St. Louis web design that keeps the page light and adds the door.

A St. Louis site at 2.36 MB doesn't need a designer who arrives with a video header. It needs one who can leave well enough alone. Only 14 of the 41 sites we tested came in under 2 MB, about the same share as our 31-city sample, so there's still room to trim. But the median is ahead, on a modest sample, and our advice is to put a weight limit in the scope before any drawing starts. Our read of the rest of the test is that the design job here is the first screen. Median main content took 8.3 seconds to show, so what's at the top had better be worth the wait.

What's up there depends on who's looking, and we'd design for someone who has never been to your place. 36 of the 42 sites we tested are food and drink or retail. A restaurant owes that stranger the hours, the street and the menu. A shop owes them what it carries and whether it's open now. A clinic, in a city where education and health jobs run at nearly twice the national share, owes them a first step, and we have no measured figure for those sites. 21 of the 42 homepages had no tap-to-call link, so that button goes on the first screen too.

The finer points are close to our 31-city sample, and we wouldn't pretend otherwise. Text contrast failed on some text at 59% of sites here, 62% across the sample. Tap targets failed at 17% against 22%. Skipped heading levels ran 38% against 47%. Websites run $1,500 to $5,750 at a fixed price, up to 70 pages, and if only a few things need changing, design fixes fall under repairs, from $149. The whole test is in the St. Louis report. Send us your homepage, and we'd say which of those you need.