Websites did not always matter this much.

In 1991, the first website went live, and by 2015, Google shifted to mobile first search, changing how businesses compete online. Today, a website is often the first sales meeting. In fact, 75% of people judge a business’s credibility by its website, and 88% will not return after a bad experience.

For comparison, a weak website can lose trust faster than a bad sales call. Now, with AI search, faster pages, and higher buyer expectations, website performance has become a make or break factor for SMB and B2B growth.

With that in mind, we’ll cover some powerful statistics about websites in 2026, which include small business website statistics, load time, hacking, and many more.

• 1.88 billion websites exist today, and 200 million of them are active.
• 175 websites go live every single minute.
• 71% of small businesses have a website.
• 67.56% of all website traffic comes from mobile users.
• 94% of first impressions are based on website design.
• 75% of users judge a company’s credibility by its website design.
• 3.21 seconds is the average load time for websites.
• Around 30,000 websites are hacked daily.

Sources: (Statista, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, similarweb, Forrester Research, Stanford University, Pingdom, Linkedin)

• 71% of small businesses have their own website.
• First impressions are 94% design related.
• 75% of consumers judge a business’s credibility based on their website
• 81% of shoppers research a business online before making a purchase.
• Small businesses with websites grow 2X as fast as those without.
• 48% of people said that the number one factor they used to determine a business’s credibility was their website design
• Over 1 out of 3 of small business owners feel that their business is too small for a website.

Small Business Website Growth Rate

According to a study, 73% of small businesses had a website in 2022, compared with just 55% in 2017, which increases the average growth rate by 3.6%. 

Year	% of small businesses have websites
2017	55%
2018	64%
2019	No data is available.
2020	No data is available.
2021	72%
2022	73%
2023*	73%*

• 15–50% is the revenue growth small businesses typically see when they use their websites to engage with customers.
• 97% of customers say websites influence their purchases.
• 91% of customers visited a store after interacting with an online website.
• 84% of consumer a business’s website as more credible than its social media presence.
• 75% of customers judge a business’s credibility through its website design.
• 52.3% of American internet users look up brands online before buying, and 33.5% of them visit the brand’s website.

Sources: (RainPOS, Hubspot, Dicom Interactive, EIN News, 3P Marketing)

• 67.56% of website visits are made by mobile users.
• 30.8% of visits to websites are from desktop computers.
• 67.1% of people around the world use the internet.
• 5.44 billion people were using the internet globally as of April 2024.
• 343 million people in the U.S. are expected to be internet users by 2029.

Sources: (Similarweb, Statista )

• 94% of first impressions are influenced by how a website looks.
• 50 milliseconds is all people need to make a judgment about a website.
• It takes 2.6 seconds for the eyes to focus on key areas of a web page.

Sources: (CXL, Missouri University of Science and Technology)

• A website’s average page speed load time is 3.21 seconds.
• As page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds, the chance of a bounce goes up by 32%.
• Every 1 second delay reduces user satisfaction by 16%.
• Conversion rates drop by 4.42 percent for every second that it takes to load.
• 40% of website visitors leave a site that takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
• 70% of consumers have said that the speed of a page affects their willingness to buy from an online retailer.
• 47% of consumers expect a website page to load in two seconds or less.
• 64% of dissatisfied shoppers will not go back to a slow website again.

Sources: (Pingdom, Think with Google, BigCommerce, Duda, BrowserStack, Unbounce, Kiss Metrics.)

• Around 30,000 websites get hacked worldwide daily.
• Every day, an average of 94 attacks are launched on websites. 
• 96.2% of compromised websites are made with WordPress.
• 43% of all cyberattacks are directed at small businesses.
• 1 in 10 small businesses gets hit by a cyberattack each year.
• 81% of data breaches happen due to weak, stolen, or default passwords.

Sources: (Linkedin, Small Business Administration, Terranova Security, Verizon’s 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report, SiteLock)

• Customers who visit your About Us page spend 22.5% more than those who do not.
• 52% of people say that when they land on a website, they want to see the “About Us” page first.
• 31% of people say that a website’s “About Us” page is the most important part.
• 44% of website visitors will leave if there is no contact information.
• 63% of consumers prefer to buy from brands that have a purpose.

Sources: (Siege Media, KoMarketing, HubSpot, Accenture, PwC, DemandBase, Expert Market, Oracle.)

• 98% of American web pages fail to meet legal accessibility standards for the disabled.
• 96% of the world’s top one million web pages fail accessibility standards.
• 86.4% of websites have home pages with low contrast in their text.
• 2,281 web accessibility lawsuits hit the courts in 2023.
• On average, 51.4 accessibility errors are present on the home pages of the top million websites.
• 42% of disabled individuals feel web accessibility hasn’t improved over the past year.

Sources: (Web Accessibility Annual Report, Accessibility App, HubSpot, Accessibility)

Average Bounce Rate Benchmark, According to 15 Studies & Reports

Based on the data we collected, we calculated that the average bounce rate benchmark is approximately 55.43% across the industry. 

Findings: The average bounce rate across these 15 studies and reports from 2018 to 2023 is approximately 55.43%.

This value is an average calculated from 15 different studies and reports containing average website bounce rate benchmarks. As with any average, individual results can vary widely based on specific conditions and contexts, and this should be taken into account when using this figure to inform decision-making.