ubyssey.ca website review

30 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (3.0 MB).

7 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 3.8 s.

10 images could be 774 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 1.6 s faster on a phone.

Your mobile performance score is 63 (desktop: 77). Pages that score under 90 lose visitors before the first paint.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (Google/Doubleclick Ads, Google Tag Manager and Other Google APIs/SDKs and others), adding 4.6 MB and 457 ms of main-thread time.

About 31 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 460 ms faster on a phone.

About 331 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 150 ms faster on a phone.

Other Google APIs/SDKs costs a phone 52 ms of main-thread work and 3.6 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.

Adobe TypeKit costs a phone 0 ms of main-thread work and 461 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.

5 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 171 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

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

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.

Your largest element takes 8.3 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image “A smiling man in a blue button-up shirt wears an orange-red…”.

The first text or image appears after 4.8 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

The page becomes fully interactive after 10.5 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Real visitors wait 1.1 s for your server to start answering (75th percentile). Good is under 800 ms.

Visually, the page fills in at 4.8 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

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

Your homepage downloads 4.6 MB in 47 requests on a phone: images 3.5 MB (20), scripts 593 KiB (12) and fonts 490 KiB (5). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

2 images weigh 2.4 MB together. On a phone connection a single image that size takes seconds.

6 images are downloaded at several times the size a phone draws them, for example vilest-rag.png at 3,674 px wide, shown at 366 px. Resized copies would save about 2.3 MB.

12 images (3.2 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.

6 images further down the page (2.6 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 1.32 g of CO₂e: 158.1 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

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

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 3 elements on the page fail this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

The viewport tag blocks pinch-zoom, which low-vision visitors rely on.

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.

Elements with visible text labels do not have matching accessible names. (3 elements).

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

Your title is only 11 characters: “The Ubyssey”. 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 171 characters; Google truncates after about 160, so the end of your pitch is cut.

No XML sitemap at https://ubyssey.ca/sitemap.xml, so Google discovers your pages only by following links.

The homepage links to 126 pages on ubyssey.ca and 11 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 /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 and ClaudeBot, which collect pages to train models. That's a legitimate choice and doesn't by itself stop the site appearing in AI answers.

/archive, /photo, /video, /the-vilest-rag, /about/our-team and /contact have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 74 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

30 of 46 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

1 error was logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Uncaught Error: Minified React error #299; visit https://reactjs.org/docs/error-decoder.html?invariant=299 for the full…”.

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: 20 customer or partner logos. 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 1,029 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and Meta Pixel (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 2 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 9 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.