: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated critical by axe-core.

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

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

1 visible link has no text or label, so screen readers cannot say where it goes.

ARIA role should be appropriate for the element: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated minor by axe-core.

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

No meta description, so Google writes its own snippet from whatever text it finds.

There is no <h1>, so neither visitors nor Google get a clear main headline.

No Open Graph image, so links shared on LinkedIn, Slack or Facebook show no preview picture.

7 links have no real href, so search engines can't follow them.

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

The homepage links to 364 pages on nscad.ca and 22 external pages.

Your Organization JSON-LD is missing sameAs (social profiles), description and contact details. These are the facts AI assistants use to describe a business and to tell it apart from others with a similar name.

There is no https://nscad.ca/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://nscad.ca/admissions/financing-your-education and https://nscad.ca/student-experience/academic-resources/financing-your-education all use the title “Financing your education - NSCAD”. Search engines can't tell which page to show for a search, so each competes with the others.

https://nscad.ca/admissions/how-to-apply, https://nscad.ca/give, https://nscad.ca/admissions/how-to-apply/admissions-deadlines, https://nscad.ca/admissions/how-to-apply/undergraduate-admission-requirements, https://nscad.ca/admissions/how-to-apply/graduate-admission-requirements and https://nscad.ca/admissions/how-to-apply/certificate-admission-requirements and 9 others have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

Your homepage links to 1 page by a URL that isn't its canonical one, for example https://nscad.ca/admissions/financing-your-education/tuition-and-fees, whose canonical is https://nscad.ca/tuition. Linking straight to the canonical URL saves crawlers a detour and keeps ranking signals on one address.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 114 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

3 of 8 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

3 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 404 ()”.

Chrome logged issues while loading the page (“Cookie”).

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

No testimonials, customer logos, ratings or customer counts on the homepage: nothing tells a new visitor that others already trust you.

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.

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 496 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 16 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 13 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.