Fix Forced Reflows and Layout Shifts

How to optimize sciencereader.com

Generic SiteScore: 79/100Analyzed February 2026

Fix Forced Reflows and Layout Shifts

Medium Impact+6 points estimated

Why It Matters

JavaScript is causing 63ms of forced reflows, blocking the main thread and degrading user experience.

How to Fix

Audit jQuery code to avoid reading geometric properties after DOM changes - batch DOM reads before writes. Replace jQuery animations with CSS transitions where possible. Update the Cookie Law Info plugin to a more efficient version that doesn't trigger layout recalculations.

0Needs Improvement

What This Score Means

A score of 79 falls in the "Needs Improvement" range (50-89). While it is better than poor (0-49), you should aim for 90+ to provide an optimal user experience and maximize SEO benefits.

This site is slower than approximately 35% of similar sites. The main issues affecting performance are image optimization, JavaScript execution time, and layout stability.

Addressing these issues could improve your conversion rate by 15-20% and boost your search engine rankings.

Core Web Vitals Analysis

LCP

Largest Contentful Paint

3.7s
Needs Improvement

Good: < 2.5s

Measures how long it takes for the main content to appear on screen

INP

Interaction to Next Paint

289ms
Needs Improvement

Good: < 200ms

Measures how quickly the page responds to user interactions

CLS

Cumulative Layout Shift

0.00
Good

Good: < 0.1

Measures visual stability - how much content shifts during page load

AI Performance Analysis

This science website scores 79/100 on performance but has significant room for improvement, particularly with loading speed issues that hurt user experience. The biggest problem is excessive resource loading delays - your main content image takes over 2.7 seconds to start loading due to render-blocking CSS and JavaScript files that could be deferred or optimized. Images are also oversized for their display dimensions (wasting 28KB) and you have 228KB of unused JavaScript from Google Analytics and other plugins that's slowing things down. Fixing these image optimization issues, deferring non-critical JavaScript, and improving caching policies could easily boost your score into the 90s and make the site feel much faster for visitors.

Other Optimization Recommendations

Eliminate Render Blocking Resources

High Impact+12 points estimated

Why It Matters:

Critical CSS and JavaScript files are blocking page rendering, delaying First Contentful Paint by 450ms.

How to Fix:

Use a WordPress optimization plugin like WP Rocket or Autoptimize to inline critical CSS and defer non-essential CSS. Move jQuery to load asynchronously or defer it until after page render. Combine and minify CSS files to reduce the number of blocking requests.

Optimize Image Delivery and Compression

High Impact+8 points estimated

Why It Matters:

Images are oversized for their display dimensions and poorly compressed, wasting 28 KiB in bandwidth and slowing LCP.

How to Fix:

Install ShortPixel or Smush to automatically compress images and serve responsive sizes. Update the badge image to match its 558x498 display size instead of serving 768x686. Increase WebP compression on the Dyscalculia article image to reduce its 25KB size by ~45%.

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Generic Performance Resources

Remove Unused JavaScript Code

Google Tag Manager scripts contain 139KB of unused code, slowing LCP by 600ms and wasting processing time.

Optimize Video File Caching

17MB of video content has zero cache lifetime, forcing full re-downloads on every visit and wasting 69MB of bandwidth.

Defer Render-Blocking JavaScript

JavaScript files are blocking initial page render, delaying FCP by 750ms and preventing users from seeing content.

Remove Unused CSS and JavaScript

136KB of unused JavaScript and 63KB of unused CSS waste bandwidth and slow down page parsing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Keep Your Site Fast After Optimization

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