valpo.edu website review

About 4.6 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 14.4 s faster on a phone.

94 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 11.7 s.

YouTube costs a phone 1.8 s of main-thread work and 5.7 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 37 (desktop: 30). Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

A phone's processor spends 7.7 s on main-thread work while loading, 4.5 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (YouTube, Google Tag Manager and 451.io and others), adding 7.7 MB and 3.0 s of main-thread time.

18 images could be 1.2 MB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 500 ms faster on a phone.

26 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (816 KiB).

About 121 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 910 ms faster on a phone.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 680 ms of main-thread work and 866 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.

20 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 669 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

The page has 2,954 HTML elements. Above 1,500, rendering and every interaction get slower on phones.

451.io costs a phone 158 ms of main-thread work and 626 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.

Other Google APIs/SDKs costs a phone 74 ms of main-thread work and 300 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.

Polyfills for old browsers add 43 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.

4 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.

The first text or image appears after 25.3 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Your largest element takes 34.6 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the text “Find Your Calling Not sure what to study? Explore the abund…”.

Visually, the page fills in at 25.3 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

The page becomes fully interactive after 64.3 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 743 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Real visitors wait 2.9 s for the largest content to appear (75th percentile). Good is under 2.5 s.

Real visitors see the first content after 2.2 s (75th percentile). Good is under 1.8 s.

6 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 106 ms to 122 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 2.4 s to 2.4 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 19.7 MB in 368 requests on a phone: scripts 8.4 MB (153), media 8.0 MB (2) and images 1.5 MB (53). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

7 images further down the page (895 KiB) download before anyone scrolls to them. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

2 images are downloaded at several times the size a phone draws them, for example 2026019-JR-MLK-Day-Convocation-100.webp at 2,400 px wide, shown at 390 px. Resized copies would save about 398 KiB.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 5.59 g of CO₂e: 671.0 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

1 dropdown has no label.

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

3 form fields have no label, so screen readers announce an empty box and autofill guesses.

Your title is only 21 characters: “Valparaiso University”. Between 30 and 65 characters leaves room to say what you do and for whom.

There are 2 <h1> headlines (“Valparaiso University” and “We Build Lives for Good”). One clear main headline is easier for people and search engines.

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

The homepage links to 191 pages on valpo.edu and 17 external pages.

Your robots.txt shuts out ChatGPT search (OAI-SearchBot). These fetch pages to answer people's questions and cite the source, so your site can't be quoted or linked in those answers.

Your Organization JSON-LD is missing url, logo, 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.valpo.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.valpo.edu/stories, https://www.valpo.edu/academics/find-your-program and https://www.valpo.edu/college-of-arts-and-sciences have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

https://www.valpo.edu/academics/find-your-program took over 3 s to send its HTML from our server.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 110 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

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

5 errors were 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”).

Large scripts ship without source maps.

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.

No phone number or email link on the homepage, so ready-to-buy visitors have one fewer way to reach you.

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 1,153 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Meta Pixel and Microsoft Clarity 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 26 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.