Small Business Website Quality Report: 2026
We analyzed 235,120+ small businesses across 42 cities and 34 industries. Here’s what we found.
Top 10 Cities With the Worst Small Business Websites
Ranked by the percentage of business websites scoring below 80/100 on mobile performance.
Industries With the Lowest Website Quality
All 34 industries ranked by percentage of websites scoring below 80.
Key Findings
- 42% of small business websites score below 80/100 on mobile performance. Nearly half of all business websites need improvement.
- Berlin and Phoenix tie for the worst average website quality of any major metro, with 46% of businesses scoring below 80.
- Dentists and Tattoo Shops have the lowest average website quality of any industry at 45%.
- Only 69% of small businesses have a website at all, meaning 31% are completely invisible online.
What This Means for Web Designers & Agencies
If you sell web design, SEO, or digital marketing services to local businesses, this data tells a clear story: nearly half of all small business websites are underperforming, and about a third of businesses don’t have a website at all. That’s a massive addressable market hiding in plain sight.
The cities at the top of this list (Berlin, Phoenix, Charlotte, Chicago) represent the highest-opportunity markets for cold outreach. A web designer targeting dentists in Berlin would find that 46% of their prospects already have websites that need improvement. That’s not a cold pitch; it’s a warm conversation.
Want to find these businesses yourself? Browse leads by city and industry, or use our free website scoring tool to evaluate any business website instantly. Read our guide on how to find web design clients for a step-by-step process.