The western suburbs website report, 2026
We checked the websites of 150 independent businesses from the Hinsdale and Oak Brook chambers of commerce, the way a customer sees them: on a phone. The median site scored 46 out of 100 for mobile performance, 53% scored under 50, and 19% of the sites that showed a phone number didn't make it tappable.
By Hashim H., Elimenti. Published November 4, 2026. Data collected November 4, 2026.
Key findings
No business is named in this report. We publish only totals and shares, and we're happy to share a business's own results with its owner, privately.
How fast these sites are on a phone
Lighthouse, Google's open-source testing tool, scores mobile performance from 0 to 100: 90 and above is good, 50 to 89 needs improvement and under 50 is poor. Of the 137 sites it could measure, 2% scored 90 or more, 46% landed in the middle and 53% scored under 50.
Show the numbers
| Score | Sites |
|---|---|
| 0 to 9 | 2 |
| 10 to 19 | 2 |
| 20 to 29 | 14 |
| 30 to 39 | 37 |
| 40 to 49 | 17 |
| 50 to 59 | 21 |
| 60 to 69 | 18 |
| 70 to 79 | 17 |
| 80 to 89 | 7 |
| 90 to 100 | 2 |
Page weight is one visible factor. The median homepage downloaded 3.2 MB, and 52% downloaded more than 3 MB. In the lab test, the largest piece of content took a median of 8.5 seconds to appear, and 4% of sites got there within 2.5 seconds, the mark Google calls good for real visitors. Lab results aren't the same as real visits, but they come from the same simulated phone for every site, which makes them fair to compare.
What they're built on
We identified each site's platform from the fingerprints it leaves in the page code. WordPress runs 49% of the sites that loaded for us. 17% showed no fingerprint of a known builder, which usually means custom code or a less common platform.
Show the numbers
| Platform | Sites | Share |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress | 60 | 49.2% |
| No builder detected | 21 | 17.2% |
| Squarespace | 10 | 8.2% |
| Shopify | 8 | 6.6% |
| Wix | 6 | 4.9% |
| GoDaddy Website Builder | 5 | 4.1% |
| Weebly | 3 | 2.5% |
| Duda | 3 | 2.5% |
| Showit | 2 | 1.6% |
| Webflow | 2 | 1.6% |
| Hibu or other hosted builder | 1 | 0.8% |
| HubSpot CMS | 1 | 0.8% |
Show the numbers
| Platform | Sites measured | Median score | Scoring 90 or more |
|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress | 60 | 46 | 1.7% |
| No builder detected | 21 | 46 | 4.8% |
| Squarespace | 10 | 39.5 | 0.0% |
| Shopify | 8 | 35.5 | 0.0% |
These figures don't prove that a platform causes a score; a heavy page is slow on anything. They show what local businesses end up with in practice. Our guide to Wix, Squarespace, WordPress or custom covers the choice itself.
The basics, and how often they were missed
Speed takes work to fix. These don't: each is a small change, and each one affects customers who are already trying to reach the business.
Show the numbers
| Check | Share of sites |
|---|---|
| No local business structured data | 62.3% |
| Tap targets too small or too close | 29.2% |
| Phone number shown but not tappable | 19.1% |
| Some phone numbers tappable, others not | 19.1% |
| No meta description | 16.8% |
| A tap-to-call link with a malformed number | 8.2% |
| Copyright year from 2024 or earlier | 8.2% |
| HTTPS broken or sends visitors back to plain HTTP | 7.4% |
| Contact link that fails to load | 3.9% |
73% of the homepages showed a phone number. On 19% of those, the number wasn't a link at all, so a customer on a phone had to copy it by hand. On another 19%, one number was tappable and another wasn't. Copyright years were mostly current: 82% of the sites that showed one showed 2026.
Hinsdale and Oak Brook compared
Both areas had enough sites to compare. The neighboring suburbs are shown for completeness, but with so few sites, their figures can swing on one or two businesses.
| Area | Sites in sample | Measured by Lighthouse | Median performance | Phone not tappable | On WordPress |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hinsdale | 68 | 64 | 43 | 19.0% | 44.8% |
| Oak Brook and Oakbrook Terrace | 62 | 55 | 46 | 18.9% | 52.1% |
| Neighboring suburbs | 20 | 18 | 62.5 | 20.0% | 56.2% |
What owners should fix first
In order of effort, smallest first. Every one of these can be done on the site you have.
- 1. Make the phone number tappable
- A link that starts with tel: turns a number into a call with one tap. Minutes of work, and it matters to every customer on a phone.
- 2. Check the tap-to-call link dials
- Tap it on your own phone. 8% of the sites we checked had a tap-to-call link with a malformed number.
- 3. Put hours, address and phone in text
- Not only inside an image, and the same as your Google Business Profile. Add local business structured data so search engines can read them directly.
- 4. Fix HTTPS
- A visitor to a site with broken HTTPS sees a browser warning before they see the business. The fix is usually a certificate renewal or a hosting setting.
- 5. Write a meta description
- The sentence a search result shows under your name. Write it for customers, not for search engines.
- 6. Cut page weight
- Resize and compress photos before they go on the site, and remove plugins and widgets nobody uses. Then run the homepage through PageSpeed Insights again.
If the fixes keep coming back to the theme, the builder or something nobody can safely edit, the problem is structural. Our scorecard in redesign or refresh helps you tell.
How we did this
- Who
- Businesses listed in the public online member directories of the Hinsdale Chamber of Commerce and the Greater Oak Brook Chamber of Commerce, read on November 4, 2026: 759 listings.
- Which ones
- Listed address in Hinsdale, Oak Brook or a neighboring suburb (668); not in a directory category that is never an independent business, such as banks, schools, churches, nonprofits, government, hospital systems, utilities and manufacturers (572); a website listed (414); the business's own domain rather than a page on a national brand's site (372); not a chain, franchise, brand-managed hotel, large regional or national company or web agency, checked by name (258); one entry per website (253). From those, a random sample of 150 with a fixed seed.
- Speed and quality
- Lighthouse 13.6.0 with its mobile settings: an emulated mid-range phone, simulated slow 4G and a 4x CPU slowdown. Three runs per site; we report the median. A result counted only if the page came back with a success status.
- Page checks
- Each homepage loaded once as a phone, 390 by 844 pixels: phone numbers in the text and tap-to-call links, the contact link and whether it loads, the newest year in a copyright notice, structured data, sideways scrolling, small text and platform fingerprints. HTTPS was checked for every site.
- Not measured
- 10 sites showed our test a bot check instead of the page, and 15 couldn't be checked over HTTPS. Sites with broken HTTPS count in the HTTPS figure but weren't tested further. Each share above is out of the sites we could check, and the charts say which.
- Limits
- These are lab tests on one day, not measurements of real visits. Chamber members aren't every business in town. Scores vary from run to run, which is why we used the median of three, and a site can score differently from another location.
- Privacy
- No business is named here. The site-level data is stored under random IDs, with no names or addresses.
- Reproduce it
- The scripts and the site-level data, with every business replaced by a random ID, are in our public repository.
Use these findings
You're welcome to cite, quote or republish these findings with credit and a link to this page, under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Suggested credit: "Elimenti, Western Suburbs Website Report 2026." Journalists and chambers with questions can reach Hashim at hello@elimenti.com or (630) 509-8822.
Own one of these businesses?
If your business belongs to the Hinsdale or Oak Brook chamber, ask and we'll tell you, privately, whether your site was in the sample and how it measured. No pitch attached unless you want one.
Sources
- Chrome for Developers, "Lighthouse performance scoring": score bands, 0 to 49 poor, 50 to 89 needs improvement, 90 to 100 good.
- web.dev, "Largest Contentful Paint": 2.5 seconds or less is good for real visitors.
- Hinsdale Chamber of Commerce member directory and Greater Oak Brook Chamber of Commerce member directory, read November 4, 2026.
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.