We build and fix websites for South African businesses, so we wanted real numbers instead of opinions. We picked 30 small business sites that show up in Google for what they do: fence and deck builders, guesthouses and holiday homes, and local trades such as plumbers, electricians and pest control. We ran the same checks on each homepage, the way a visitor on a phone would meet it.
What was fine
All 30 load securely, all 30 have a page title, and all 30 are set up for mobile screens. The basics are mostly done.
What was not
- Speed on a phone. The middle score was 64 out of 100. Only 6 sites scored 90 or more. 20 scored between 50 and 89, and 4 scored below 50.
- Accessibility. 16 of 30 scored under 90. One scored under 50.
- A missing description. 3 of 30 have no meta description, the line Google often shows under a business name in results.
- No easy way to get in touch. On 5 of 30 we could not find a phone link, a contact form or a WhatsApp link on the homepage.
- Dead links. Rare. 3 of 30 had any, and all were pictures or files, not pages. Two sites pointed at images stored on a service that no longer exists. One still contained an address from the site builder's test environment.
By type of business
Fence and deck builders did best (middle score 81.5). Local trades scored 64. Guesthouses and holiday homes scored 58. We think large photo galleries are the main reason for the guesthouses. That is our reading, not something we measured.
Why it matters
A person searching on a phone leaves a page that takes too long. A business can do the hard things right, show up on Google and have a good-looking site, and still lose the customer in the first few seconds. Speed is usually fixable, and it costs less to fix than to buy more visitors.
What a business owner can check in ten minutes
- Open your own homepage on your phone, on mobile data, not Wi-Fi. Does it show something useful in about three seconds?
- Is your phone number a tap-to-call link? Is there a contact form or a WhatsApp button you can reach without scrolling?
- Search your business name. Is there a line of description under it, or a cut-off random sentence?
- Click your own photos and links. Anything that does not load?
If the answer to any of these is no, that is where to start.
How we did this
We scanned the homepage of 30 public sites on 10 November 2026, one at a time and at a slow pace, using free tools: Lighthouse for the speed and accessibility scores and lychee for dead links. Each site was tested once. These are lab results, not data from real visitors, and 30 is a small sample. We picked sites that show up on Google for their trade, so they are probably better than the average small business website. We have not named any business, because the point is the pattern, not the people.
The full write-up is published openly under a CC BY 4.0 licence: How fast are South African small business websites on a phone? A 30-site scan (Shany Bouwer, BreakGround Partners, 2026).
Short guides from this research
- How to read your website's mobile speed score, and what to fix first
- What a qualifying form does, and why a few questions can help your business
- Website checklist for a fence and deck builder
Want yours checked?
We do a free audit of your current website. It gives you a grade, shows what the problems are costing you and what to fix first. Get the free audit.
Research by Shany Bouwer. More about the author.