stthom.edu website review

93 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (16.2 MB).

42 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 5.5 s.

About 476 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 2.3 s faster on a phone.

Your mobile performance score is 46 (desktop: 64). Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

The page has 3,019 HTML elements. Above 1,500, rendering and every interaction get slower on phones.

About 1.0 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 450 ms faster on a phone.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, rlets.com and Facebook and others), adding 1.0 MB and 899 ms of main-thread time.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 336 ms of main-thread work and 518 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 HTML itself could arrive sooner: redirects, a slow server response or missing compression delay everything after it.

A phone's processor spends 2.6 s on main-thread work while loading, 1.5 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

17 KiB could be saved by minifying CSS.

10 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 157 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

1 image could be 44 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen.

Polyfills for old browsers add 21 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.

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 6.5 s for the largest content to appear (75th percentile). Good is under 2.5 s.

Real visitors see the first content after 6.2 s (75th percentile). Good is under 1.8 s.

Real visitors wait 3.1 s for your server to start answering (75th percentile). Good is under 800 ms.

Your largest element takes 12.2 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the text “University of St. Thomas HOUSTON, TEXAS CRESCAMUS IN CHRIST…”.

The first text or image appears after 7.4 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

The page becomes fully interactive after 21.6 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 9.9 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 111 ms to 155 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 1.5 s to 5.4 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 414 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

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

Your homepage downloads 17.6 MB in 146 requests on a phone: media 13.2 MB (2), scripts 2.3 MB (49) and stylesheets 771 KiB (47). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

8 images (411 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 (118 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 4.98 g of CO₂e: 597.3 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

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

Landmarks should have a unique role or role/label/title (i.e. accessible name) combination: 2 elements on the page fail this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

Banner landmark should not be contained in another landmark: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

Document should not have more than one banner landmark: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

ARIA role should be appropriate for the element: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated minor by axe-core.

Headings skip levels (h2 → h6, h2 → h5 and h3 → h5), which makes the page harder to scan with a screen reader.

There are 4 <h1> headlines (“University of St. Thomas”, “VOA Provides 100 Pragmatic Studies Scholarships T…” and “UST Announces Inauguration of Dr. Sinda Vanderpool”). One clear main headline is easier for people and search engines.

5 links use generic text like “click here” or “learn more”, which tells Google nothing about the page behind them.

1 link has no real href, so search engines can't follow it.

The homepage links to 139 pages on stthom.edu and 66 external pages.

Your Organization JSON-LD is missing url, sameAs (social profiles), description and contact details. These are the facts AI assistants use to describe a business and to tell it apart from others with a similar name.

There is no https://stthom.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.

Your homepage links to 8 pages by a URL that isn't their canonical one, for example https://stthom.edu/faculty-directory, whose canonical is https://stthom.edu/about/faculty-directory. Linking straight to the canonical URL saves crawlers a detour and keeps ranking signals on one address.

https://stthom.edu/news, https://stthom.edu/about, https://stthom.edu/faculty-directory, https://stthom.edu/about/giving, https://stthom.edu/about/leadership-administration and https://stthom.edu/admissions and 9 others took over 3 s to send their HTML from our server.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 90 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=56303026&Ver=2&mid=6f21d361-0c68-4b45-a543-69ebd51d177f&bo=1&sid=4aa710e0d1f611f1a9e90b81b6117b60&vid=4aa724f0d1f611f19e69c73f27ff560a&vids=1&msclkid=N&pi=918639831&lg.

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

5 of 12 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

3 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “tag is not defined”.

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

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

A local customer looking to call finds no phone number on the homepage. Add one, ideally as a tap-to-call link.

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 661 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 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 17 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 21 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.