The State of Cumbria's Business Websites 2026: We Tested 88 of Them

Cumbria's broadband is no longer the problem. Whether the county's business websites are keeping up with it is a question we could find no published answer to, so in late July 2026 we tested 88 independent business websites across Carlisle, Kendal, Penrith, Barrow-in-Furness, Whitehaven, Workington, Ulverston and Windermere and Ambleside, plus a Lancaster group for comparison, using the same Google Lighthouse test that powers PageSpeed Insights.

The headline: the typical site took 8.9 seconds to show its main content on a mid-range phone, more than three times Google's 2.5 second benchmark, and 95% of the sites we tested missed that benchmark. The encouraging part: the basics are largely in place, one town is quietly excellent, and every problem we found is fixable.

Last updated: 29 July 2026. We plan to repeat this study annually.

Why did we run this study?

Because the connectivity story and the website story have come apart. In January 2026, Cumberland Council and Westmorland and Furness Council jointly launched the Cumbria Digital Infrastructure Strategy 2026-2030, which opens by describing Cumbria as a £12 billion economy. The coverage data published alongside it by Connecting Cumbria shows superfast broadband now reaching 96.8% of Cumbrian properties and gigabit-capable connections 87.4% (Thinkbroadband, July 2026), with the strategy anticipating over 95% gigabit coverage by the end of 2027.

In other words, the pipes are built. What travels down them is now the question, and for the county's businesses, around 22,700 registered enterprises supporting 249,000 employees (Cumbria Observatory), the website is where that question gets commercial. We could find no published data on how Cumbrian business websites perform, so we gathered our own.

How did we test?

The short version, with the full note at the end of this post: we selected ten independent businesses with their own websites in each of the nine towns, drawn from public directories and local coverage, spread across hospitality, retail, trades, professional services, health and leisure, and accommodation. National chains, franchises and our own clients were excluded. We then ran each homepage through Google's Lighthouse test, which loads the page on an emulated mid-range phone over a throttled 4G connection and scores performance out of 100.

Two of the 90 sites did not render in the test environment, leaving 88 results. We are not naming any business: every figure below is a town or sector aggregate, because the point of this study is the pattern, not the finger.

What did we find across Cumbria?

Seven findings, each from our own testing:

1. The median performance score was 68 out of 100, and only 9% of sites scored 90 or above, the range Lighthouse rates as good.
2. The median Largest Contentful Paint was 8.9 seconds: the typical wait before the page's main content appears on a mid-range phone. Google's benchmark for a good experience is 2.5 seconds or less (web.dev).
3. 95% of sites missed that 2.5 second benchmark in our test, and 86% took longer than 4 seconds, the point Google classes as poor.
4. 98% of sites load over a secure HTTPS connection. This is the best news in the study: the security basics that worried everyone five years ago are now close to universal.
5. 93% pass the basic mobile configuration check, so the county's sites are mobile-aware even where they are not mobile-fast.
6. The median homepage weighed 2.5 megabytes, and the heaviest weighed 43.6 megabytes, which on a patchy rural connection is not a webpage so much as a download.
7. The median accessibility score was 88.5 out of 100: respectable, though automated checks catch only a subset of accessibility issues.

For national context, the HTTP Archive's Web Almanac 2025 found 48% of mobile websites achieve good Core Web Vitals in real-user field data. That is a different measurement to our lab test, so the numbers are not directly comparable, but the direction of the gap is the same everywhere: most business websites are slower than the standard Google asks for.

Which Cumbrian town has the fastest business websites?

Penrith, and it is not close.

Penrith's nine tested businesses posted a median score of 92, with over half the cohort scoring 90 or above and a median main-content load of 3.3 seconds. Whether that reflects a good local developer, newer sites, or simply lighter pages, the town's independents are quietly running the best business websites in the county.

At the other end, Whitehaven's median wait of 11.8 seconds was the longest in the study, and Carlisle, the county's city, sat near the bottom on performance score despite having the biggest business population to draw from. Kendal, our own home town, had a middling median and one of the study's two sites still running without a secure connection, so nobody gets to be smug, us included.

How does Cumbria compare with Lancaster?

Better than county pride dared hope. We included ten Lancaster businesses as an over-the-border comparison, and the Lancaster cohort recorded the lowest median performance score in the study at 60.5. Every Cumbrian town matched or beat it.

An honest caveat belongs here: ten sites per town is a real sample but a small one, so treat the town rankings as a snapshot rather than a league table carved in stone. What the comparison does show is that Cumbria's business websites are not lagging behind a larger neighbouring city's, which, given how much of the digital economy conversation assumes rural equals behind, is worth putting on the record.

Which sectors have the slowest websites?

The pattern that surprised us most: professional services, the solicitors, accountants and estate agents, had the slowest sites in the study, with a median main-content load of 12.2 seconds across 17 sites. These are businesses where a single new client can be worth thousands of pounds, waiting longer than any cafe menu page to show themselves.

Trades came out best, with a median score of 74 across 17 sites: builders' and plumbers' sites tend to be simple, and simple is fast. Hospitality was the most polarised sector, containing both some of the best scores and the largest share of sites scoring under 50, usually the weight of photography being the difference. Our accommodation sample was too small to report fairly, so we have left it out of the sector findings.

Does any of this matter commercially?

The evidence says yes, and not marginally. A Deloitte study commissioned by Google found that a 0.1 second improvement in mobile site speed lifted retail conversions by 8.4% and average order value by 9.2% across 37 brand sites. Our study's typical site is not 0.1 seconds from the benchmark; it is more than six seconds from it.

And the audience keeps growing: the UK Business Data Survey 2026 found 78% of UK businesses now have a website, up from 68% two years earlier. Meanwhile Cumbria's business population is at a record high: analysis of Companies House data by Inform Direct, reported by In-Cumbria, counted 24,059 registered companies in the county at the end of 2024, with 651 new businesses formed in Carlisle alone that year, 529 in South Lakeland and 440 in Allerdale. Every one of those new businesses will compete partly on how well its website works on a phone.

The pattern in this data is the same one we see in client work every week: the site is rarely broken, it is heavy. Oversized images, accumulated plugins and themes carrying features nobody uses. The fixes are usually unglamorous, and the difference they make on a phone is anything but.

Miles Debinski, Co-Founder and Technical Lead, Digital Otter

What should a Cumbrian business do with these numbers?

Three things, none of which require a rebuild.

First, take the test yourself: PageSpeed Insights is free, and your score against the figures above tells you where you stand in the county. Second, if your score is low, start with images, which in our client work are the most common single cause of a heavy, slow site. Third, ask whoever looks after your website one question: what is our main-content load time on a phone, and what would it take to get it under Google's benchmark? A good developer will have an answer the same day.

If the answer you get back is a shrug, our guides on how to tell if your website is working and whether your website needs a refresh or a rebuild are the sensible next reads, and our web design service exists for the businesses that want it fixed properly.

Methodology note

Sample: 90 independent businesses with their own websites, ten per town across Carlisle, Kendal, Penrith, Barrow-in-Furness, Whitehaven, Workington, Ulverston, Windermere and Ambleside, and Lancaster, selected from public directories, town websites and local press coverage in late July 2026, spread across hospitality, retail, trades, professional services, health and leisure, and accommodation. National chains, franchises, web agencies and our own clients were excluded. Testing: Google Lighthouse (version 12) mobile lab test, emulating a Moto G Power on a throttled Slow 4G connection, performance and accessibility categories, run in late July 2026; two sites, one in Kendal and one in Penrith, did not render in the test environment and were excluded, leaving 88 results. Lab tests simulate a consistent device and connection; real-user speeds vary with hardware and signal. Aggregates are medians unless stated. No individual business is named or identifiable, and we are happy for any statistic on this page to be cited with a link.

Want to know where your website sits in these numbers?

Send us your website address and we will run the same tests we ran for this study, tell you your scores plainly, and explain what is behind them, including if the answer is that your site is in good shape. Get in touch, or see how we approach web design for businesses across Cumbria and beyond.