principalbuilders.com website review

15 images could be 3.6 MB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 3.1 s faster on a phone.

Your mobile performance score is 69 (desktop: 83). Pages that score under 90 lose visitors before the first paint.

9 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 550 ms.

About 70 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.

4 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (38 KiB).

Polyfills for old browsers add 10 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 200 ms faster on a phone.

About 19 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 150 ms faster on a phone.

14 KiB could be saved by minifying JavaScript.

4 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics and Monotype and others), adding 220 KiB and 137 ms of main-thread time.

1 long task block the main thread while loading, the longest for 119 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

Web fonts hide text while they load. Setting font-display: swap shows text immediately (about 50 ms).

Critical files load one after another instead of in parallel (3 chains). Preconnecting to key origins and preloading the hero image shortens the chain.

Your largest element takes 11.2 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image “Banner”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 11.6 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

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

The first text or image appears after 2.2 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

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

Chrome's UX Report (opens in a new tab) has too little real-visitor traffic for this site, so the figures here are lab measurements from Google's test phone on a throttled 4G connection.

Your homepage downloads 4.0 MB in 40 requests on a phone: images 3.7 MB (19), scripts 260 KiB (10) and stylesheets 38 KiB (7). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

15 images are downloaded at several times the size a phone draws them, for example Gensler_Gusto_233_rev.jpg at 1,920 px wide, shown at 390 px. Resized copies would save about 2.5 MB.

15 images (3.7 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.

Gensler_Gusto_233_rev.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 1.14 g of CO₂e: 137.2 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

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

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

The page has no <main> landmark, so screen-reader users cannot jump straight to the content.

The viewport tag blocks pinch-zoom, which low-vision visitors rely on.

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

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 structured data (JSON-LD), so Google can't show rich results such as your logo, ratings or FAQs.

No Open Graph image (also missing: og:title, og:description), so links shared on LinkedIn, Slack or Facebook show no preview picture.

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 incomplete here.

The homepage links to 6 pages on principalbuilders.com and 6 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://principalbuilders.com/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://principalbuilders.com/about, https://principalbuilders.com/services, https://principalbuilders.com/project-type/featured, https://principalbuilders.com/people and https://principalbuilders.com/work-here have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

https://principalbuilders.com/about, https://principalbuilders.com/services, https://principalbuilders.com/project-type/featured, https://principalbuilders.com/people and https://principalbuilders.com/work-here have no <h1> headline, so visitors and search engines get no clear main topic.

https://principalbuilders.com/project-type/featured and https://principalbuilders.com/work-here have under 150 words in the HTML. Thin pages rarely rank; if the text loads with JavaScript, crawlers that don't run it see even less.

We fetched 5 pages linked from your homepage and read each the way a search engine does.

9 of 15 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 “Access to XMLHttpRequest at 'https://www.principalbuilders.com/wp-content/themes/principalbuilders/genericons/genericon…”.

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

We found no call-to-action buttons or links (such as “Book a demo” or “Get a quote”) anywhere on the homepage.

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 map but no LocalBusiness JSON-LD, so Google and AI assistants have to guess your address, hours and phone from the page text.

The homepage has only about 35 words of visible text; thin pages give Google and first-time buyers little to go on.

The homepage shows no opening hours. If customers visit or call, show when.

There is no form on the homepage, so every lead has to click through to another page first.

No guarantee or risk reducer (money-back, free trial, no credit card) is mentioned, which is often what tips a hesitant visitor.

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 4 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 4 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.