stripes.com website review

186 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (2.8 MB).

9 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 3.4 s.

About 453 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 2.1 s faster on a phone.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 1.1 s of main-thread work and 2.4 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.

A phone's processor spends 11.7 s on main-thread work while loading, 7.2 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

Your mobile performance score is 20. Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, Google/Doubleclick Ads and pelcro.com and others), adding 12.9 MB and 4.3 s of main-thread time.

About 3.7 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page.

Google/Doubleclick Ads costs a phone 945 ms of main-thread work and 2.8 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.

Connatix costs a phone 449 ms of main-thread work and 5.2 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.

110 KiB could be saved by minifying CSS.

pelcro.com costs a phone 662 ms of main-thread work and 464 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.

Other Google APIs/SDKs costs a phone 359 ms of main-thread work and 1,019 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.

20 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 454 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

12 images could be 263 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen.

The page has 2,387 HTML elements. Above 1,500, rendering and every interaction get slower on phones.

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

30 KiB could be saved by minifying JavaScript.

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.

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.

Real visitors wait 2.2 s for your server to start answering (75th percentile). Good is under 800 ms.

Visually, the page fills in at 19.3 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

The page becomes fully interactive after 68.4 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 1.8 s in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Your largest element takes 5.9 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image “A man carries Marine Corps uniform pieces.”.

The first text or image appears after 4.4 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

The layout shifts by 0.259 while loading, so content jumps under the reader's thumb. Good is under 0.1.

Real visitors wait 3.0 s for the largest content to appear (75th percentile). Good is under 2.5 s.

For real visitors the layout shifts by 0.24 (75th percentile). Good is under 0.1.

Real visitors see the first content after 2.7 s (75th percentile). Good is under 1.8 s.

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

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-31, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 95 ms to 89 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-31, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 2.9 s to 3.1 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 17.3 MB in 491 requests on a phone: scripts 6.7 MB (122), media 4.6 MB (3) and images 3.6 MB (173). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

23 images (1.7 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.

16 images further down the page (713 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 4.91 g of CO₂e: 589.4 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

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

2 elements hidden from screen readers can still receive keyboard focus.

2 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: 25 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.

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

Alternative text of images should not be repeated as text: 3 elements on the page fail this check, rated minor by axe-core.

Headings skip levels (h2 → h4, h2 → h4 and h2 → h4), 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.

No structured data (JSON-LD), so Google can't show rich results such as your logo, ratings or FAQs.

Open Graph is missing og:description, so shared links fall back to guesses.

The homepage links to 287 pages on stripes.com and 114 external pages.

Your robots.txt shuts out ChatGPT (ChatGPT-User). These fetch pages to answer people's questions and cite the source, so your site can't be quoted or linked in those answers.

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.stripes.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.

robots.txt blocks GPTBot, ClaudeBot and Google-Extended, which collect pages to train models. That's a legitimate choice and doesn't by itself stop the site appearing in AI answers.

https://www.stripes.com/subscribe and https://www.stripes.com/communities have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

https://www.stripes.com/branches, https://www.stripes.com/branches/army, https://www.stripes.com/branches/marine_corps, https://www.stripes.com/branches/navy, https://www.stripes.com/branches/air_force and https://www.stripes.com/branches/coast_guard and 1 other use the same meta description. A description written for each page earns more clicks.

https://www.stripes.com/theaters, https://www.stripes.com/branches, https://www.stripes.com/veterans, https://www.stripes.com/history, https://www.stripes.com/living and https://www.stripes.com/sports and 8 others have no <h1> headline, so visitors and search engines get no clear main topic.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 120 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

1 image failed to load on a phone, for example https://www.stripes.com/.

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

6 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'ready')”.

1 image is served at too low a resolution for sharp phone screens.

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.

Social proof on the homepage: 2 trust badges. Pairing it with named testimonials or customer logos makes it far more convincing.

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 845 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Amazon Ads, Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and The Trade Desk (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 18 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 51 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.