secondstep.org website review

About 2.1 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 8.3 s faster on a phone.

4 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 5.0 s.

58 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (706 KiB).

YouTube costs a phone 1.0 s of main-thread work and 1.9 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.

Your mobile performance score is 38 (desktop: 66). Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

A phone's processor spends 5.7 s on main-thread work while loading, 2.8 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (YouTube, Google Tag Manager and Facebook and others), adding 5.3 MB and 2.3 s of main-thread time.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 603 ms of main-thread work and 829 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.

About 137 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.

6 images could be 467 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen.

website-files.com costs a phone 149 ms of main-thread work and 1.7 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.

20 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 313 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

JSDelivr CDN costs a phone 97 ms of main-thread work and 386 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.

Polyfills for old browsers add 40 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 200 ms faster on a phone.

Desktop scores 66 but mobile only 38. 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.

2 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 16.1 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Your largest element takes 24.6 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image “40th Birthday Message”.

Visually, the page fills in at 16.1 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

The page becomes fully interactive after 38.7 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 698 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Real visitors wait 2.7 s for the largest content to appear (75th percentile). Good is under 2.5 s.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 107 ms to 135 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

13 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' largest content (lcp) went from 2.2 s to 2.3 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 6.3 MB in 188 requests on a phone: scripts 4.2 MB (88), fonts 1.1 MB (13) and images 601 KiB (23). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

69aacf0af5de8e9a9a6fa21f_Hero Image.avif 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).

1 image (56 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 1.79 g of CO₂e: 214.3 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

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

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

There are 3 <h1> headlines (“Better Climate. Better Behavior.Better Learning.”, “Better Climate. Better Behavior.Better Learning.” and “Improve school climate by building the skills tha…”). One clear main headline is easier for people and search engines.

Structured data found (WebPage) but with 1 problem, for example “WebPage: url is not an absolute URL ("/")”.

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

The homepage links to 49 pages on secondstep.org 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://www.secondstep.org/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.secondstep.org/resources/assessments-and-evaluation is marked noindex but linked from your homepage. If it is meant to be found, remove the noindex.

https://www.secondstep.org/resources/blog and https://www.secondstep.org/resources/success-stories use the same meta description. A description written for each page earns more clicks.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 35 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

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

The page uses 1 deprecated browser API that will stop working in future browsers (“Unload event listeners are deprecated and will be removed.”).

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

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

Large scripts ship without source maps.

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 680 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, LinkedIn Insight and Meta Pixel and 1 more (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 13 cookies, 1 of them by other companies (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 40 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.