What we observed across 100 business websites
This release is descriptive of the sampled websites, not every business in Metro Vancouver. Each included homepage returned public HTML successfully and came from a business listing with a concrete address in one of the sampled municipalities.
Sample
100
successfully audited websites
Average
70.9/100
observable foundation score
Median
78.5/100
middle sample score
Range
12–100
lowest to highest observed score
How to read these findings
Percentages below mean “the signal was detected on the checked homepage or conventional endpoint.” They do not prove that the underlying business process works well, that the business ranks highly, or that the website converts visitors into customers.
The strongest fundamentals and the biggest observable gaps
The same individual checks are retained for every row, which makes the aggregate score explainable. A strong overall average can still conceal a weak commercial action path, while one missing technical signal does not automatically make a website ineffective.
Most consistently present
| Signal | Present | Share of sample |
|---|---|---|
| Page title | 94/100 | 94% |
| Contact / action language | 92/100 | 92% |
| robots.txt | 92/100 | 92% |
| Mobile viewport | 89/100 | 89% |
| HTTPS | 87/100 | 87% |
Least consistently present
| Signal | Present | Share of sample |
|---|---|---|
| Quote / consultation path | 31/100 | 31% |
| Clickable email | 40/100 | 40% |
| Enquiry form | 51/100 | 51% |
| Clickable phone | 60/100 | 60% |
| Structured data | 63/100 | 63% |
For the complete signal-by-signal result, download the raw CSV rather than relying only on the five strongest and five weakest items summarized here.
Score distribution across the sample
| Observable score band | Websites | Share of sample |
|---|---|---|
| 85–100 | 30 | 30% |
| 70–84 | 33 | 33% |
| 50–69 | 23 | 23% |
| 0–49 | 14 | 14% |
The bands are descriptive rather than grades. The score measures a deliberately narrow set of public website fundamentals and should not be used as a proxy for business quality, revenue performance or search ranking.
City and industry context
The audit pool is drawn round-robin across every sampled municipality and category, but the finished sample is not evenly distributed: municipalities differ widely in how many directory records carry a verifiable local address, so Vancouver and Surrey supply most of the rows and several sampled municipalities contributed none. Segment averages are included for transparency, and the smaller groups in particular are too small to read as city or industry league tables.
Municipalities represented
| Municipality | Websites | Average score |
|---|---|---|
| Vancouver | 50 | 71.2/100 |
| Surrey | 45 | 69.8/100 |
| Burnaby | 2 | 83/100 |
| Coquitlam | 1 | 61/100 |
| North Vancouver | 1 | 61/100 |
| Richmond | 1 | 95/100 |
Industries represented
| Industry | Websites | Average score |
|---|---|---|
| HVAC & heating | 9 | 72.6/100 |
| Plumbing | 9 | 71.6/100 |
| Roofing | 9 | 81.7/100 |
| Cafes | 8 | 62.6/100 |
| Legal services | 8 | 84.8/100 |
| Dentistry | 7 | 86/100 |
| Employment services | 7 | 55.6/100 |
| Investment services | 7 | 68.6/100 |
| Dental laboratories | 6 | 53.7/100 |
| Upholstery | 6 | 62.5/100 |
| Florists | 5 | 66.8/100 |
| Real estate | 5 | 55.4/100 |
| Pest control | 4 | 82.5/100 |
| Psychology | 4 | 77.8/100 |
| Education | 3 | 70.3/100 |
| Accounting | 2 | 81/100 |
| Bridal retail | 1 | 83/100 |
Sample design and reproducibility
The sample is drawn from public Vancouver Local by Names and Numbers category listings. A candidate needs an external business website and a concrete address containing the municipality being sampled. Broad “serving Metro Vancouver” listings and directory spillover results are not enough on their own.
| Sampling rule | Method |
|---|---|
| Source | Vancouver Local by Names and Numbers public category listings |
| Geography | Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, Surrey, North Vancouver, West Vancouver, Coquitlam, Delta, Port Moody and Port Coquitlam are queried where category listings are available. |
| Industry mix | Plumbing, dentistry, roofing, accounting and legal-services directory categories are queried to avoid a single-sector sample. |
| Business website | The directory listing must expose an external public website; social profiles and directory URLs are excluded. |
| One hostname per sample | Duplicate website hostnames are removed before the balanced audit pool is created. |
| Successful homepage | Only websites whose checked homepage returns HTML successfully enter the final 100-row sample. |
| Collection period | September 3, 2026 |
Discovery itself is reproducible from the public source pages, but directory contents and business websites change over time. A later rerun may therefore produce a different valid sample.
View the public discovery source ↗The true 100-point observable scoring model
The report and the System Current Website & Enquiry Checker now use the same weights. A point is awarded only when the signal is observed in public HTML or at the conventional endpoint.
| Signal | Points | Why it is included |
|---|---|---|
| HTTPS | 8 | Encrypted delivery of the final checked homepage. |
| Mobile viewport | 8 | Basic mobile rendering signal. |
| Page title | 6 | Core page identity for browsers and search results. |
| Meta description | 6 | A substantive search-result description signal. |
| Canonical URL | 5 | Preferred-URL declaration. |
| HTML form | 10 | Observable path for structured customer input. |
| Clickable phone | 7 | Direct mobile calling path where exposed. |
| Clickable email | 5 | Direct email path. |
| Contact / action language | 7 | Evidence of an obvious next customer action. |
| Quote / consultation language | 7 | Evidence of an explicit commercial enquiry path. |
| JSON-LD structured data | 9 | Machine-readable entity or page information. |
| Open Graph metadata | 5 | Basic social sharing metadata. |
| H1 heading | 5 | Observable primary heading structure. |
| robots.txt | 6 | Conventional crawler-control endpoint. |
| sitemap.xml | 6 | Conventional sitemap endpoint. |
Important limitation
A site can score 100 and still have weak positioning, poor proof or low search authority. A lower score can also be appropriate when a business deliberately does not publish a phone number, email link or public quote form.
What this research cannot conclude
- It cannot prove that a contact form successfully delivers to a person, inbox or CRM.
- It cannot infer conversion rate, lead quality, revenue impact or customer satisfaction.
- It cannot determine Google rankings or local-pack visibility without search-performance data.
- It does not establish full accessibility conformance, security posture or Core Web Vitals from the homepage HTML check.
- JavaScript-rendered or bot-protected content may not be visible to the lightweight collector.
- The directory-derived sample is not a random census of all Metro Vancouver businesses and should not be generalized as one.
- Municipal coverage is uneven. Most rows come from two municipalities, and several sampled municipalities are absent entirely, so the findings describe the sample rather than Metro Vancouver as a whole.
- City and industry subgroup averages are contextual descriptors, not evidence that one municipality or industry has better businesses or websites overall.
Download, cite or reuse the research
The point of publishing the raw evidence is to make the headline findings auditable. Journalists, business organizations, agencies and researchers can reference the aggregate findings with attribution to System Current and a link to this report.
Suggested citation: System Current, Metro Vancouver Business Website Benchmark 2026, methodology 1.1, n=100, collected September 3, 2026.