We Checked 8,668 Delaware Business Websites. A Third Don't Exist.

There's a kitchen in Milford where the dishwasher has been leaking since Tuesday. The homeowner did what everyone does now. She typed "plumber near me," got a list, and started tapping. The first one had no website, just a listing with two reviews and a number that went to voicemail. The second opened with a red "Not secure" warning across the top of her screen. The third loaded, looked fine, and offered no way to ask for a price except a phone number buried in the footer. She called the fourth. The fourth got the job, and the first three never knew they were in the running.

The Scorecard

This year we ran an automated check on 8,668 Delaware businesses across forty trades, from Wilmington to Laurel, including restaurants, salons, auto shops, remodelers, dentists, landscapers, flooring, HVAC, general contractors, electricians, physical therapists, and chiropractors. We look at every one of them before we ever send an email, so we have the numbers. Here they are.

• 2,741 businesses, 32 percent, have no website at all. Not a bad one. None.
• Of the 5,927 that do have a site, 776 (13 percent) are not on https. Chrome greets every visitor with "Not secure."
• 2,941 (50 percent) have no contact form. There is no way to ask for a quote except finding a number and dialing it.
• 961 (16 percent) show no phone number on the page at all.
• 301 (5 percent) are paying for a domain that goes nowhere: dead, 404, expired certificate, or parked.

Half the Auto Shops. Half the Salons.

The no-website number is not spread evenly. Auto repair shops: 53 percent have nothing. Salons and hair stylists: 50 percent. Restaurants come in at 35, landscapers 32, electricians 31, general contractors 30, remodelers 27. Dentists are the outlier at 14 percent, and that tells you something. The trades where a website is treated as the cost of doing business are the ones customers already assume are professional. Everyone else is competing on a Facebook page and a Google listing they didn't write.

"No Website" Is Not a Category. It's a Queue.

If you're in one of those trades and you do have a site, you may read that as good news. Half your competitors aren't even in the race. That's true, and it's the wrong lesson. The customer doesn't see a category. She sees a list, and she taps down it until something works. Your competitor with no site didn't lose the job to you. He lost it to whoever was next, and whether that's you depends on what happens in the four seconds after she taps your name.

The Sites That Exist Are Failing Quietly

The businesses with no website at least know it. The ones that worry me are the 5,927 that have one and believe the box is checked. One in eight of them is serving a security warning to every visitor on every device, and nobody on the inside has seen it, because owners don't type their own address into a phone. Half of them give a ready-to-buy customer no button to press. Those owners aren't ignoring leads. They're never finding out the leads existed.

What Passing Looks Like

None of this is expensive and none of it is clever. A padlock instead of a warning. A quote request one tap from every page. A phone number that dials when touched. Photos of your work from this year, not from whenever the site was built. Your services and your towns written out in words a stranger can read. That's the whole exam, and most of the state is failing at least two questions.

Check Yours Before She Does

Pull out your phone. Skip the bookmark. Type your business name into Google the way a stranger would and tap what comes up. If you see a warning, a stock photo from 2019, or no obvious way to ask for a price, you now know what the woman in Milford knows. The difference is you can fix it before the next one searches.

CAN Web Management runs this check on any Delmarva business for free. Start with a free website review, and if you would rather the calendar filled itself, ask about the CAN Lead Engine. Everything happens over email, no sales calls.