vsu.edu website review

36 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (16.3 MB).

About 351 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 2.0 s faster on a phone.

audioeye.com costs a phone 1.3 s of main-thread work and 345 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.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (audioeye.com, Google Tag Manager and ShareThis and others), adding 1.1 MB and 1.7 s of main-thread time.

Your mobile performance score is 52. Pages that score under 90 lose visitors before the first paint.

3 images could be 637 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 379 ms of main-thread work and 509 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.

2 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 300 ms.

A phone's processor spends 2.8 s on main-thread work while loading, 2.1 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

4 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 158 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

Web fonts hide text while they load. Setting font-display: swap shows text immediately (about 150 ms).

About 72 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.

15 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.

The first text or image appears after 8.2 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Your largest element takes 16.0 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the text “video has no sound - video of short clips of students and e…”.

Visually, the page fills in at 10.9 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

The page becomes fully interactive after 16.1 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 208 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Your homepage downloads 17.4 MB in 91 requests on a phone: media 15.0 MB (2), scripts 1.0 MB (30) and images 806 KiB (17). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 4.94 g of CO₂e: 593.4 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

3 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: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

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 25 characters: “Virginia State University”. Between 30 and 65 characters leaves room to say what you do and for whom.

Your meta description is 242 characters; Google truncates after about 160, so the end of your pitch is cut.

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

The homepage links to 243 pages on vsu.edu and 32 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.vsu.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.vsu.edu/admissions/apply/index.php and https://www.vsu.edu/admissions/apply all use the title “Apply | Virginia State University”. Search engines can't tell which page to show for a search, so each competes with the others.

https://www.vsu.edu/admissions/apply/index.php and https://www.vsu.edu/admissions/apply use the same meta description. A description written for each page earns more clicks.

Your homepage links to 9 pages by a URL that isn't their canonical one, for example https://www.vsu.edu/admissions/apply/index.php, whose canonical is https://www.vsu.edu/admissions/apply. 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 123 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

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

2 of 9 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

6 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”).

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 trust badges. 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 785 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Ads, Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager (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 7 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 24 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.