3 Recommendations for Web Performance: Glacier National Park Website
The Glacier National Park website has an interesting parameter that poses some challenges for increasing web performance. The website itself seems to be part of and interlinked system of websites under the umbrella of the entire National Park Service. That being said it would still be good to see some simple changes and they could start right there on the Glacier National Park branch of website.
Design — Mobile First Designs
According to the PageSpeed Insights tool, which is provided by Google, the Glacier National Park page on the National Parks Service (NPS) website ranks moderately well for both mobile (54/100) and desktop (83/100). The difference in mobile and desktop performance suggests the website was not designed mobile first.
Optimizations to both the mobile and the desktop site would increase user experience and optimize the page’s rank on a search engine results page (SERP).
Mobile Optimizations
By eliminating render-blocking resources, serving images in updated formats, deferring offscreen images, and removing unused CSS, Glacier’s page could load up to 4.17 seconds faster. This increase in speed will make the user more likely to return and increase their ranking on relevant keywords.
Desktop Optimizations
While the website is better optimized for desktops, there are still opportunities for improvements. By implementing these changes, Glacier can see a page load speed increase of .93 seconds.
Structured Data
On the SERP for the query “things to do in glacier national park”, there is a plethora of questions about Glacier National Park answered completely on the webpage. Answers to these questions, come from web pages other than the official Glacier National Park website.
Intentionally structuring web data to optimize for People Also Ask boxes (PAAs) will provide the clearest information and the most opportunities for users to learn more.
Conclusion
Streamlining the performance of any website is important these days. Google is the master of who is seen and who is forgotten. National Parks like Glacier should not be forgotten due to petty mistake and minor fixable problem. Glacier should lead the way in modernizing National Park website and focusing on the mobile user first.
