Research · updated
Small-business research
Where small companies lose time to paperwork and admin, and what real small-business websites look like to Google, to AI assistants like ChatGPT, and to customers using screen readers. Every number comes from our own analysis of public government data or from checks we ran ourselves on public websites. No business is named.
- How much work can companies with 10 to 200 employees automate?About 15-20% of the average employee's week is admin and data work that current tools can do.Read the findings
- Can ChatGPT and other AI assistants read small-business websites?Almost none block AI crawlers, but 87% answer no customer questions on the home page.Read the findings
- Wix vs WordPress vs Squarespace vs GoDaddy: which small-business websites score best?Wix sites had the fewest serious accessibility problems; every GoDaddy site we checked had at least one.Read the findings
- Do accessibility overlay widgets fix small-business websites?88% of sites with an overlay still had a serious problem, against 76% without one.Read the findings
- How Wisconsin small-business websites hold up in search, AI answers and accessibility512 sites in six areas; 87% answer no customer questions on the home page.Read the findings
How we collect the data
Workplace reports combine free public datasets, such as the Census Bureau’s business counts, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ job and wage survey and the Labor Department’s O*NET job database. Each report explains its method and its limits.
Website reports: we take businesses from public member directories, such as chambers of commerce and trade associations, and run our automated website checks on their home pages at a slow pace, obeying each site’s robots.txt. What we publish is totals only: no business, email address or person is named. We spot-check the headline numbers by hand against the real pages before publishing.
You’re welcome to quote any number with a link to the page it came from. Press questions: phulaxllc@gmail.com.