uwo.ca website review

52 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (5.1 MB).

12 images could be 3.6 MB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 1.1 s faster on a phone.

About 737 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 2.9 s faster on a phone.

11 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 2.6 s.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 1.4 s of main-thread work and 1.2 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.

Your mobile performance score is 31 (desktop: 57). Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

A phone's processor spends 4.5 s on main-thread work while loading, 2.5 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 1.8 MB and 2.5 s of main-thread time.

Facebook costs a phone 331 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.

About 54 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.

18 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 348 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

Polyfills for old browsers add 34 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 300 ms faster on a phone.

Desktop scores 57 but mobile only 31. A gap that wide usually means heavy scripts and images that hit phones hardest.

9 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.

3 KiB could be saved by minifying CSS.

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

The page becomes fully interactive after 23.8 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

The first text or image appears after 4.9 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 9.8 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 1.5 s in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Real visitors wait 248 ms for the page to respond to a tap (75th percentile). Good is under 200 ms.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 149 ms to 177 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Real visitors see the first content after 1.9 s (75th percentile). Good is under 1.8 s.

5 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' largest content (lcp) went from 1.1 s to 1.2 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 39.0 MB in 165 requests on a phone: media 31.5 MB (12), images 5.0 MB (49) and scripts 2.0 MB (35). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

EricCollins.png weighs 2.0 MB. On a phone connection a single image that size takes seconds.

11 images (3.0 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.

7 images further down the page (2.6 MB) download before anyone scrolls to them. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

1 image is downloaded at several times the size a phone draws it, for example EricCollins.png at 1,200 px wide, shown at 374 px. Resized copies would save about 264 KiB.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 11.05 g of CO₂e: 1326.3 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

Interactive controls must not be nested: 3 elements on the page fail this check, rated serious by axe-core.

Your title is only 18 characters: “Western University”. Between 30 and 65 characters leaves room to say what you do and for whom.

Structured data found (CollegeOrUniversity, ItemList, NewsMediaOrganization and Organization) but with 1 problem, for example “Organization: url points at a different host (https://www.communications.uwo.ca/)”.

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

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

No favicon is declared in the HTML, so browser tabs and Google's mobile results may show a generic icon.

The homepage links to 110 pages on uwo.ca and 180 external pages.

Your Organization JSON-LD is missing logo, 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://www.uwo.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://www.uwo.ca/parking/index.html and https://www.uwo.ca/research have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

Your homepage links to 2 pages by a URL that isn't their canonical one, for example https://www.uwo.ca/directory.html, whose canonical is https://www.uwo.ca/westerndir//index.html. 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 49 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

5 of 9 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.

1 error was logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Failed to load resource: net::ERR_FAILED”.

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.

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

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 730 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Hotjar and LinkedIn Insight and 6 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 21 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 37 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.