I Checked 1,837 Contractor Websites. The Problem Isn't the Tech.

I expected to find a lot of broken websites.

I was building a list of construction companies I might help, so I checked the homepage of every one. About 2,350 sites, and 1,837 loaded. I looked for the usual suspects: no security certificate, no mobile layout, ancient code.

Those are mostly fine. Of the 1,837 sites:

• 98.8% load over HTTPS.
• 94% have the tag that makes a site work on a phone.

So the old advice, “your site is outdated and not secure,” doesn’t describe most of these companies. Somebody built them a decent site at some point.

What I found instead is that the sites are fine and they don’t make a case for hiring the company.

What was missing

Out of those 1,837 homepages:

• 39% had no link to a projects or portfolio section.
• 49% had no link to testimonials or reviews.
• 57% had no contact form on the homepage.
• 43% had no tap-to-call phone link, so on a phone you can’t just tap the number.
• 31% had no meta description, the short line that shows under your name in Google.
• 27% had no main heading (H1) on the homepage.
• 47% had no structured data, the code that helps Google understand what the business is.
• 59% had no link to a blog or news section.

And one more. Of the 1,207 sites that showed a copyright year in the footer, 251 (21%) still said 2022 or earlier. A footer from 2019 tells a buyer nobody has touched the site in years, whether or not that’s true.

Why this matters more than a speed score

Nobody hires a general contractor on a whim. Someone is picking a company to run a project worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they are asking one question: will these people finish the job?

A site that never links to a single finished project can’t answer it. A site with no testimonials can’t answer it. A site where you can’t tap the phone number makes the next step harder than it should be.

A technical problem is something a developer fixes in an afternoon. Missing proof is a problem of showing the work you’ve already done, and that takes a little organized effort and no new technology.

What I’d fix first, in order

1. Put your best finished projects where people can see them. Real photos, the type of job, the town, the rough size. Even five good projects beat a blank page.
2. Add testimonials with a real name and a company. “Great job!” from nobody helps no one.
3. Make the phone number tappable and visible on every page.
4. Write a one-sentence description of what you do and where, so Google has something real to show under your name.
5. Update the footer year, and then actually update something on the site once in a while.

None of that needs a redesign.

How I checked

I loaded each company’s homepage and recorded what was in the HTML: security, mobile tag, title, description, headings, structured data, phone links, forms, and whether the page links to projects, testimonials or a blog. The companies came from a lead database of US construction firms with roughly 25 to 250 employees, so this is not every contractor in the country, and it leans toward mid-size firms.

Limits

• I only looked at the homepage. A company can have a great projects section that the homepage doesn’t link to.
• I judged links by their text. If a menu is built in a way my check couldn’t read, I may have counted a real link as missing. Treat the “missing” numbers as upper bounds.
• I did not measure real page speed, so I’m not making claims about it.
• This is a snapshot from October 2026 of one list, not a ranking of the industry.

If you want a second set of eyes

If you’d like a second set of eyes on your own site, Book a free one-on-one marketing session and bring it with you. I’ll tell you honestly what I’d fix first.

Benjamin