2026 Columbus business website report
The Columbus sites we tested have their paperwork in order. Read the riders.
Search descriptions, phone links and forms look about like the other cities we tested. What the page brings along doesn't: a median of 119 requests against 93 in our 31-city sample, and third-party cookies on 32 of 41 sites against 54%. We can count them. Only you can say what each one is for.
In most of what we counted, the Columbus homepages we tested look like everyone else's. 86% carry a search description, 70% have a tap-to-call link and 30% have a lead form, against 82%, 72% and 31% in our 31-city sample. None of those gaps is worth an argument. Insurance and finance are among the main industries here, and we find it fitting that the paperwork is in order.
Then we counted what each page brings along, and here the Columbus sites stand apart. The median homepage makes 119 requests against 93 in the sample, and weighs 3.5 MB against 3.08 MB. 32 of 41 sites set third-party cookies, the kind that come from someone else's domain, 78% against 54%. We retested many of these sites, and those counts barely moved. The speed figures did. The median score is 56 against 61, which we'd call about the same. Median blocking time, the stretch when a page is too busy to answer a finger, is 443 ms against 277 ms, but that is one run per site on a shared test machine, and it's the figure that moves most with how busy the machine is. We wouldn't call these sites slow on that evidence.
Think of those extras as riders on a policy. Each was probably added for a reason, and we'd bet few get read again. That's our opinion, since we counted them and didn't record who added them or what they do. It's also a cheap thing to check on your own page. Run the check on this page, then Google's PageSpeed Insights on mobile, more than once, and read what it lists as third-party code. If nobody can say what an item is for, that's your first candidate. If your score is low, find what's slowing the page before you pay for a new one. On WordPress, our speed tune is $399, measured before and after. Franklin County has 40,012 business establishments, and a customer waiting on your page has other tabs to open.
Measured November 7, 2026
We tested 44 Columbus business websites on a phone.
Independent businesses with a Columbus street address on their own site. Totals only: we do not name anyone. How we tested.
56 of 100
Median mobile speed score
31-city sample: 61
8.8 seconds
Until the main content shows
On a simulated mid-range phone. 31 cities: 7.4s
93% of sites
Took over 4 seconds
38 of 41 tested
11% of sites
Let a visitor book online
31 cities: 10%
Scores for Columbus are from our own test, described under How we tested.
What it means
What came along with the page.
The pages bring a crowd.
The median Columbus homepage makes 119 requests, against 93 in our 31-city sample. Third-party cookies turned up on 32 of 41 sites, 78% against 54%. A failure means at least one such cookie, so it doesn't say how many. 9 of 41 came in under 2 MB, 22% against 31%. It's a modest sample with one run per site, but these counts barely move between runs, so we'd lean on them before a score. We didn't record what the requests were or who added them. Here is where we'd start on your own page.
The speed figures don't stand apart.
The median score is 56 against 61, about the same. The middle half of the Columbus sites we tested scored 39 to 64, and the middle half of the sample scored 49 to 73. 15 of 41 landed in the poor band, 37% against 26%, a gap of a handful of sites. 0 of 41 reached the good band. Median blocking time is 443 ms against 277 ms, a wider gap, on one run per site on a shared test machine. Those are the figures that moved most when we retested, and scores read low in every city we tested, given how we tested. On your own page, a developer can trace what is holding it up. Here is what the score measures.
The platform isn't the question.
The 20 WordPress sites here post a median of 56.5, against 62 for WordPress across the sample. The 10 sites we couldn't tie to a known platform post 45 against 62. Those are small groups, and they don't tell you what to blame. They do tell you this sample gives no grounds for paying to move platforms. Read our comparison before anyone quotes you for it.
The ways in are ordinary.
On 41% of homepages a phone link is the only way in we counted, against 45% in the sample. 8 of 44 showed no phone link, form or booking tool on the homepage, and we didn't count email links or contact pages. Booking shows up on 5 of 44, too few to read much into. So we wouldn't start there. A lead form can be a newsletter sign-up, and if yours is meant to bring in work, send yourself a test.
How Columbus sites ask for the business
31 Columbus sites · 31-city sample: 72%
13 Columbus sites · 31-city sample: 31%
5 Columbus sites · 31-city sample: 10%
21 Columbus sites · 31-city sample: 45%
Most common failures
- Uses third-party cookies78%
- Text with too little color contrast61%
- Links with no discernible name46%
- Browser errors logged in the console46%
- Headings that skip levels41%
- Links with vague text ("click here")29%
Free tool
How does your site compare with the rest of Columbus?
Give it your address and you get a graded report in about twenty seconds. It runs its own checks, so its grade isn't comparable with our speed scores. These three you can check yourself, against what we counted in Columbus:
- 70% have a tap-to-call link
- 86% have a search description
- 48% tell search engines what kind of business they are
Who does business in Columbus
Insurance town, retail town, and who else has a page to load.
Independent insurance and financial offices
Insurance and insurtech, and finance and fintech, are main industries here. Nationwide, JPMorgan Chase and Huntington are among the big employers. The 15 professional-services sites we tested post a median speed score of 59 against 64 in our 31-city sample, about the same. That group is small and mixes many kinds of office.
The site has to: name the people and the lines you handle, take a first note in writing, say when it will be answered, and have your own counsel read the claims.
Financial services websitesRetail and fashion shops
Retail and fashion is one of the main industries. We had too few store sites to report them as a group, so this one is judgment: a shopper waiting on a product page has very little reason to stay.
The site has to: show price and stock on a phone, keep the cart short, and test the checkout after every change.
Online store designRestaurants and food makers
Food and beverage is a main industry, and Red, White & BOOM! puts more than 400,000 people downtown in early July. Food sites were too few in this test to count as a group. Our guess is that a lot of those people are looking for dinner on a phone.
The site has to: put hours, address and the menu in plain text on the first screen, and keep them current through festival season.
Restaurant website designClinics and private practices
The 10 health sites we tested post a median speed score of 52 against 61 in the sample, on one run per site on a shared test machine. 3 had a booking tool and 1 had a homepage lead form. A group that size is a hint and no more.
The site has to: take an appointment request after hours, ask only what a first contact needs, and ask your adviser what a web form may collect and what outside services on the page may see.
Healthcare website designSuppliers to semiconductors, automotive and life sciences
All three are among the main industries here. Our read is that a small supplier gets judged on how quickly it can answer a question and produce a document.
The site has to: say what you make and for whom on the first screen, keep spec sheets where a buyer can find them, and move repeat paperwork into a portal.
Manufacturing websitesBusinesses with Somali-speaking customers
The Census estimates 21,806 Columbus residents of Somali ancestry in its 2024 one-year figures, with a wide margin of error. Ancestry isn't language, and language wasn't part of our test, so this one is judgment too.
The site has to: ask your customers what they'd read, have a fluent person write the main service page, and keep the form on it short.
Web designColumbus by the numbers
914,802
Population
Census Reporter — Columbus, OH (ACS figures are 2020–2024 five-year; page opens on one-year)$66,082
Median household income
Census Reporter — Columbus, OH (ACS figures are 2020–2024 five-year; page opens on one-year)21,806
Residents of Somali ancestry (ACS 2024 one-year)
Census Reporter — table B04006, Columbus (ACS 2024 one-year)221.5 sq mi
Land area
Census Reporter — Columbus, OH (ACS figures are 2020–2024 five-year; page opens on one-year)Businesses online
Statewide, 59% of Ohio small businesses use an AI platform (state scope; survey fielded June 2025).
U.S. Chamber of Commerce — Empowering Small Business 2025 (state scorecards)Before you spend a dollar
Five things to settle before you pay for a new site.
- 1
Get your own count first.
The city's median is not your page. Run Google's PageSpeed Insights on mobile a few times and write down the score and the third-party code it lists. A browser's network panel counts the requests. If you're well under 119, this report has less to say to you, and a repair may be all you need.
- 2
Don't replace what you haven't diagnosed.
A new site with the same add-ons, photographs and embeds may land in the same place. Find out what your page is doing, and then decide. A redesign is the right answer when the design is the problem.
- 3
Make somebody list what loads.
The median page here makes 119 requests. We can't say what they are or whether they earn their keep. On your own page you can find out. Ask what each script and tracker does, and keep the ones with an answer. On WordPress, that job has its own page.
- 4
Leave the good paperwork alone.
38 of 44 homepages carry a search description and 30 have one main heading. If yours is among them, a long list of add-ons is no reason to rewrite it. Search work is a separate decision with its own reasons.
- 5
Decide who gets a second language.
Language wasn't part of this test, so we have no number to offer. The Census estimates 21,806 Columbus residents of Somali ancestry, with a wide margin, and whether that matters depends on who walks through your door. Our advice is one page written by a person, for customers you know are there. Adding a page to a working site is a smaller job than a new site.
Local marketing
Buy traffic after you've read the page it lands on.
Search opportunities
Searches with a date or a deadline on them.
Our read of what buyers here need answered, not search-volume figures.
“Where can we eat near the Red, White & BOOM! fireworks?”
A date on the calendar and more than 400,000 people downtown. A page written ahead of time, with hours for that night, answers a question with an expiry date.
Restaurant marketing“Who can see me this week in Columbus?”
Booking turned up on 3 of the 10 health sites we tested. A practice that can answer this on the page has something to say.
Healthcare websites“Where can I train during the Arnold Sports Festival?”
The festival comes every March, and we'd expect some visitors to look for a gym while they're here. It's a short page to write for a business that will take a day pass.
Fitness marketing“Can I get an insurance quote without calling?”
Our guess is that more people want this than ever type it. If your office can do it, say so on the page, and let your counsel read what the page promises.
Financial services marketing
What it costs
The fee schedule, with no adjuster.
Websites up to 70 pages run $1,500 to $5,750 at a fixed price set by page count. Online stores start at $2,500, repairs at $149. If speed is the only thing wrong with your WordPress site, the $399 speed tune is the first thing we'd look at. These are published prices and they don't change with your zip code.
Website, up to 10 pages
$1,500
fixed price
Website, 11 to 20 pages
$2,250
fixed price
Website, 21 to 50 pages
$3,750
fixed price
Website, 51 to 70 pages
$5,750
fixed price
- Online storeFrom $2,500
- Web app, portal or integrationFrom $575***
- Mobile appFrom $3,750
- SEO, local marketing or PPCFrom $575 a month***
***Pricing depends on complexity. ***Pricing depends on complexity, setup and budget. Ad spend is paid to the ad platform directly.
See every priceThe Columbus playbook
From your own list to the State Fair, in order.
- 1
Write down your number.
Run the health check for a graded list of problems, and Google's PageSpeed Insights on mobile for a score you can hold against the median of 56 here. The two are different tests, so don't compare one with the other. Scores move between runs, so take a few.
- 2
- 3
Test the page again before you celebrate.
Run the same test the same way and compare it with what you wrote down. Then keep the habit for a month, since add-ons have a way of returning. Maintenance is the dull name for this.
- 4
Check the doors while you're in there.
22 of the 69 form fields we found here had no label, ARIA name or title we could find. Label yours and send a test message to yourself. Conversion work starts with knowing the form arrives.
- 5
Then get ahead of the calendar.
The Arnold comes in March, the Arts Festival in June, ComFest in late June, Red, White & BOOM! in early July, the Ohio State Fair in late July and the Marathon in October. Pick the one your trade lives on, write one page for it, and bring it back every year. Update your Google Business Profile the same week.
Recent work
Modern builds we've shipped.
TeamAIOps
AI SaaS · Platform
AI employees for operations teams, a customer-service rep that answers in seconds, books the work, and reports what happened. Live on a client's site in under an hour.
Core Construction Group
Construction & Remodeling
A dark, modern build for a veteran-owned Phoenix construction group whose pitch is the org chart: you deal with the owner, not a subcontractor chain.
LeadBolt
SaaS · Speed-to-Lead for Contractors
Software that answers every contractor lead in under a minute, so the crew on a roof still wins the job that came in while they were up there.
Bleuwave Electrical
Electrical — Residential & Commercial
A WordPress site rebuilt on a modern Next.js stack, panels, EV chargers, roofline lighting, and 24/7 repair, with brand-specific EV charger pages and an instant callback estimator.
What stood out was the balance of design and operations.
The site looked polished, but the real win was behind the scenes: better forms, cleaner handoffs, stronger tracking, fewer manual steps.
They get it done.
We had no idea where to start; they explained the build process and were patient with our many questions. All expectations and timelines were met. Double thumbs up!
Start here
Tell us what you need in Columbus.
Pick what you want and the price appears on the spot. The developer follows up, not a salesperson.
Prefer to talk? (480) 525-7582.
See what your project costs. It takes about a minute.
Rather talk? (480) 525-7582. 0% financing on any project, 25% down. See all pricing
Columbus website questions, answered.
How fast were the Columbus sites you tested?
41 of the 44 sites finished the speed test. The median mobile score was 56 out of 100, and the main content took a median of 8.8 seconds to show on a simulated mid-range phone. That is one lab run per site, so it's a benchmark and not a grade on any business.
Are Columbus sites slower than the other cities'?
We wouldn't say so. The median score was 56 against 61, about the same. Blocking time looks wider, at 443 ms against 277 ms, but that's one run per site on a shared test machine, and it's the figure that moves most with how busy the machine is. Requests and cookies barely move between runs, so those are what we lean on. If your own page is slow, the reason can be found.
What is the sample you compare Columbus with?
1274 independent business sites across 31 US cities, tested the same way, and it includes these Columbus sites. That makes it a yardstick and not a national average, and it doesn't stand for the country. Gaps of a few points on it mean little.
Do I need a new website if mine scored low?
Not on that evidence alone. A low score tells you to look, and what you find might be a speed fix on the site you have. If the design and the content are also tired, then a redesign might earn its price. We'd tell you which we think it is once we've seen the page.
What does it cost a Columbus business?
The same list everyone gets: $1,500 to $5,750 for a site up to 70 pages, online stores from $2,500 and repairs from $149. Every price is published, so you can read them before you talk to anybody.
Are you naming any sites?
No. You'll find totals here and not one business name. For your own site, the free Website Health Check gives a graded report on its own scale, and Google's PageSpeed Insights runs the same Lighthouse engine we used.
Method
How we tested.
We started from OpenStreetMap business listings, independents only, screened 90 candidate sites in a shuffled, evenly mixed order, and kept 44 independent businesses that publish a Columbus street address on their own site. We left out national chains, referral sites, parked or broken domains, and sites that block automated tests, along with anything we built ourselves.
Each homepage got one run of Google Lighthouse 12.6.0: mobile form factor (412 x 823 screen emulation), Lighthouse default simulated throttling (150 ms round trip, 1.6 Mbps throughput, 4x CPU slowdown), headless Chrome, one run per site. 41 runs completed. A second pass in headless Chrome looked for tap-to-call links, forms, booking tools and search markup, on the homepage only, so a form on a contact page or an email link doesn't count. A form with an email, phone or message field counts as a lead form, which means a newsletter sign-up can count too. Business markup means JSON-LD naming one of the common local-business types, so another format or a more general type isn't counted. Testing ran on November 7, 2026, several sites at a time on one machine.
A lab test is one controlled load, which makes sites comparable with each other. It does not measure any real visitor's experience, and one run per site carries noise. Tests ran several at a time on one machine, and a busy machine lowers speed scores and lengthens blocking time, so we reran the tests taken when it was busiest. Read those two figures as rough, and small gaps as noise. Listings skew toward businesses someone has bothered to map, so read this as a careful sample, not a census. The comparison figures are 1274 sites across 31 US cities, tested the same way, and they include these Columbus sites. Our Mesa report found its sample through web searches and ran one site at a time, so its figures aren't directly comparable.
- Candidate sites screened
- 90
- Columbus businesses kept
- 44
- Speed runs completed
- 41
- Tested
- November 7, 2026
- Speed test
- Lighthouse 12.6.0
Sources for the facts on this page
- Census Reporter: Columbus, OH profile (ACS 2020 to 2024)
- BLS QCEW 2025 annual averages: Franklin County
- Census Reporter: table B04006, Columbus (ACS 2024 one-year)
- One Columbus: Industries
- One Columbus: Top employers
- Experience Columbus: Festivals and annual events
- ComFest
- Red, White & BOOM!
- Ohio State Fair
Beat the Columbus median.
Fifteen minutes, plain English, and a number in writing. If we are not the right fit, we will say so.