The Haddonfield Website Census: How 946 local businesses show up online

Last month I published a census of every small business website in Collingswood and Westmont. The short version: most local businesses are missing the basics online, and the bar for doing better is remarkably low.

The most common question I got afterward was some version of "Is that just Collingswood?"

Fair question. One ZIP code is a sample of one. So I ran the same census next door, in 08033, which covers Haddonfield, and then went back and refreshed the Collingswood numbers with the same, slightly improved method, so the two could be compared fairly. [LEE: a line on why Haddonfield: it's home, and Mountwell's own office is here.]

The scan found 1,217 Google listings in 08033. Of those, 45 were temporarily closed, 37 weren't really businesses (parks, monuments, government offices), 20 looked like fake listings set up to collect sales leads, and 169 were branches or franchises of larger brands, or pages on a big company's website. That left 946 locally owned businesses to examine.

From 1,217 Google listings to 946 local businesses

Fun fact: 20 suspected fake listings is a lot for a town that size. Collingswood and Westmont had 13. Most of Haddonfield's follow the same recipe: a trade plus the town's name ("[town] Roll Off Dumpster Rentals"), no website or one on a .homes or .quest domain, a phone number from North Jersey or outside the region, and zero or one review. [VERIFY: spot-check two or three of these in Google Maps before publishing.]

How many businesses in Haddonfield have a website?

Almost exactly the same share as in Collingswood and Westmont: about 3 out of 5 businesses (62%) link to a website of their own on their Google Business Profile. Another 28% have no link at all, and the rest point somewhere less useful, like a dead link (54 businesses), a Facebook page, a booking app or a domain that has lapsed. Three of those lapsed domains now show gambling spam.

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

The businesses without websites tell a different story here, though. In Collingswood, they were a mix of shops, salons, contractors and health care. In Haddonfield, they're overwhelmingly health care: 78 of the 268 are doctor and clinic listings, and 61 of those 78 have never received a single Google review.

A lot of these are listings for individual practitioners in the medical offices along Kings Highway, [VERIFY: many of which appear to have been created automatically rather than by the practitioners.] Nobody is managing them, and they don't link anywhere. Someone searching for a specialist in Haddonfield finds a long list of names with nothing behind them.

Most businesses with no website show no recent sign of activity

Only 40 of the 268 have a review from the past year. Those are the clearly active businesses that would almost certainly benefit from a basic website, including [LEE: describe a few types after a look at the list, e.g. salons, a bakery, contractors].

How are Haddonfield websites built?

I found 71 different platforms behind the 542 local websites, from the usual DIY builders to restaurant ordering systems, salon booking tools, a rare-book dealer's platform and one site still built with a desktop program that was discontinued years ago.

WordPress runs four in ten local websites

WordPress is even more dominant here than in Collingswood and Westmont: 41% of local sites, compared with 36%. That tracks with the business mix. Law firms, medical practices and financial advisers tend to hire a developer or agency, and developers tend to build on WordPress.

Hand-built sites were again the most likely to be outdated, and by a wider margin: 37% of them score as outdated, compared with 10% of WordPress sites and 2% of Wix sites. Many of them are clearly the product of a developer who built something custom years ago and then moved on.

Hand-built sites are the most likely to be outdated

How well are Haddonfield sites built and maintained?

I ran the same checks as last time: basic search engine optimization (SEO), user experience (UX) guidelines from the Nielsen Norman Group, and the telltale signs of a neglected site, like insecure pages and footer copyright dates that are years out of date.

The headline is a little better than in Collingswood and Westmont. About 28% of Haddonfield's local sites have no technical problems at all, compared with 21%. Still, 14% score as outdated, the same share as next door, and 25 sites don't resize properly for a phone.

About one in four local websites has no technical problems

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

The basics that matter most to customers fared worse. Six in ten storefront websites don't show their hours on the homepage, and more than a third don't show a phone number or a call button on the first screen someone sees on their phone.

Six in ten storefront sites don't show their hours on the homepage

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

And just like last time, plenty of sites violate basic usability guidance. More than half have five or more buttons or links too small to tap comfortably on a phone, and 44% use body text smaller than 16 pixels.

Half of sites use buttons or links too small for a phone

How does Haddonfield compare with Collingswood and Westmont?

Haddonfield and Collingswood share a border, a PATCO line and a reputation for walkable downtowns. But their business districts are built very differently, and that shows up in the data.

A different mix of businesses

Collingswood's Haddon Avenue is a dining and shopping street: 62% of local businesses there have a Haddon Avenue address. Haddonfield's Kings Highway is more of an office corridor, and only 27% of local businesses are on Kings Highway East.

Doctors and medical clinics make up 17% of Haddonfield's local businesses, compared with 10% in Collingswood and Westmont. Lawyers (6.6% vs. 2.5%), consultants and financial firms are also far more common. Restaurants (3.5% vs. 6.8%) and hair and beauty salons (2.6% vs. 4.7%) are much less so. [VERIFY: Haddonfield's restaurant count is lower partly because many restaurants in town have addresses in other ZIP codes, and the census counts businesses by the ZIP in their address.]

Haddonfield has far more doctors, lawyers and financial firms

Fewer reviews, more perfect ratings

Here's a pattern I didn't expect. The typical Haddonfield business has just 2 Google reviews, compared with 7 in Collingswood and Westmont, and 37% have none at all (27% next door). Haddonfield's 946 local businesses have about 38,000 reviews combined, while Collingswood and Westmont's 707 have nearly 60,000.

Yet half of Haddonfield's rated businesses have a perfect 5.0 average, compared with 42% next door.

Both of those come down to the business mix. Restaurants and salons collect reviews by the hundreds; a lawyer or a solo practitioner might get a handful in a decade. And a business with three reviews is much more likely to have a perfect score than one with 300. In other words, a 5.0 rating in Haddonfield often means "a few happy clients," not "hundreds of happy customers." That's worth remembering the next time you're comparing two businesses by their stars alone.

Half of Haddonfield's rated businesses have a perfect 5.0

Different towns, the same website problems

This was the most striking finding. Despite very different business districts, the two ZIP codes' websites look remarkably similar. The same share of businesses link their own site on Google (62% vs. 61%). The same share of sites score as outdated (14%). And about six in ten sites miss three or more of the 11 essentials in both places.

Haddonfield's sites are a little more likely to be technically clean, which fits a town full of professional firms that pay a developer. But they're also more likely to have tiny buttons and to leave storefront hours off the homepage. Being professionally built isn't the same as being built for the customer.

Different towns, nearly the same website problems

My takeaways from the second small business website census

When I published the first census, I suspected Collingswood's results would hold up in most small-business districts. Haddonfield suggests they do. A town with more professional offices and more hired developers ends up with nearly the same problems: 97% of local websites miss at least one essential, the median site misses three, and only 16 of 542 meet all 11.

Most local websites miss three or more essentials

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

The other lesson is about who these problems affect. In Collingswood, the businesses with no website were scattered across every industry. In Haddonfield, they're concentrated in health care, where the stakes for the person searching are a lot higher than finding a slice of pizza. If you're a practitioner with a Google listing you've never touched, it's worth five minutes to claim it, add a link and make sure the basics are right.

As I said last time, none of this is about how creative or beautiful a website is. It's about the fundamentals, and the bar is still extremely low. Any local business can clear it with a little experienced help, and spend the rest of its energy on the things that make it unique.

[LEE: optional candid aside, e.g. Mountwell's own site is one of the 16 that meet all 11 essentials ("it'd better").]

Appendix: fun facts

• 38,278Google reviews across all local businesses
• 2reviews for the typical local business
• 347local businesses with no Google reviews at all
• 50%of rated businesses have a perfect 5.0 average
• 27%of local businesses have a Kings Highway East address
• 2010oldest copyright year still showing in a local site's footer
• 7 of 33local restaurants take reservations on their website
• 32pages on the typical local website

Doctors, consultants and lawyers are the largest groups

Chiropractors, therapists and doctors are the most likely to have no website

Businesses without a website have far fewer Google reviews

The typical local website has 32 pages

How I did it

• I searched Google Maps across the whole 08033 ZIP code in a fine grid, then ran a separate search for each of about 80 business types to check it. I also checked the results against a database of more than 20,000 Camden County businesses compiled from state licensing records, OpenStreetMap and other public sources, and added the dozen businesses on Google that the searches had missed. Businesses without a Google listing aren't included, and businesses are counted by the ZIP code in their address.
• 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, read the page code of every site that looked hand-coded, and loaded every site in a real browser at phone and desktop size to measure what a customer sees. 23 Haddonfield websites turned away automated visits, so I opened each one by hand in a regular browser. Six turned out to be dead, a placeholder or pointing somewhere else, and they're counted that way. The other 17 missed a median of 2 of the 11 essentials, in line with the rest, but a check by eye can't produce the same problem score, so they're left out of the site-level figures. The Collingswood and Westmont sites that blocked the scan were handled the same way.
• For the comparison, I re-ran the October Collingswood and Westmont census with the same, updated method, so a few of its numbers differ slightly from the original post (707 local businesses rather than 720, mostly because multi-location brands and suspected fake listings are now filtered out more consistently).
• Site-level figures are per website (542 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.