Research
Small business website statistics 2026
The numbers behind small business websites in Canada and BC: who has a site, how customers find local businesses, why speed matters, and how AI search is changing it. Every industry stat links to its original source and date. The first section is original Cresscit data you won't find anywhere else.
Original Cresscit data
Numbers we gathered or measured ourselves. Feel free to quote them; please cite "Cresscit" and link to this page.
- 10,761 small BC businesses (1–50 employees) in five customer-facing categories are listed with no website.Cresscit analysis of a B2B business database (Vibe Prospecting), BC-wide, July 2026.
- 4,788 BC restaurants with 1–50 employees are listed without a website, the largest group we counted.Cresscit analysis, Vibe Prospecting database, July 2026.
- 1,862 BC barbershops and salons with 1–50 employees are listed without a website.Cresscit analysis, Vibe Prospecting database, July 2026.
- 1,224 BC trades businesses (plumbing, electrical, contracting and similar) with 1–50 employees are listed without a website.Cresscit analysis, Vibe Prospecting database, July 2026.
- 2,252 BC health clinics with 1–50 employees are listed without a website (this category may include some hospital-related listings).Cresscit analysis, Vibe Prospecting database, July 2026.
- 635 BC car dealerships with 1–50 employees are listed without a website.Cresscit analysis, Vibe Prospecting database, July 2026.
- The Cresscit flagship site scores 100 for SEO, 100 for best practices, 96 for performance and 95 for accessibility in Google Lighthouse on mobile, while running a full 3D scroll scene.Cresscit, Lighthouse mobile audit of cresscit.github.io, July 2026.
- The Cresscit flagship site's main content loads in 1.5 seconds on mobile (Largest Contentful Paint), with zero layout shift.Cresscit, Lighthouse mobile audit, July 2026.
- A standard Cresscit build goes from brief to live site in about 7 days.Cresscit build process, 2026.
How we counted. We filtered a commercial B2B business database for British Columbia businesses with 1–50 employees in each category and counted the records with no website on file, in July 2026. A missing website in a database doesn't guarantee a business has none, and some businesses fit more than one category, so treat these as estimates of the gap rather than an exact census.
Canada and BC small business landscape
- Canada had 1.10 million employer businesses in December 2024, and 98.2% of them were small businesses (1–99 employees).ISED Canada, Key Small Business Statistics 2025, data December 2024.
- Small businesses employed 5.8 million Canadians in 2024, 46.6% of private-sector employment.ISED Canada, Key Small Business Statistics 2025, 2024 data.
- British Columbia had 170,512 small employer businesses, 98.4% of all employer businesses in the province.ISED Canada, Key Small Business Statistics 2025, data December 2024.
- About 22% of Canadian businesses with 5+ employees had no company website in 2023.Statistics Canada, Table 22-10-0120-01, Types of web presence, 2023 survey.
- 9.8% of Canadian businesses with 5+ employees had no web presence of any kind in 2023.Statistics Canada, Table 22-10-0120-01, 2023 survey.
- 32% of Canadian businesses received e-commerce orders in 2023, up from 25% in 2019.Statistics Canada, Survey of Digital Technology and Internet Use, 2023, September 2024.
How customers find local businesses
- 84% of US consumers searched online for a local business in the past three months.BrightLocal, Consumer Search Behavior 2026, July 2026.
- 52% of US consumers started their last local search on Google, and 75% used more than one channel before choosing.BrightLocal, Consumer Search Behavior 2026, July 2026.
- 97% of US consumers read reviews for local businesses.BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, February 2026.
- After reading positive reviews, 54% of US consumers go to the business's website next, up from 32% in 2019. It's the most common next step.BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, February 2026.
- 75% of US consumers decide which local business to use in under 30 minutes, and 72% compare three or fewer options.BrightLocal, You have less than 30 minutes to win a customer, June 2026.
Mobile and site speed
- 73% of US local business searches happen on a phone, compared with 19% on a computer and 8% on a tablet.BrightLocal, Consumer Search Behavior 2026, July 2026.
- Mobile devices made up 46.4% of Canadian web traffic in September 2026.Statcounter, Desktop vs Mobile vs Tablet Market Share Canada, September 2026.
- Worldwide, mobile devices made up 59.0% of web traffic in September 2026.Statcounter, Desktop vs Mobile vs Tablet Market Share Worldwide, September 2026.
- Only 48% of websites pass all three Core Web Vitals on mobile.HTTP Archive, Web Almanac 2025: Performance, CrUX data July 2025.
- A 0.1-second improvement in mobile site speed increased retail conversions by 8.4%.Deloitte for Google, Milliseconds Make Millions, March 2020.
- 53% of mobile visits are abandoned when a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load (2016 data).Google, The Need for Mobile Speed, September 2016.
How small business websites get built
- 83% of US small businesses had a website in 2025, up from 64% in 2018, which leaves 17% still offline.Clutch, State of Small Business Websites 2025, August 2025.
- Of US small business websites launched in the past year, 41% were built on DIY builders like Wix or Squarespace and 45% were outsourced.Clutch, State of Small Business Websites 2025, August 2025.
- WordPress powers 40.1% of all websites, Wix 4.2% and Squarespace 2.4%.W3Techs, Usage statistics of content management systems, October 2026.
AI search and local businesses
- 45% of US consumers have used AI tools like ChatGPT to get local business recommendations, up from 6% a year earlier.BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, February 2026.
- Business websites made up 42% of the roughly 1.97 million sources cited across about 200,000 local AI searches in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews.BrightLocal, Local AI visibility study, September 2026.
- 18% of Google searches showed an AI Overview in March 2025.Pew Research Center, Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears, July 2025.
- When an AI Overview appeared, users clicked a regular search result 8% of the time, compared with 15% when none appeared.Pew Research Center, same study, July 2025.
- Google's AI Overviews reached over 2 billion monthly users in more than 200 countries.Google, Alphabet Q2 2025 earnings remarks, July 2025.
- 44% of US adults have used ChatGPT, up from 18% in 2023.Pew Research Center, Americans and AI 2026, June 2026 (question wording changed in 2026).
- 12.2% of Canadian businesses used AI to produce goods or deliver services in Q2 2025, double the 6.1% a year earlier. In accommodation and food services, it was just 1.5%.Statistics Canada, AI use by businesses in Canada, Q2 2025, June 2025.
What this means for a local business
Customers search on their phones, compare a few options, and decide within half an hour. They read reviews and then check your website, and AI assistants increasingly cite business websites when they recommend someone. Thousands of BC businesses still have no website to send that customer to. A fast, mobile-first site you don't have to maintain closes that gap. That's what Cresscit builds.