ubalt.edu website review

21 images could be 13.7 MB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 4.0 s faster on a phone.

About 716 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 1.5 s faster on a phone.

7 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 1.5 s.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 1.1 s of main-thread work and 947 KiB 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 27. Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

A phone's processor spends 4.1 s on main-thread work while loading, 1.9 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 1.5 MB and 1.8 s of main-thread time.

30 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (407 KiB).

Facebook costs a phone 277 ms of main-thread work and 254 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.

18 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 257 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

Web fonts hide text while they load. Setting font-display: swap shows text immediately (about 250 ms).

The HTML itself could arrive sooner: redirects, a slow server response or missing compression delay everything after it.

About 55 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page.

Polyfills for old browsers add 31 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 5.1 s for the largest content to appear (75th percentile). Good is under 2.5 s.

Real visitors see the first content after 4.3 s (75th percentile). Good is under 1.8 s.

Real visitors wait 3.6 s for your server to start answering (75th percentile). Good is under 800 ms.

Your largest element takes 46.0 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image “Seth, a UBalt student, leans against a pool table while pos…”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 51.8 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 12.2 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 958 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

For real visitors the layout shifts by 0.18 (75th percentile). Good is under 0.1.

The layout shifts by 0.247 while loading, so content jumps under the reader's thumb. Good is under 0.1.

The first text or image appears after 2.8 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

7 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 170 ms to 204 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 2.7 s to 3.5 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 18.1 MB in 181 requests on a phone: images 15.8 MB (50), scripts 1.8 MB (44) and fonts 228 KiB (10). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

10 images weigh 11.8 MB together. On a phone connection a single image that size takes seconds.

10 images are downloaded at several times the size a phone draws them, for example homepage_pathways_design.jpg at 2,000 px wide, shown at 390 px. Resized copies would save about 5.5 MB.

22 images (15.7 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.

12 images further down the page (8.8 MB) 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 5.14 g of CO₂e: 616.5 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: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

Your title is only 27 characters: “The University of Baltimore”. Between 30 and 65 characters leaves room to say what you do and for whom.

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

Your meta description is 356 characters; Google truncates after about 160, so the end of your pitch is cut.

No Open Graph image (also missing: og:title, og:description), so links shared on LinkedIn, Slack or Facebook show no preview picture.

No twitter:card tag. X falls back to Open Graph, which is incomplete here.

The homepage links to 99 pages on ubalt.edu and 8 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.ubalt.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://www.ubalt.edu/academics/academic-libraries/index.cfm and https://www.ubalt.edu/academics/early-college-initiatives/index.cfm have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

https://www.ubalt.edu/admission-and-aid/undergraduate-admissions/index.cfm and https://www.ubalt.edu/admission-and-aid/transfer-admissions/index.cfm took over 3 s to send their HTML from our server.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 70 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

6 of 22 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

1 third-party cookie is 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 “$ is not defined”.

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.

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 292 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Hotjar and LinkedIn Insight and 4 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 27 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.