Of 788 independent tradesman businesses with a website on file, 71% of those sites returned no working page. Among the 29% that did load, 83% were not mobile friendly and 71% were not secure.
Homeowners now find and judge a tradesman online before they ever pick up the phone. So we wanted a hard number for how the independent end of the trade actually looks on the web. We took 788 tradesman businesses that already had a website address listed and scanned each one. The results below are the raw findings, with the sample described plainly so the numbers can be trusted and cited.
How we did it, and what the numbers mean
Sample: a technical scan of 788 independent UK tradesman businesses that had a website address on file, across twelve trades (builders, electricians, plumbers, roofers, painters and decorators, kitchen fitters, heating engineers, plasterers, tilers, landscapers, loft conversion specialists and carpenters) and 57 towns in the East of England, Bedfordshire and West London, run in May 2026. Honest caveat: these businesses came from our prospecting list, so the sample deliberately leans toward small, independent trades at the older end of the market. It is a snapshot of the long tail of independent tradesmen, not a random sample of every UK trade business, and it excludes the larger firms that dominate national directories. Because every business in the sample had a website listed, the 71% figure means 71% of listed tradesman websites, not 71% of all tradesmen. Where a figure is quoted for a sub-group (for example, sites that loaded), that is stated.
The key findings
- 71% of listed tradesman websites were dead or broken. Of 788 businesses that had a website address, 558 returned no working page: 57% were completely unreachable and a further 14% returned an error.
- Only 29% served a working page. Just 230 of the 788 sites actually loaded something a customer could use.
- 83% of the working sites were not mobile friendly. They had no mobile viewport, so they do not resize for a phone, where most trade searches now happen.
- 71% of the working sites were not secure. They had no HTTPS, so browsers flag them as 'Not secure' to every visitor.
- Half were built on old or missing web standards. 50% used an outdated or absent doctype, a marker of code written many years ago.
- 46% were a single page. Nearly half of the working sites were one page with no room to rank for services or areas.
- 19% still ran jQuery 1.x, a JavaScript library last current around 2013, and 8% still used Adobe Flash, which no browser has supported since 2020.
- Some were built in Serif WebPlus and Microsoft FrontPage, tools discontinued years ago, with copyright dates on the pages going back as far as 1997.
The 788 sites at a glance
| Count | Share of 788 | Note | |
|---|---|---|---|
| No working page (dead or broken) | 558 | 71% | Unreachable or returned an error |
| Working page that loaded | 230 | 29% | Analysed for the findings below |
| Working sites with no mobile version | 191 | 83% of 230 | No viewport tag |
| Working sites with no HTTPS | 164 | 71% of 230 | Flagged 'Not secure' |
| Working sites that were a single page | 106 | 46% of 230 | One page only |
What the working sites looked like
The 71% headline is stark, but the 29% that still worked tell their own story. Four in five had no mobile version at all, which on a modern phone means pinching and zooming around a desktop layout. Seven in ten were served without HTTPS, so a homeowner sees a 'Not secure' warning before they read a word. Half were built on web standards that pre-date the smartphone, and nearly half were a single page with nowhere to describe services or cover local areas.
A long tail of these sites were genuinely frozen in time: built in discontinued tools like Serif WebPlus and Microsoft FrontPage, still loading Adobe Flash, and carrying copyright lines reaching back to the late 1990s. For a trade that lives on local reputation, this is a lot of first impressions being made by a broken shopfront.
Why this matters for the trade
Independent tradesmen compete on trust, and more of that trust is now formed online than on the doorstep. A dead link, a 'Not secure' banner or a site that will not open on a phone quietly sends work to whoever looks more credible, which is often a national directory charging the tradesman for the privilege. The gap this research exposes is also the opportunity: the bar is so low that a fast, secure, mobile-first site puts an independent trade business ahead of most of its local rivals overnight.
For journalists: cite this research
You are welcome to reproduce these findings with attribution to LeadFly Websites and a link to this page. Suggested credit: "Research by LeadFly Websites, 2026 (leadflywebsites.co.uk)."
The full anonymised dataset, a regional or trade-by-trade breakdown, and comment from founder Shane McEvoy are available to media on request. Contact Shane McEvoy at LeadFly Websites: info@leadfly.co.uk.
Frequently asked questions
Does 71% mean most tradesmen have no website?
Is this a representative sample of all UK tradesmen?
When and where was the data collected?
Can I get the underlying data?
Sources
- LeadFly primary research: what tradesman websites are built on (technical scan)
- LeadFly primary research: tradesman website security (HTTPS) audit
- LeadFly primary research: tradesman website mobile statistics
- LeadFly audit of 4,895 UK trade businesses (wider statistics)
- LeadFly primary research: tradesmen and social media
Want to fix the basics for your trade?
If your own site is in the 71% or the 29%, we build a fast, secure, mobile-first website that puts you ahead of most of your local competition. One-off fee from 500 pounds, and you own it outright.