ucn.ca website review

9 images could be 1.3 MB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 5.8 s faster on a phone.

About 518 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 4.3 s faster on a phone.

10 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 1.9 s.

6 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (283 KiB).

Your mobile performance score is 47. 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 CDN, Facebook and Google Tag Manager and others), adding 1.3 MB and 967 ms of main-thread time.

Google CDN costs a phone 554 ms of main-thread work and 741 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 65 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 300 ms faster on a phone.

A phone's processor spends 2.5 s on main-thread work while loading, 1.5 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

Polyfills for old browsers add 23 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 150 ms faster on a phone.

8 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 152 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

Web fonts hide text while they load. Setting font-display: swap shows text immediately (about 100 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.

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 23.5 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image.

The page becomes fully interactive after 23.7 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

The first text or image appears after 6.5 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 10.4 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Real visitors wait 2.6 s for the largest content to appear (75th percentile). Good is under 2.5 s.

Real visitors wait 1.2 s for your server to start answering (75th percentile). Good is under 800 ms.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 325 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-31, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 94 ms to 107 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 4.5 MB in 55 requests on a phone: images 1.9 MB (14), scripts 1.2 MB (20) and fonts 1,001 KiB (3). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

5 images are downloaded at several times the size a phone draws them, for example Thompson-Orientation-Full-Res-327-scaled.jpg at 1,920 px wide, shown at 390 px. Resized copies would save about 689 KiB.

11 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.

8 images further down the page (1.1 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 1.29 g of CO₂e: 154.7 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

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: 31 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.

Landmarks should have a unique role or role/label/title (i.e. accessible name) combination: 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.

Headings skip levels (h1 → h4, h2 → h4 and h2 → h5), which makes the page harder to scan with a screen reader.

Your title is 77 characters, so Google will cut it off around 60: “University College of the North | Post-Secondary Education Institute Manitoba”.

1 link use generic text like “click here” or “learn more”, which tells Google nothing about the page behind it.

The homepage links to 196 pages on ucn.ca and 6 external pages.

Your Organization JSON-LD is missing 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://ucn.ca/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://ucn.ca/indigenous-initiatives-reconciliation/land-acknowledgement, https://ucn.ca/sponsors-and-sponsored-students, https://ucn.ca/applynow, https://ucn.ca/events, https://ucn.ca/stories and https://ucn.ca/locations and 6 others have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

Your homepage links to 1 page by a URL that isn't its canonical one, for example https://ucn.ca/applynow, whose canonical is https://ucn.ca/apply-now. Linking straight to the canonical URL saves crawlers a detour and keeps ranking signals on one address.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 52 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

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

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.

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 779 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads 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 8 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.