2026 St. Louis business website report
The St. Louis sites we tested pack light and leave the phone at home.
The median St. Louis homepage we tested makes 66 requests on a phone, against 93 in our 31-city sample. Yet 21 of the 42 have no tap-to-call link, and we think that costs more here than the lighter page saves.
Start with the good news, since there is some. The median St. Louis homepage we tested makes 66 requests and weighs 2.36 MB. In our 31-city sample those figures are 93 and 3.08 MB. Third-party cookies turned up on 39% of sites here and 54% there. The median best-practices score is 96 against 79. 41 speed tests is a modest sample, one noisy run each, so we wouldn't take any one figure to the bank. These gaps are wide, though, and they point the same way.
Then ask what the tidy page wants from you. 21 of the 42 homepages have no tap-to-call link, which leaves 50% with one, against 72% in our 31-city sample. Much of that gap is the mix: 36 of the 42 are food and drink or retail, which run low on phone links in the wider sample too. The blunter figure is this one. 11 homepages, 26%, had no tap-to-call link, no lead form and no booking tool, against 17% in the sample. We counted the homepage only, so an email link or a contact page may be one more tap away.
We think that matters here. The Census Bureau's estimate has St. Louis down 7.7% in population between April 2020 and July 2025. Our read is that a restaurant or shop in a city losing residents ends up selling to people from somewhere else, and those people don't know your number, your hours or your street. The fix is small. A phone link or a booking tool is often a feature job on the page you already have, and it needn't undo the lightness. Check your own site first and see which door is missing.
Measured November 7, 2026
We tested 42 St. Louis business websites on a phone.
Independent businesses with a St. Louis street address on their own site. Totals only: we do not name anyone. How we tested.
63 of 100
Median mobile speed score
31-city sample: 61
8.3 seconds
Until the main content shows
On a simulated mid-range phone. 31 cities: 7.4s
83% of sites
Took over 4 seconds
34 of 41 tested
14% of sites
Let a visitor book online
31 cities: 10%
Scores for St. Louis are from our own test, described under How we tested.
What it means
What a light page gets you, and what it doesn't.
Less cargo, by a wide margin.
Weight and requests both run under the wider sample. Yet the share of sites under 2 MB is about the same, 34% here and 31% there, so the savings sit in the middle of the pack, not at the lean end. We measured what loaded, not who decided. Our read is fewer add-ons bolted on over the years. Whatever the reason, it is worth keeping, and here is what the scores measure.
The diet didn't buy speed.
The median speed score is 63 against 61, which is about the same. Main content took a median of 8.3 seconds to show against 7.4, a gap we wouldn't lean on, and 34 of 41 sites took over 4 seconds. 4 reached the good band. When a light page still takes that long, our guess is one heavy thing near the top or a slow server behind it. The test times the wait and names no culprit. Look at the pictures first, then the rest.
The phone gap is mostly a question of who we tested.
Tap-to-call is on 48% of the 21 food and drink sites here, against 58% in our sample. Retail runs 53% of 15 against 54%. Retail is even, and food is close enough that we wouldn't swear to it. The health and professional sites that lift the wider figure, at 88% and 78%, didn't come through here in numbers we could report. So we have no measurement for clinics or law offices in St. Louis, in a city where education and health jobs run at nearly twice the national share. If that's you, test your own page.
The labels on the page need work.
A single H1 shows on 19 of 42 homepages, 45% against 61% in the wider sample, the largest gap in the search basics we checked. A search description, 74% against 82%, and business markup, 38% against 45%, trail by less, and on 42 sites those may be noise. None of this wins a customer by itself. It is cheap housekeeping on a house already kept, and our view is that search work goes better on a page that says plainly what it is.
How St. Louis sites ask for the business
21 St. Louis sites · 31-city sample: 72%
10 St. Louis sites · 31-city sample: 31%
6 St. Louis sites · 31-city sample: 10%
16 St. Louis sites · 31-city sample: 45%
Most common failures
- Text with too little color contrast59%
- Links with no discernible name43%
- Uses third-party cookies39%
- Headings that skip levels38%
- Browser errors logged in the console32%
- Links with vague text ("click here")29%
Free tool
How does your site compare with the rest of St. Louis?
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 St. Louis:
- 50% have a tap-to-call link
- 74% have a search description
- 38% tell search engines what kind of business they are
Who does business in St. Louis
Who sells here, and to whom.
Restaurants and other food and drink
Leisure and hospitality is one of the city's main industries, and food and drink is the biggest group we tested. Of 21 sites, 10 had tap-to-call and 4 had booking. The median speed score is 66.
The site has to: put the hours, the street and the phone number on the first screen, and take a reservation without a call if you take reservations at all.
Restaurant website designShops
Retail is the second group we could report. Main content on the 15 sites took a median of 8.7 seconds to show, and 4 had a lead form, which can be a newsletter sign-up. Our guess is that a shopper from out of town wants to know two things: do you have it, and are you open.
The site has to: say what you carry and when you're open, and decide on purpose whether the site sells or only points to the door.
Online store designClinics and private practices
Education and health services jobs run at nearly twice the national share here, and Barnes-Jewish Hospital and SSM Health are among the big employers. Too few health sites came through our test to report as a group, so this one is judgment.
The site has to: tell a new patient what to do first, and say what happens when the office is closed.
Healthcare website designFirms that sell to institutions
With education and health this large, a St. Louis firm may be selling to an institution and to the people who work there at the same time. We have no measurement for this group. Our view is that those are two different readers.
The site has to: give each reader a path: what a purchasing office wants in writing, and what a person on a lunch break can do with one tap.
Education website designContractors working both sides of the line
St. Louis is an independent city, not part of St. Louis County, so a business serving both should say so plainly. Too few home service sites came through to report as a group.
The site has to: name the city and the county separately, and list the places you actually work.
Home service websitesFinancial and professional offices
Professional and business services and financial activities are both among the main industries, and Wells Fargo Advisors and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service are among the big employers. We have no group figure for these offices either.
The site has to: name the people, say what the firm does and for whom, and take a first note in writing.
Financial services website designSt. Louis by the numbers
278,144
Population (July 2025 estimate)
U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2025 city population estimates (July 1, 2025; base April 1, 2020)-7.7%
Population change, April 2020 to July 2025
U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2025 city population estimates (July 1, 2025; base April 1, 2020)$56,160
Median household income (2020-2024)
U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2020-2024 5-year summary file, table B19013 (St. Louis city)15,936
Business establishments (St. Louis city, 2025)
BLS QCEW 2025 annual averages, St. Louis city, MO (establishments and employment by supersector)9.4%
Speak a language other than English at home (2020-2024)
U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2020-2024 5-year summary file, table C16001 (St. Louis city)$197,500
Median home value (2020-2024)
U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2020-2024 5-year summary file, table B25077 (St. Louis city)Businesses online
In a 2025 Clutch survey, 83% of small businesses had a website (national scope, no city or state breakout). Statewide, 58% of Missouri small businesses use an AI platform (state scope, U.S. Chamber survey, June 2025).
Clutch survey press release, 2025 (copy on TMCnet, August 21, 2025)Before you spend a dollar
Settle these before anyone adds a slideshow.
- 1
Keep the diet.
Our opinion is that a redesign is how a light site gets heavy. Put a weight limit in the scope, using the 2.36 MB median here as the number to beat, and check it before launch. A redesign should add what's missing and keep what's light.
- 2
Find the slow thing at the top.
A median wait of 8.3 seconds on a light page suggests a specific culprit to us, and on a restaurant or shop site we'd check the big photograph first. Image work costs less than a new site, and it leaves the rest of your page alone.
- 3
Give the number a link.
Make it a real tap-to-call link and put it where a thumb lands. 21 of the 42 homepages we tested had none. Mobile fixes are a small job next to anything a designer will propose.
- 4
Decide what a visitor who won't call can do.
Booking shows on 6 of 42 homepages and a lead form on 10, and a lead form can be a newsletter sign-up. A reservation link suits a restaurant. An in-stock question suits a shop. Either can be built as a small tool. Hold it to the same weight limit as the rest of the page.
- 5
Say which St. Louis.
We screened 84 candidate sites and dropped 26 where we could find no St. Louis street address on the site. We can't say where each one sits. Some may be in the county, and some may not print an address at all. A stranger would have the same trouble we did. Print your street, and say whether you serve the city, the county or both. Local search follows from that.
Local marketing
Where to spend when customers have to come from farther off.
Search opportunities
Questions from people who don't know the way.
Our read of what buyers here need answered, not search-volume figures.
“Where can I eat near Forest Park after the balloon race?”
The race is a free two-day event in September. A page saying what you serve and your hours that weekend is a small job, and it can come back every year.
Restaurant marketing“What's open in Soulard during Mardi Gras?”
The 2027 Grand Parade is on February 6. If your hours change that day, say so on the page and on your profile a few weeks ahead.
Keeping your profile current“Does this contractor work in the city or only the county?”
It's a fair question in a city that belongs to no county. One sentence on the page answers it.
Home service marketing“Can I order from this shop online?”
Retail made up 15 of the 42 sites we tested. Yes or no on the homepage saves a stranger a trip, and if the answer is yes, it starts a sale.
Online store marketing
What it costs
The prices, which also travel light.
Our prices are published, and they don't change at the city limits, wherever a given reader thinks those are. Websites run $1,500 to $5,750 for up to 70 pages, online stores start at $2,500, and repairs start at $149.
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 St. Louis playbook
Five jobs for a tidy site that forgot to ask.
- 1
Tap the number yourself.
Open your homepage on a phone and try to call. Then run Google's PageSpeed Insights on mobile and hold that score against the 63 median we found here. The health check is a separate graded report, so don't hold its grade against our medians.
- 2
Fill the first screen with what a stranger needs.
Street, hours, number, and one H1 that says what you are. Only 19 of the 42 homepages we tested had a single H1. Testing what's up there beats guessing, once there's something to test.
- 3
Cut the wait, not the page.
WordPress sites here post a median speed score of 63, and the sites we couldn't tie to a known platform post 64.5, so the software doesn't look like the reason. Find the slow element first. On WordPress, a speed fix may be the whole job.
- 4
Add one way in that doesn't need a call.
A reservation link, a booking tool or a short form. It's often a feature job. Label the fields, since 8 of the 39 we found here had no label, ARIA name or title we could find, and send yourself a test. A form that fails quietly is worse than none.
- 5
Write for the calendar and count what comes.
Soulard Mardi Gras comes in winter, the balloon race in September and the Thanks-For-Giving Parade in November. Write a page for the one your business lives on and bring it back each year. Set up conversion tracking first, so you can tell whether it paid.
Recent work
Modern builds we've shipped.
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Interim Controller & CFO Partners
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A finance-leadership firm for owners whose books have stopped telling the truth, built to send a worried visitor to the right seat, interim or fractional, before anyone picks up the phone.
American Roofing & Waterproofing
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A WordPress plumbing site rebuilt on Next.js, a 3 a.m. brand with a written-quote estimator and 60+ residential and commercial service pages, built to answer and book while the competition sleeps.
Simply amazing!
They took our outdated website and transformed it into a modern, user-friendly platform that truly represents our brand.
They made the technical side feel clear.
We talked about goals first — then platforms, content, search, and automation.
Start here
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St. Louis website questions, answered.
How fast were the St. Louis sites you tested?
Across the 41 sites that finished the speed test, the median mobile score was 63 out of 100, and main content took a median of 8.3 seconds to show on a simulated mid-range phone. That's one lab run per site on a modest sample. Use it as a benchmark, not a grade on any one business.
What is the sample you compare St. Louis with?
1,274 independent business sites across 31 US cities, tested the same way, and these St. Louis sites are among them. It isn't a national average. Gaps of a few points may be noise, and the mix of businesses differs from city to city. Here, 36 of 42 sites are food and drink or retail.
I run a restaurant. Does a phone link really matter?
Our view is yes, for anyone who doesn't already know you. It is also among the smallest jobs on this page. If you take reservations, a booking link is worth adding beside it. See what else we'd put on a restaurant site.
Should my site mention St. Louis County?
If you work there, yes. St. Louis is an independent city, so the city and the county are separate places, and a business serving both should say so plainly. A page for each area you really serve is the usual start for local search.
What does a website cost for a St. Louis business?
Websites run $1,500 to $5,750 for up to 70 pages, online stores start at $2,500 and repairs start at $149. Every price is on one page, and the list is the same in every city.
Is my business in this report, and can I test my own site?
We report totals and name no business. Google's PageSpeed Insights runs on the same Lighthouse engine we used, so its mobile score is the one to compare. The free Website Health Check gives you a separate graded report. Scores move between runs, so test more than once.
Method
How we tested.
We started from OpenStreetMap business listings, independents only, screened 84 candidate sites in a shuffled, evenly mixed order, and kept 42 independent businesses that publish a St. Louis 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 St. Louis 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
- 84
- St. Louis businesses kept
- 42
- Speed runs completed
- 41
- Tested
- November 7, 2026
- Speed test
- Lighthouse 12.6.0
Sources for the facts on this page
- U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2025 city population estimates (July 1, 2025; base April 1, 2020)
- U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2020-2024 5-year summary file, table B19013 (St. Louis city)
- BLS QCEW 2025 annual averages, St. Louis city, MO (establishments and employment by supersector)
- U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2020-2024 5-year summary file, table C16001 (St. Louis city)
- U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2020-2024 5-year summary file, table B25077 (St. Louis city)
- Clutch survey press release, 2025 (copy on TMCnet, August 21, 2025)
Beat the St. Louis median.
Fifteen minutes, plain English, and a number in writing. If we are not the right fit, we will say so.