We gathered the most useful, verifiable research on how websites affect sales, closings and customer service. Every figure on this page names its source and year, and links to it where the source is public.
Faster pages convert more visitors, on every device and in every industry studied.
| Load time | Conversion rate |
|---|---|
| 1 second | 3.05% |
| 2 seconds | 1.68% |
| 3 seconds | 1.12% |
| 4 seconds | 0.67% |
more retail conversions from a 0.1-second mobile speed improvement.
Deloitte and Google, Milliseconds Make Millions, 2020
of mobile visits are abandoned when a page takes longer than three seconds to load.
Google, The Need for Mobile Speed, 2016
more sales for Vodafone after a 31% improvement in Largest Contentful Paint.
web.dev case study, 2021
Shorter forms convert more people, and faster responses qualify more leads.
| Form fields | Value |
|---|---|
| 1 | 18.2% |
| 2 | 13% |
| 3 | 11.5% |
| 4 | 9.9% |
| 5 | 8.1% |
| 7 | 7.6% |
| 8 | 5.8% |
| 9+ | 4.2% |
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| vs. one hour later | 7x |
| vs. 24 hours or more | 60x |
average form completion rate among people who start a form.
Zuko form benchmarking, 2025
average completion rate for insurance forms specifically.
Zuko industry benchmarks, 2025
average time US firms took to respond to an online lead.
Harvard Business Review, 2011
Customers want to handle simple tasks themselves, but only when the website makes it easy.
| Channel | Value |
|---|---|
| Self-service | $0.10 |
| Live channel | $8.01 |
of customers try to resolve an issue themselves before contacting a person.
Dixon et al., Harvard Business Review, 2017
of customers would rather use self-service for simple issues.
Salesforce, State of the Connected Customer
of service issues are fully resolved in self-service today, often because customers cannot find the right content.
Gartner, 2024
The takeaway for agencies, firms, governments and funeral homes: a well-organized client service center, with request forms for the tasks people do most, saves staff time and is what customers prefer. A poorly organized one fails both.
How consumers choose local businesses, from BrightLocal’s 2026 survey of US adults.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Read reviews for local businesses | 97% |
| Bought after reading reviews | 93% |
| Expect owners to respond | 89% |
| More likely to use a business that responds | 80% |
| Only use businesses rated 4 stars or more | 68% |
| Use AI tools to research local businesses | 45% |
Google is still the biggest source of reviews, but BrightLocal found its share fell from 83% to 71% in a year while AI tools jumped from 6% to 45%. AI assistants summarize what they find across the web, including your own website, so the reviews and answers you publish there carry more weight than ever.
AI summaries reduce clicks to ordinary results, while visitors who do arrive from AI tools tend to convert well.
| Group | June 2024 | September 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| With an AI Overview | 1.76% | 0.61% |
| Without an AI Overview | 2.72% | 1.62% |
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Jan 2025 | 6.5% |
| Jul 2025 | 24.6% |
| Nov 2025 | 15.7% |
weekly active ChatGPT users in February 2026.
OpenAI, as reported by TechCrunch, 2026
better conversion from AI-referred visitors to US retail sites than from other traffic.
Adobe Analytics, January 2026
drop in traditional search engine volume predicted by Gartner for 2026. A forecast, not a measurement.
Gartner, February 2024
Lawsuits, breaches and plugin vulnerabilities are all rising.
| Period | Lawsuits |
|---|---|
| 2017 | 814 |
| 2018 | 2,258 |
| 2019 | 2,256 |
| 2020 | 2,523 |
| 2021 | 2,895 |
| 2022 | 3,255 |
| 2023 | 2,794 |
| 2024 | 2,452 |
| 2025 | 3,117 |
of the top one million home pages have detectable WCAG failures.
WebAIM Million, 2026
new WordPress vulnerabilities disclosed in 2025, 91% of them in plugins.
Patchstack, 2026
global average cost of a data breach.
IBM Cost of a Data Breach, 2026
Each industry page has its own research and a deeper look at what it means for your website.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Digital channels | 47% |
| Through an agent | 35% |
| Call center | 17% |
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Research online after a referral | 96% |
| Check reviews and awards | 83% |
| Visit the advisor’s website | 72% |
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Site is easy to use | 88% |
| Site is hard to use | 43% |
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| More likely to choose a firm with online pricing | 82.4% |
| Visit funeral home websites | 66.4% |
| Reviews sealed their choice | 33.2% |
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| 56% | |
| The contractor’s own website | 51% |
| Yelp | 43% |
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| On the internet | 52% |
| Through an agent | 27% |
| Friend, relative or neighbor | 9% |
We used figures we could trace to the original publisher or to a reputable outlet quoting it, preferred studies from 2022 onward, and labeled older landmark studies and vendor research with their year and source. Predictions are marked as predictions. If you spot a figure that has been updated, tell us and we will refresh it.
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