The Collingswood & Westmont Website Census: How 725 local businesses show up online

How well are small businesses presenting themselves online? Are they making it easy for customers to find them and get the information and services they need? Are their websites doing all the essentials to set themselves up for success?

I've had these questions for a long time. From working with lots of small businesses, and just being a consumer myself, my hypothesis has been that most local companies aren't doing the basic things they should be doing online, let alone the more advanced things that marketers frequently try to sell them.

But that was just my opinion based on my experience. I wanted to get some current, objective, comprehensive data on the situation: essentially a census of small business websites.

So I picked one nearby ZIP code to examine in detail: 08108, which covers downtown Collingswood and Westmont in South Jersey. That includes the vibrant commercial district along Haddon Avenue, from the border of Haddonfield to the border of Camden. I scanned every single Google listing I could find there, and if it linked to a website, also ran an audit of the website.

The initial scan found 930 Google listings. Of those, 32 were closed, 30 weren't really businesses (like government offices or public parks), 7 looked like fake listings set up to collect sales leads, and 136 were local branches or franchises of larger brands, which I filtered out to only focus on truly local businesses.

From 930 Google listings to 725 local businesses

That left 725 local businesses to examine. Below is an overview of what I found, with some thoughts and takeaways for all small business owners.

How many businesses in Collingswood and Westmont have a website?

Only about 3 out of 5 businesses (61%) had a link to their own website on their Google Business Profile. Some only linked to social media accounts, some linked to third-party directories, some links were broken, and some had no link at all, indicating they either don't have a website or never added it to their Google listing.

About six in ten local businesses link to a website of their own

Of the 199 without a website linked, more than a quarter were health-related listings: doctors, clinics, counselors, dentists and chiropractors. Most also had no Google reviews, or no new ones in the past year, so it's hard to tell if these professionals are even practicing anymore. For someone searching for care in Collingswood or Westmont, they find a crowd of providers with very little information about them.

Many of the other listings without websites also seem to be inactive, judging by the lack of any recent Google reviews. However, 51 were clearly active businesses with a significant number of recent reviews, including retail stores, restaurants and salons. These are businesses that would almost certainly benefit from a basic website.

Most businesses with no website show no recent sign of activity

I spot-checked a lot of these businesses without sites, and in a few cases found they had a website but it wasn't linked to their Google profile. That's better than not having a site at all, but still a problem, because it's harder for people to find, and harder for Google and AI tools to understand and recommend the business.

How are Collingswood and Westmont websites built?

Of the 430 small business websites found, I then looked at how the sites were built. There was much more variation than I was expecting. I found more than 60 different platforms, ranging from popular DIY site builders like Squarespace and Wix, to industry-specific tools like Slice and SpotHopper, to hand-built or AI-coded sites.

WordPress runs more than a third of local websites

More than a third of sites (36%) are built using WordPress, which makes sense because it's one of the oldest and most popular tools in the world. That's not a problem in and of itself, but in practice WordPress sites are often difficult for non-developers to properly maintain. Themes and plugins need to be updated frequently to maintain functionality and security, and adding new content is often cumbersome. Many times in just the past year or two I've had to perform what I call "WordPress Rescue," where a small business is stuck with an outdated WordPress site another developer built years prior, and the business owner has no idea how to update or maintain it.

Many sites are built on even more dramatically outdated tools, like Weebly, which its owner, Square, has been shutting down in dozens of countries (though not yet in the U.S.). Weebly was already a very limited building platform, and now it's no longer getting updated and is eventually being replaced with Square Online. Two-thirds of the Weebly sites found had major issues, far more than any other platform, indicating they've been neglected and could use a substantial update.

Two-thirds of Weebly sites are outdated, far more than any other platform

How well are Collingswood and Westmont sites built and maintained?

Once a website was found, I then ran several automated checks, looking for details like basic search engine optimization (SEO) best practices, user experience (UX) best practices, and other details that are telltale signs of sites that have been neglected or abandoned, like insecure connections and copyright dates in the footer that are more than a year old. For certain types of business, I also looked for things that are typically annoying for users, like not having storefront hours or contact information on the homepage, or only loading a menu in PDF form.

More than half of storefront sites don't show their hours on the homepage

Only 22% of sites passed every check. Nearly half had minor issues, while about a third had noticeable or serious issues, like not having basic security in place, which causes web browsers to warn visitors. A few (18) had sites that don't resize appropriately for smartphones, something that became an industry standard about a decade ago. There were also 40 websites with copyright dates in their footer that were 3 or more years old, often indicating that was the last time they were updated, and no one's actively updating them.

About one in five local websites passes every check

Signs of neglect: old footers, insecure pages and outdated software

Even for sites that are actively maintained, there were lots of issues with basic SEO details, such as structured code that clearly tells Google and other tools about the business (called schema), missing meta descriptions, and contradictory contact information (like a phone number that doesn't match the Google listing) that can also negatively impact local search rankings.

Four in ten sites don't give Google their business details in structured form

Still more sites violated some basic guidance for creating a good user experience. For this component, I used standards created by the Nielsen Norman Group, one of the pioneers of UX research and a leading authority today. Many sites failed these tests for providing a good experience for their customers, such as text and buttons being too small on smartphones, pop-ups covering the entire screen, and other unnecessary movement that's distracting or confusing.

Four in ten sites use text or buttons too small for a phone

Interestingly, there were 38 websites that had a developer or agency name in the footer, e.g. "Website built by XYZ," linking to the developer's own website. I also scanned those websites, and for 7 of them, the developer's own site had problems of its own (2 didn't load at all). This is also fairly common: someone built a website years ago, may not have done it well in the first place, and is now no longer managing their own website, let alone maintaining their clients' sites. Sometimes, the business owner was left without the credentials and training to update their own site.

Nearly six in ten sites built by a developer with a neglected site are outdated

My takeaways from this first small business website census

One of the key things I've emphasized again and again since founding Mountwell Marketing has been that more small businesses would be better off ignoring trendy marketing tools and tactics, and instead focusing on doing the fundamentals well. That would be better for their own businesses, and better for everyone as consumers.

This analysis helps prove that hypothesis: most small businesses are missing many of the marketing basics. 95% of local websites were missing at least one key best practice, while three out of every five had three or more issues.

Most local websites miss three or more essentials

The 11 essentials, and how many local sites get each right

It also highlights that so many entrepreneurs waste time and money reinventing the wheel when they start their business. In just this one ZIP code there are dozens of different website building and hosting platforms, some of them better, less expensive and easier to maintain than others.

It doesn't have to be this way. For a fraction of the money businesses spend on their storefronts or advertising in local print magazines, they could easily hire an expert to set them up the right way, clean up what they already have, and maintain their websites so they not only stay up to date, but also get better over time.

Appendix: fun facts

• 62,680Google reviews across all local businesses
• 7reviews for the typical local business
• 197local businesses with no Google reviews at all
• 43%of rated businesses have a perfect 5.0 average
• 64%of local businesses have a Haddon Ave address
• 1997oldest copyright year still showing in a local site's footer
• 15 of 48local restaurants take reservations on their website
• 29pages on the typical local website

Health care, restaurants and real estate are the largest groups

Therapists and insurance agents are the most likely to have no website

Businesses without a website have far fewer Google reviews

The typical local website has 29 pages

How I did it

• I searched Google Maps across the whole 08108 ZIP code in a fine grid, then ran a separate search for each of about 80 business types to check it. Businesses without a Google listing aren't included.
• I followed each listing's Website button to where it lands. I didn't go looking for websites that aren't linked from Google; if a site can't be found from the Google listing, that's a problem in itself.
• I identified each site's platform from the files its pages load, and loaded every site in a real browser at phone and desktop size to measure what a customer sees. Sites that turned away automated visits were re-checked in a regular browser, so every local site is included.
• Site-level figures are per website (430 sites); a practice with several Google listings and one website counts once. Usability guidelines come from the Nielsen Norman Group's published research; text-size and contrast thresholds come from the WCAG accessibility standard.