rmc.edu website review

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 1.6 s of main-thread work and 1.2 MB of downloads while your page loads. That alone is enough to make taps feel slow. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

20 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 1.2 s.

A phone's processor spends 5.1 s on main-thread work while loading, 2.9 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, Facebook and TikTok and others), adding 1.9 MB and 2.7 s of main-thread time.

Your mobile performance score is 65 (desktop: 68). Pages that score under 90 lose visitors before the first paint.

About 738 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page.

18 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 378 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

Facebook costs a phone 331 ms of main-thread work and 278 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.

7 images could be 352 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen.

14 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (334 KiB).

About 27 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.

Polyfills for old browsers add 32 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.

5 KiB could be saved by minifying JavaScript.

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 page becomes fully interactive after 22.4 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 2.0 s in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Visually, the page fills in at 6.0 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

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

Real visitors wait 243 ms for the page to respond to a tap (75th percentile). Good is under 200 ms.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 179 ms to 221 ms 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 934 ms for your server to start answering (75th percentile). Good is under 800 ms.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 1.9 s to 2.1 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 3.3 MB in 157 requests on a phone: scripts 2.0 MB (46), images 1.0 MB (38) and fonts 141 KiB (8). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

8 images (818 KiB) 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.

4 images further down the page (401 KiB) download before anyone scrolls to them. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

1 image is downloaded at several times the size a phone draws it, for example high-impact-2024.jpg at 1,467 px wide, shown at 390 px. Resized copies would save about 58 KiB.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 0.94 g of CO₂e: 112.4 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

2 buttons have no accessible name, so screen readers announce just “button”.

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

Some lists contain elements other than list items, which screen readers announce wrongly.

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 24 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.

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

1 form field has no label, so screen readers announce an empty box and autofill guesses.

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

Headings should not be empty: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated minor by axe-core.

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

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

Your title is only 22 characters: “Randolph-Macon College”. Between 30 and 65 characters leaves room to say what you do and for whom.

No XML sitemap at https://www.rmc.edu/sitemap_index.xml, so Google discovers your pages only by following links.

The homepage links to 131 pages on rmc.edu and 19 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.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 114 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=97192861&tm=gtm002&Ver=2&mid=3acb666c-aa0b-427d-a395-42e201f30f44&bo=1&sid=8d912b00d2eb11f1a7b53f95479aa8a5&vid=8d913340d2eb11f1adb2dd479bb077ac&vids=1&msclkid=N&pi=91.

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

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.

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 299 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Meta Pixel and Microsoft Ads and 3 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 19 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 39 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.