Work/case study/Alabama Credit Union

case study — Insight Genesis · Credit Union

The design is doing its job. The web underneath has moved.

Five dimensions pressure-tested. Visual design and UX held up; the template-level technical SEO, render performance, and accessibility code did not. The 10+ point engagement-rate drop in the GA4 data has a clean technical fingerprint — and a roadmap to close it.

client_snapshot

client

Alabama Credit
Union

industry

Credit Union
39 branches · AL + N. FL

engagement

Nine Effect Audit
Insight Genesis pillar

delivered

May 2026
Five-dimension report

CREDIT UNION · 70 YEARSAlabama Credit Union.alabamacu.com · 39 locations

the_finding_that_defines_this_audit — performance × engagement

findings/performance-engagement-link.md

critical

FINDING 01 · PERFORMANCE × ENGAGEMENT

A 10-point engagement drop with a 28-PageSpeed signature.

GA4 shows the site’s engagement rate has dropped from 54.9% to 44.4%. PageSpeed Insights run on May 19, 2026 returned a mobile Performance score of 28/100 with a 7.5-second Largest Contentful Paint, 8,530ms of Total Blocking Time, and 14.5 seconds of JavaScript execution on emulated mid-range hardware.

Context: CrUX field data shows typical users currently passing Core Web Vitals — LCP 2.0s, INP 197ms, CLS 0.01. The gap is in the tail. Users on weaker devices and slower connections aren’t waiting through the 7.5-second lab LCP — they’re leaving. Since March 2024, Google’s INP ranking signal made render performance a confirmed input to ranking, not just a tiebreaker.

impact

Engagement decline reading directly through to acquisition. Performance is now both a UX problem and a search-rankings problem, with the same root cause and the same fix sequence.

recommendation

Address the 3,147 KiB of unused JavaScript, the 42 third-party scripts, the 6 Google Font loads, and the 11 blocking stylesheets. Same root cause; same fix sequence; both the median and the tail pull forward at once.

audit_scoreboard

Five dimensions. Five grades.

Industry standards: Core Web Vitals · WCAG 2.1 AA · schema.org · OG protocol

B-

VISUAL DESIGN

Brand identity strong, doing its job.

Alabama crimson + deep navy palette differentiates clearly from competitor credit unions. The /// triple-slash brand element is used consistently as a section accent. One inconsistency: cyan/aqua CTAs on product pages clash with the red/navy system.

C+

USER EXPERIENCE

Conversion paths exist; dense nav drags.

Hero balances brand moment + member login as sidebar (not the common credit-union failure mode). 'I'm looking for' search and 'Become a Member' CTAs are present. 63 navigation links creates cognitive load. Lifestyle Checking landing page has no above-the-fold CTA.

TECHNICAL SEO

Foundation solid, template gaps real.

Title tags, meta descriptions, canonicals, and Organization schema in place. Lighthouse SEO 85/100. But the homepage is missing its H1, og:image is a placehold.co URL site-wide, and /e-services vs /e-Services is splitting 48K+ views across two URLs.

PERFORMANCE

Lighthouse 28 / 100 on mobile.

42 third-party scripts from 15 domains. 11 blocking stylesheets + 6 Google Font loads. 3,147 KiB of unused JavaScript. 14.5s JS execution, 8,530ms TBT, 7.5s LCP on mid-range mobile. The largest single optimization opportunity on the site.

B-

ACCESSIBILITY

Lighthouse 84, overlay isn't enough.

Third-party accessibility overlay present — good intent, not sufficient for WCAG. Specific code-level gaps: missing skip link, broken heading hierarchy (cascades from missing H1), contrast failures, links without discernible names. For a financial-services site, AA is now both best practice and emerging legal baseline.

top_five_priorities — immediate_action

What we’d fix first.

6 critical · 14 high · 16 medium · 3 low

criticalTechnical SEO · H1

Homepage is missing its H1.

The strongest on-page signal for the primary keyword target — and the anchor for screen-reader heading navigation. The current hero headline (“Your Trusted Partner for Financial Success”) renders as an h2. Inner pages each have one correctly structured H1, so the fix is isolated to the homepage template.

1 templateSEO + accessibilityfix: 15 minutes

criticalPerformance · Fonts

Six Google Font resources load — render-blocking on every page.

Each font request is a separate render-blocking call. Consolidating from six families to two (one display, one body) is a one-day fix with measurable Core Web Vitals impact. Lighthouse estimates 1,660ms of font display savings from this change alone.

6 font loadstarget: 2fix: ~30 minutes

criticalPerformance · Third-Party Scripts

42 third-party scripts from 15 external domains.

The largest single performance opportunity on the site, and Core Web Vitals are now a confirmed ranking factor. Includes Pinterest tracking, Eltropy CoBrowse, Ensighten tag manager (running alongside GTM), four Google scripts, five HubSpot scripts, AlphaRank, Facebook pixel, LinkedIn Insight. Each requires DNS, TCP, TLS, and download.

42 scripts15 domainsfix: 1–2 days

criticalTechnical SEO · URLs

Duplicate URL casing on /e-services splitting 48,000+ views.

/e-services/online-banking (39,494 views) and /e-Services/Online-Banking (9,074 views) resolve to the same content but track as separate pages. Splits analytics, dilutes authority. 301 redirect from the mixed-case URL to the lowercase canonical is a sub-30-minute fix.

48K+ views split1 redirectfix: <30 min

highSEO · Open Graph

og:image is a placehold.co URL site-wide.

Every shared link to alabamacu.com renders a gray placeholder box on Facebook, LinkedIn, iMessage, and every other link-preview surface. The fix is a single template change to a branded 1200×630 image — fixed everywhere at once. For a financial brand, this is the entire shareable first impression.

sitewide impact1 templatefix: ~1 hour

measurements

Measured against the real numbers.

Live PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse runs on May 19, 2026, paired with Chrome User Experience field data (28-day window) and GA4 engagement metrics. The lab/field gap is the entire story.

01// alabamacu.com — May 18, 2026

03export const audit = {

04 lighthouse_mobile: 28, // PageSpeed score (of 100)

05 lcp_lab_s: 7.5, // emulated mid-range mobile

06 lcp_field_s: 2.0, // CrUX 28-day · median ✓

07 tbt_ms: 8530, // total blocking time

08 js_execution_s: 14.5, // main-thread JS

10 unused_js_kb: 3147, // largest single fix

11 third_party_scripts: 42, // 15 external domains

12 blocking_stylesheets: 11, // + 6 google fonts

13 network_payload_kb: 12360, // total page weight

15 engagement_rate_before: 54.9, // GA4

16 engagement_rate_after: 44.4, // GA4 · −10.5 pts

17};

remediation_roadmap

Three waves. One quarter.

The site isn’t broken — it’s mistuned for the 2026 web. None of the work below requires a redesign. The sequence below leads with the eight quick wins, then the deeper performance work, then the structural SEO upside the 39-branch footprint unlocks.

WAVE 01 · ONE BUSINESS DAY

Eight quick wins.

Measurable lift on SEO, engagement, and credibility before the larger roadmap work begins.

Add an H1 to the homepage template
Replace og:image placeholder with a branded 1200×630
Consolidate Google Fonts from 6 families to 2
301 /lifestyle-checking → /checking/lifestyle-checking
301 the mixed-case /e-Services URL to lowercase canonical
Add alt text to the 2 missing homepage images
Expand image lazy-loading from 3/22 to 19/22
Add a skip-navigation link

8 actions · ~1 business day

WAVE 02 · WEEKS 2–5

Performance surgery.

Pull the Lighthouse mobile score out of the 20s. Same fixes carry both the tail and the median forward.

Defer / async non-critical third-party scripts (target: 15–20 from 42)
Consolidate dual tag managers (Ensighten + GTM)
Remove 3,147 KiB of unused JavaScript
Modern build targets — drop 151 KiB of legacy JS
Combine + minify CSS; eliminate 80% of blocking stylesheets
Cache-Control header policy — recover 5,339 KiB on return visits
WebP/AVIF image pipeline — 335 KiB savings
Add explicit width/height to all images (CLS fix)

8 actions · ~3–4 sprint weeks

WAVE 03 · QUARTER

Structural SEO + a11y.

Convert the audit into compounding outcomes — local SEO, structured data, code-level accessibility, and conversion tooling.

FinancialService + LocalBusiness JSON-LD across 39 branch pages
39 individual branch landing pages with neighborhood content
FAQ schema on Help Center pages
Rates page restructured to show rates inline, not as a nav hub
Token-level contrast and heading-hierarchy fixes (WCAG 2.1 AA)
Loan/savings/mortgage calculators — SEO and decision-support
Sticky mobile CTAs on product templates
CSP, HSTS, COOP security headers for the financial-site baseline

8 actions · ongoing optimization

what_the_client_walked_away_with

Clarity, in writing.

The Nine Effect Audit is one pillar of the Insight Genesis engagement. The web findings above join the companion SEO, lead generation, and social diagnostics in the same frame — and the full picture lands as a Growth & Optimization Roadmap. The deliverable is the diagnosis; the next phase is optional.

deliverables

Five-dimension website audit — visual design, UX, technical SEO, accessibility, and performance
Lighthouse + CrUX data — lab and field measured side-by-side, with the engagement-rate fingerprint surfaced
19-finding matrix ranked by severity (6 critical / 14 high / 16 medium / 3 low) with effort estimates per item
Eight quick wins sequenced inside one business day — H1, og:image, fonts, redirects, alt text, lazy load, skip link
Growth & Optimization Roadmap — three-wave sequence carrying the audit findings into measurable outcomes over the quarter

Want one of these for your business?

get_started

~$nine init --audit

Six weeks. Fixed scope. Starting at $10,000. A written diagnosis of where your marketing actually stands — and a sequenced plan to move it. If we don’t think you need us, we’ll say so.

Start an audit→↵Book a discovery call⌘ B