How do contractor websites hold up on a phone? We tested 1,177.

How did we test the websites?

We started from the 13,728 home-service businesses with their own website in the Google Maps listings our research tools collected for US cities between July and September 2026, and drew a random sample. The same draw added dental practices, law firms, veterinary clinics, and med spas and salons for comparison. Each homepage was loaded once in a headless Chromium browser set up as an iPhone: a 390 by 844 pixel screen, touch enabled, and an iOS Safari user agent. We waited for the page to load and paint its text, measured it, then simulated a first scroll and touch and listened for 2.5 more seconds, because some sites hold their tags until a visitor interacts: 6% of the home-service sites loaded their tags only after that first touch, and they count as tagged.

63 sites answered with a bot check, 152 did not load at all and 18 showed a parked, for-sale or placeholder page; all three are left out of the percentages. That leaves 1,177 home-service sites and 2,563 sites in total, from listings in at least 334 cities across 36 states. The results by group, with 95% confidence intervals, are a free download: contractor-websites-phone-test-2026-10.csv (CC BY 4.0, totals only, no business names).

Definitions: the first screen is the top 844 pixels of the page. A tap-to-call link is a visible link that starts a phone call. Buttons count as too small to tap when at least six are visible and more than 40% of them are under 32 pixels tall. That bar is lenient: Google's Lighthouse audit flags tap targets smaller than 48 by 48 pixels, and WCAG 2.2 sets a minimum of 24 by 24 pixels. A serious phone fault means no mobile viewport tag, a page that scrolls sideways, broken images, a blank first screen or almost no content.

Can customers call a contractor from the first screen?

A homeowner with a burst pipe or a dead air conditioner wants one thing from the first screen: a way to call. 40% of the home-service sites we measured showed no tap-to-call link there, and 21% had none anywhere on the homepage. Another 4% showed the number as plain text; some phones turn plain numbers into links on their own, but a site cannot count on it. 30% offered neither a call link nor a book, schedule or quote button on the first screen.

Which trades do best and worst on a phone?

Among the trades with at least 80 sites in the sample, HVAC sites were the most likely to show a call link on the first screen (27% had none there) and general contracting and remodeling sites the least likely (58% had none). On tracking, HVAC sites were the best measured (35% loaded no tag at all) and electrical sites the least (59%). Smaller groups are in the table with their sample sizes, and the CSV gives a 95% confidence interval for every share.

Do contractor websites measure their calls and ads?

41% of the home-service sites loaded no analytics or advertising tag at all: no Google Analytics, no Google Tag Manager, no Google Ads or Meta tag, and nothing from the other ad networks and session recorders we looked for. 24% fired a Google Ads tag on the homepage and 14% a Meta pixel, but only 8% ran a call tracking script. Of the 278 sites with a Google Ads tag, 210 had no call tracking script. Google Ads can also count calls through its own forwarding numbers, which a page scan cannot see, so read that last figure as an upper bound on the gap.

How do contractors compare with dentists, law firms, vets and med spas?

Home-service sites were more likely to put a call link on the first screen than vets and med spas, about as likely as dental practices and law firms. Med spas and salons lean on online booking instead: 24% had a booking tool on or linked from the page, against 8% of home-service sites. Measurement is where contractors fall behind. 41% of home-service sites loaded no analytics or ad tag, the highest share of the five groups (the others ranged from 27% to 33%), and 8% ran call tracking against 19% of law firms and 13% of dental practices.

Do busier contractors have better websites?

Yes, by a wide margin. Home-service businesses with 100 or more Google reviews lacked a first-screen call link 22% of the time, against 46% for those with fewer, and loaded no tag at all 18% of the time against 49%. They were also more likely to load a Google Ads tag (41% against 18%) and to run call tracking (19% against 4%). Review count is only a rough sign of an established business, and this shows an association, not a cause.

How can you check your own website in two minutes?

1. Open your homepage on your phone without zooming. Without scrolling, is there a button that calls you? Tap it: your dialer should open with the right number.
2. Find your main action on the same screen: book, schedule or get a quote. If you have to scroll or pinch to reach it, so does every customer.
3. Tap each button with your thumb. If you hit the wrong one, it is too small or too close to the next.
4. Search your business on Google Maps and tap Website. Of the 1,300 home-service websites we tried, 34 (3%) pointed to a domain that no longer resolved when we tested them in October.
5. Make a test call from your site and check that it shows up wherever you measure leads: Google Ads, Google Analytics or your call tracking tool. If it does not, calls from the site cannot be credited to the marketing that produced them.

What can this data not tell you?

It is one load of one page per business, in October 2026, on one simulated phone, from outside the US. We measured the homepage only, so a site with a strong contact page still fails the first-screen checks if its homepage does. Tags that wait for a cookie banner, or for more than a scroll and a touch, are not counted, so the share with no tag is an upper bound, and an ad tag that fires only on a thank-you page is not counted. The sample comes from Google Maps listings our research tools collected for US cities, not from a census of every business, and each website counts once however many locations list it. We publish totals only, never the list of businesses.

Want us to check yours?

Every fault in this study is one we fix for a living. Our mobile website rebuild keeps your domain and puts the call and quote buttons where a thumb finds them, our call tracking audit ties every call to the marketing that earned it, and contractors starting from scratch can see our contractor websites. Everything we do for the trades is on our home services page.