43% of Detroit Small Business Websites Are Underperforming. Is Yours One of Them?

A report published this month analyzed over 164,000 small business websites across 40 major U.S. cities. Detroit ranked 8th worst in the country, with 43% of business websites scoring below 80 out of 100 on mobile performance.

Nearly half. That's a huge share of Detroit-area businesses running websites that actively hurt their ability to get customers from Google.

And it gets worse when you look at specific industries.

Contractors are the worst offenders

The report broke results down by industry, and the trades crowded the bottom of the list:

• HVAC companies: 43% scoring below 80
• Plumbers: 42%
• Landscaping companies: 42%
• Fencing companies: 42%
• Electricians: 41%
• Roofing companies: 40%
• Painting companies: 40%

Out of 25 industries analyzed, contractor categories occupied seven of the bottom fifteen spots. The only industries that scored worse were dentists and dog groomers.

If you've ever looked at contractor websites in the Detroit metro, none of this is surprising. Most of them fall into one of two categories: a GoDaddy template from 2019 that hasn't been updated since, or an overbuilt WordPress site with 47 plugins that takes 8 seconds to load.

Both of those are worse than having no website at all, because at least "no website" doesn't actively make you look bad.

What "below 80" actually means

The scoring methodology included mobile performance, SSL status, responsiveness, analytics tracking, schema markup, and page load time. A score below 80 means the site has real problems in at least a few of these areas.

For a typical contractor website, that usually looks like this:

Slow load times. The average contractor website takes 4 to 6 seconds to load on mobile. Google considers anything over 2.5 seconds "needs improvement" and anything over 4 seconds "poor." Every second of delay costs you roughly 7% of conversions, according to Google's own research.

Not mobile-friendly. Over 60% of local searches happen on phones. If your site doesn't work well on a phone screen (buttons too small, text too tiny, layout broken), you're losing more than half your potential customers before they even see your work.

No SSL certificate. Chrome literally labels sites without SSL as "Not Secure" in the address bar. If a homeowner sees that warning before they see your homepage, they're hitting the back button. This is a free fix in 2026. There's no excuse.

No schema markup. This is the structured data that tells Google what your business does, where you're located, and what services you offer. Without it, you're relying entirely on Google to figure out your site on its own. It usually doesn't do a great job.

No analytics. 31% of small businesses don't even have Google Analytics installed. They have no idea how many people visit their site, where those visitors come from, or what pages they look at. You can't improve what you don't measure.

What this actually costs you

Run some rough math for a contractor in the Detroit metro.

Say you get 500 visitors to your website per month (reasonable for a contractor with a Google Business Profile and some local visibility). Industry average conversion rate for a well-built contractor site is around 3 to 5%. For a poorly performing site, it drops to 1 to 2%.

• Good site (4% conversion): 500 visitors = 20 leads/month
• Bad site (1.5% conversion): 500 visitors = 7.5 leads/month

That's 12.5 lost leads per month. If your average job is worth $3,000 and you close 25% of your leads, that's:

• 12.5 lost leads x 25% close rate = 3 lost jobs/month
• 3 jobs x $3,000 = $9,000/month in lost revenue

Over a year, a bad website is costing you over $100,000 in jobs you never even knew about. The people searched, found you, visited your site, and left without calling because the experience was bad.

And that's before factoring in the people who never found you at all because your slow, unoptimized site doesn't rank on Google.

The silver lining

If 43% of your competitors have bad websites, the bar is low.

Standing out in Detroit's contractor market doesn't take a $15,000 website. It takes a site that loads in under 2 seconds, looks good on a phone, has clear calls to action, and actually tells Google what you do and where you do it.

None of that is rocket science. It's table stakes, and most of your competitors are ignoring it.

If you're a contractor in Michigan and your website was built more than two years ago (or you're not sure when it was last updated), there's a good chance you're in that 43%. And every month you leave it alone is another month of leads going to the competitor who fixed theirs.

What to do about it

Step 1: Test your site. Go to PageSpeed Insights and enter your URL. Check the mobile score. If it's below 80, you have work to do.

Step 2: Check the basics. Does your site have an SSL certificate (look for the padlock in the browser)? Does it look good on your phone? Can a visitor call you with one tap? Is there a clear call to action on every page?

Step 3: Decide whether to fix or replace. If your site is on WordPress with a bloated theme and 30 plugins, patching it might cost more time than starting fresh. If it's a simple site that just needs performance tuning, a few hours of work could make a big difference.

Step 4: Get professional help if you need it. Not every contractor needs to hire a web designer. But if your site is actively losing you money (and the data suggests it probably is), the ROI on a proper website is hard to beat.

We build fast, conversion-focused websites for contractors and we're based right here in Michigan. If you want to know where your site stands, reach out and we'll take a look.

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Data source: LeadsByLocation Small Business Website Quality Report 2026, analyzing 164,896+ businesses across 40 cities and 25 industries.