rcu.edu website review

75 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 8.1 s.

About 1.5 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 5.2 s faster on a phone.

About 196 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 1.2 s faster on a phone.

Your mobile performance score is 44 (desktop: 25). Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

A phone's processor spends 4.5 s on main-thread work while loading, 2.5 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, YouTube and Accessibe Accessibility Overlay and others), adding 2.8 MB and 2.1 s of main-thread time.

6 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 450 ms faster on a phone.

40 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (252 KiB).

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 863 ms of main-thread work and 1.1 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.

YouTube costs a phone 437 ms of main-thread work and 960 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.

Accessibe Accessibility Overlay costs a phone 331 ms of main-thread work and 243 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 2,755 HTML elements. Above 1,500, rendering and every interaction get slower on phones.

20 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 200 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

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

Polyfills for old browsers add 22 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.

3 KiB could be saved by minifying CSS.

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.

The first text or image appears after 14.1 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Your largest element takes 30.5 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the text “ROCHESTER CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY // ROCHESTER HILLS, MI KNOW …”.

Visually, the page fills in at 16.0 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

The page becomes fully interactive after 36.5 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Real visitors wait 2.6 s for the largest content to appear (75th percentile). Good is under 2.5 s.

For real visitors the layout shifts by 0.15 (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 2.5 s to 5.2 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Real visitors see the first content after 1.9 s (75th percentile). Good is under 1.8 s.

Real visitors wait 826 ms for your server to start answering (75th percentile). Good is under 800 ms.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 447 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

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

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 104 ms to 120 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 7.3 MB in 307 requests on a phone: images 3.0 MB (59), scripts 2.9 MB (77) and fonts 979 KiB (13). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

hs_emily_carroll-scaled.jpg weighs 626 KiB. 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 hs_emily_carroll-scaled.jpg at 2,560 px wide, shown at 90 px. Resized copies would save about 953 KiB.

8 images (1.9 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.

RCU-Winged-Warrior-768x527.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).

3 images further down the page (983 KiB) download before anyone scrolls to them. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 2.07 g of CO₂e: 248.2 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

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

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

1 frame has no title, so screen-reader users cannot tell what it contains.

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 15 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.

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

ARIA role should be appropriate for the element: 7 elements on the page fail this check, rated minor by axe-core.

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

Elements with visible text labels do not have matching accessible names. (2 elements).

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

The homepage links to 226 pages on rcu.edu and 41 external pages.

There is no https://rcu.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://rcu.edu/homecoming, https://rcu.edu/about-rochester-christian-university, https://rcu.edu/rcu-visit, https://rcu.edu/academics, https://rcu.edu/academic-undergraduate and https://rcu.edu/graduate-learning and 2 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://rcu.edu/academics/schools-departments/school-of-nursing-allied-health, whose canonical is https://rcu.edu/academics/schools-departments/school-of-nursing-and-health-studies. Linking straight to the canonical URL saves crawlers a detour and keeps ranking signals on one address.

https://rcu.edu/about-rochester-christian-university, https://rcu.edu/graduate-learning and https://rcu.edu/academics/schools-departments/school-of-nursing-allied-health took over 3 s to send their HTML from our server.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 107 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

1 image failed to load on a phone, for example https://rochesteru.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/RCU-Logo-24.png.

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

3 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Failed to load resource: net::ERR_FAILED”.

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.

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 1,063 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Meta Pixel and The Trade Desk and 2 mores (measured from a US location before any click). A consent tool (CookieYes) is installed; check it blocks these until visitors agree where the law requires it.

Opening the homepage sets 18 cookies, 1 of them by other companies (measured from a US location before any click).

Loading the homepage contacts 41 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.