Website Speed Statistics 2026: We Timed 1,277 Ontario Business Websites

Quick answer: In November 2026 we ran Google's mobile PageSpeed test on the homepages of 1,277 Ontario trades and clinics in 48 towns. The median site took 8.3 seconds to show its main content. Only 46 sites, 4%, met Google's "good" mark of 2.5 seconds or less, and 85% took longer than 4 seconds, the line Google calls poor.

Most website speed statistics you find online are years old, come from big online stores, or can't be traced back to a study at all. These come from one test, run the same way on every site, in November 2026.

They're from the Ontario Trades Web Index, our monthly measurement of local business websites. Plumbers, dentists, roofers, physiotherapists, law firms and 19 other trades. Real local businesses, in 48 towns across southern Ontario, from Niagara Falls to Barrie.

To cite these figures, credit the Ontario Trades Web Index by WebCore, November 2026.

Website speed statistics at a glance

• The median homepage took 8.3 seconds to load its main content, across 1,277 sites.
• 4% loaded it in 2.5 seconds or less, Google's "good" threshold. That's 46 sites.
• 12% landed between 2.5 and 4 seconds, which Google calls "needs improvement". That's 148 sites.
• 85% took longer than 4 seconds, Google's "poor" threshold. That's 1,083 sites.
• 40% took longer than 10 seconds, and 133 sites took longer than 20.
• 6% scored 90 or more on Google's PageSpeed performance score. 75% scored 50 to 89, and 19% scored under 50.
• The median page weighed 2.6 MB, and 19% weighed more than 5 MB, out of the 1,197 pages we weighed.
• Pages under 1 MB loaded in a median 4.7 seconds. Pages over 5 MB took 17.5 seconds.
• 86% of the 1,197 pages we checked held still while they loaded, with a layout shift of 0.1 or less. 6% moved enough to count as poor.
• The median WordPress site took 9.2 seconds, and the median Squarespace site took 14.5, among the 1,197 sites whose platform we read.

How we measured

We used the test behind Google's PageSpeed Insights, the mobile run. Google's own documentation says it simulates a mid-tier phone, a Moto G4, on a mobile network. Every homepage got the same phone and the same network, so the numbers compare fairly from one business to the next.

The load time we report is Largest Contentful Paint, or LCP. It's the moment the biggest thing on the screen finishes appearing, usually the hero photo or the main headline. It's the closest single number to "when does this page look loaded?"

Google sets the bar for it in its Core Web Vitals thresholds: 2.5 seconds or less is good, and more than 4 seconds is poor. Anything in between needs improvement.

A few things to know about the sample:

• 1,277 homepages in 48 Ontario towns, measured for the November 2026 edition.
• 24 trades with at least 10 sites each make up 1,271 of them. Six more sites belong to trades too small to report alone.
• Homepages only. An inner page can be faster or slower.
• A lab test, not your visitors' phones. On fast Wi-Fi and a new phone, a page loads faster than this. On an older phone, one bar of signal or a busy job site, it loads close to what we measured.

Load time by trade

Appliance repair sites were the fastest, at a median of 4.4 seconds. Flooring and fencing were the slowest, at about 12. Five trades have fewer than 20 sites measured, so treat their medians as rough: appliance repair, garage doors, painters, paving and fencing.

Even the fastest trade's median, 4.4 seconds, sits past Google's 4 second line. No trade comes close to 2.5.

Dental clinics stand out among the big groups. With 67 sites measured, their median was 6.2 seconds, about two seconds ahead of most trades. HVAC went the other way: 90 sites, a median of 9.3 seconds, tied with chiropractors for the slowest of any trade outside flooring and fencing.

The spread inside each trade is wider than the spread between trades. Every trade with 30 or more sites had businesses under 3 seconds and businesses over 15. Your competitor down the street could be either one.

Heavier pages load slower

Page weight is the total size of everything a page downloads before it's done: photos, fonts, scripts and video. We weighed 1,197 homepages.

A page over 5 MB took almost four times as long to load as a page under 1 MB. The median page weighed 2.6 MB. 40% weighed more than 3 MB, and only 12% stayed under 1 MB.

On a local business homepage, the weight usually comes from the same few places:

• A full-width hero photo uploaded straight from a camera or a phone, often several megabytes on its own.
• A background video that plays behind the headline.
• A slider with five large images, all downloaded even though one shows at a time.
• Chat, booking, review and tracking scripts that load before the page does.

Speed by website builder

We identify the platform from the code each homepage sends, and we read that code only on the 1,197 sites that scored under 90. So this table compares those sites. It can't tell you which platform the 80 fastest sites run on. Five groups had at least 20 sites.

WordPress runs 698 of the 1,197 sites we read, well over half, with a median of 9.2 seconds. That's less about WordPress itself than about what usually gets piled on top of it: a theme built to do everything, a page builder, a slider plugin, and a dozen more plugins that each add their own scripts.

Squarespace was the slowest group at 14.5 seconds, and almost half of its sites scored under 50.

Wix and the Yellow Pages builds had the fastest medians in the table, at about 7 seconds. That's still well past Google's 4 second line, and no platform in the table comes close to 2.5.

WebCore sites weren't part of this sample. For comparison, our own site, webcore.pro, scored between 89 and 99 in five runs of the same mobile test on November 8 and 10, 2026, with load times from 1.7 to 2.7 seconds. Scores move a few points from run to run, so we give the range.

What a slow site costs a local business

Speed isn't the only thing Google looks at, and a fast page with nothing useful on it won't rank. But Google is plain about where it stands. In its Core Web Vitals guide it says: "We highly recommend site owners achieve good Core Web Vitals for success with Search and to ensure a great user experience generally."

Think about who's on the other end. Somebody with water coming through the ceiling searches "emergency plumber", taps your result and waits. On the median site in our sample, they wait 8.3 seconds before the page shows what it's about. On 1 in 10 sites, they wait more than 20.

And the call button is often the last thing to load. If it sits below a hero photo that hasn't arrived yet, the visitor can't call you even if they want to. They go back to the results, and the next business gets the job.

You don't have to beat Amazon. You have to beat the other businesses on the same results page. With a median of 8.3 seconds, a site that loads in 3 is already faster than nearly every competitor in its trade.

How to check your own site's speed

1. Run your homepage through our free website speed test, or through Google's PageSpeed Insights. Use the mobile result.
2. Find Largest Contentful Paint. That's the number to compare with the tables above.
3. Compare it with your trade's median. If you're slower than your trade, most of your competitors' sites show up on a phone before yours does.
4. Look for the line about network payloads. It gives your page's total weight. Over 3 MB, something on the page is too big.
5. Run the test twice. Scores move a few points between runs, and a single run can catch a slow moment.

What makes a site faster, in order of effect

1. Shrink the hero image. Resize it to the width it's actually shown at and save it in a modern format like WebP or AVIF. On most local homepages the hero photo is the largest thing on the screen, so it's the one the load time waits for.
2. Drop the background video and the slider at the top of the page. One strong photo and a clear headline load faster and get read more.
3. Delay chat, booking and tracking scripts until the page has loaded, or until the visitor first scrolls or taps. That's how webcore.pro loads its own outside scripts.
4. Remove what you don't use. On WordPress, every plugin you deactivate and delete is code that stops loading on every page.
5. Use a host with caching and a CDN, so your pages come from a server near your visitor instead of one across the continent.
6. Keep fonts to one or two families. Every extra weight and style is another file to download.

If you want to see where your site stands before you change anything, the Web Index shows how your trade compares, and our small business website statistics cover the rest of what we measured: titles, business details, phone links and more.

The bottom line

85% of the local business websites we measured take longer than 4 seconds to show their main content on a phone. Only 4% meet Google's 2.5 second mark.

That's a problem for most businesses and an opening for yours. When the median is 8.3 seconds, you don't need a perfect score to stand out. You need a homepage that shows up before the visitor gives up.

Keep reading

• Small business website statistics: new data from 1,277 local sites
• The cost of a slow website
• How to get a perfect Agentic Browsing score

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good website load time in 2026?

By Google's thresholds, the main content should appear in 2.5 seconds or less. More than 4 seconds is poor. In our November 2026 test of 1,277 Ontario business homepages, only 4% met the 2.5 second mark.

How fast is the average small business website?

The median Ontario trade or clinic homepage took 8.3 seconds to load its main content on Google's mobile test. 85% took longer than 4 seconds, and 40% took longer than 10.

What is the average web page size?

The median homepage we weighed, out of 1,197, came to 2.6 MB. 40% weighed more than 3 MB, 19% more than 5 MB, and only 12% stayed under 1 MB.

Does website speed affect Google rankings?

Speed is one of many things Google considers, and relevance comes first. Google says it highly recommends that site owners achieve good Core Web Vitals for success with Search. Between two useful pages, the faster one is the better experience on a phone.

Which website builder is the fastest?

Among the sites whose platform we read, all of which scored under 90, Wix (7.0 seconds) and Yellow Pages builds (7.1) had the fastest medians. WordPress took 9.2 and Squarespace 14.5. We don't read the platform of sites that score 90 or more, so we can't say which builder the fastest sites use.

Why does PageSpeed say my site is slow when it feels fast?

Google's mobile test simulates a mid-tier phone on a mobile network. Your own phone on office Wi-Fi is faster than that. Many of your customers aren't on office Wi-Fi when they search for you.

What PageSpeed score should I aim for?

Google rates 90 to 100 as good, 50 to 89 as needs improvement and under 50 as poor. Only 6% of the sites we measured scored 90 or more, so anything above 90 puts you ahead of almost every competitor.

What slows down a small business website the most?

Page weight. In our data, pages under 1 MB loaded in a median 4.7 seconds and pages over 5 MB took 17.5. The usual causes are oversized photos, background videos, sliders and third-party scripts.

How can I cite these website speed statistics?

Credit the Ontario Trades Web Index by WebCore, November 2026, and link to this page or to the Web Index. We publish a new edition every month.