What we found checking 119 business websites around Elgin, IL

In October 2026 we looked at 119 local service businesses within 15 miles of Pingree Grove, Illinois: auto repair and body shops, HVAC companies, plumbers, electricians, roofers, groomers, salons, banquet halls and contractors in Elgin, Huntley, Hampshire, Gilberts, Algonquin, East and West Dundee, South Elgin, Carpentersville and Pingree Grove itself.

For each one we read the Google listing, opened the website on a phone and ran Google's own mobile speed test, PageSpeed Insights. The short version: most of these businesses do good work and have the reviews to prove it, and their websites lose calls anyway.

Read this first: how we picked them

We were checking these businesses because their websites looked like they needed work, and we planned to visit some of them. So the numbers below show what goes wrong and how often it shows up together. They do not show what share of all businesses around Elgin have these problems.

We name no business in this article. Several of them have hundreds of reviews and a rating of 4.7 or higher: 22 of the 119 had both. A strong Google rating and a weak website is the most common combination we saw.

Half had no working website of their own

61 of the 119 businesses had no working website of their own:

• 27 had no website on their Google listing at all.
• 13 had a Facebook or Instagram page as their only website.
• 8 linked to a page they do not own: a booking app, a directory, a page of ads or a domain for sale.
• 7 linked to a website that was broken: gone, not loading or showing an error page.
• 5 had a placeholder, such as a "Coming Soon" page on a domain they already pay for.

In one more case, people searching the business name could land on a different venue.

A Facebook page is better than nothing, but it is not the same thing. People who are not logged in to Facebook get a sign-in box over your page. You cannot put a quote form there that you control, and your page lives under Facebook's name instead of your own domain. A dead link on a Google listing is worse than no link, because the customer taps it, sees an error and goes back to the next result.

If this is you, see do you need a website if you have Facebook and Google Business Profile vs. website.

Heavy pages in Google's phone test

58 businesses had a working website, and we ran Google's speed test on 53 of them. That test loads each page on a simulated mid-range phone over a slow mobile connection. It is stricter than a visit on good Wi-Fi, where the same page can open in about a second, so the score says how heavy a page is, not exactly how long a customer waits. The middle score was 65 out of 100. Only 6 of the 53 scored 90 or more, which Google counts as good.

A heavy page matters most to people on the move with a weak signal, which is when a lot of service calls happen: in a parking lot, at a job site, in a basement with water on the floor. More on this in how fast your website should load on a phone.

No way to ask for a quote

At least 38 of the 58 working sites had no quote or contact form we could find. None had one on the home page. 19 of them had no contact page either, and the other 19 had a contact page without a form.

Without a form, the only way to reach you is to call during business hours. People who find you at 10 PM, or at work where they cannot talk, leave and do not come back. A form also gives you their details in writing: what they need, where they are and how to reach them. A contact form that gets replies covers what to ask.

The page does not fit the phone

At least 21 of the 58 working sites did not fit a phone screen. They showed the desktop page shrunk down, so visitors had to pinch and zoom to read anything or hit a button. In 19 of the 21 the cause was one missing line of code, the viewport tag, which tells a phone to show the page at its real size. In the other 2 it was set to a fixed desktop width.

Most local searches happen on a phone. A page that needs zooming looks abandoned, even when the business is busy and doing well.

No tap-to-call button

At least 14 of the 58 working sites had no phone number you could tap to call. On 11 of them the phone number was not on the home page at all.

For a plumber, a roofer after a storm or a body shop after an accident, the call is the whole point of the website. The number should be at the top of every page, and tapping it should start the call. See the tap-to-call button for how to set it up.

Smaller things we saw often

• No search description. At least 13 sites had none, so Google writes its own snippet from whatever text it finds on the page.
• No secure connection. At least 8 sites ran on plain http with no working HTTPS, and 2 more had HTTPS but did not send visitors to it. Browsers mark those pages "not secure".
• An old year in the footer. 4 sites still showed a copyright year between 2010 and 2020. Customers notice, and they wonder if you are still open.

What this means if you own one of these businesses

None of these problems takes a big budget to fix. In the order we would fix them:

1. Make sure your Google listing links to a website you own, and that the link works.
2. Put your phone number at the top of the page, as a tap-to-call link.
3. Add a short quote or contact form to the home page, with room for a photo of the job.
4. Make the page fit a phone, and keep it light so it opens quickly even on a weak signal.
5. Fill in the small things: a search description, HTTPS and the current year.

You can check your own site against the same list in about 30 seconds with our free website checker, or put it next to a competitor's. Both run the same Google speed test we used here.

For comparison, our own client sites had a middle Google mobile speed score of 89 when we measured 11 of them on October 18, 2026. Our clients so far are in Lithuania and Sweden, and none of the businesses in this article is one of them.

We are builtlit, a small web studio from Kaunas, Lithuania. Robertas is in the Chicago area until November 18, 2026 and happy to meet in person. If you would rather see the fix than read about it, we build the first version of your website free, in 2 days. Get your free preview.