Sources

Every figure we quote — on this site and in your assessment results — is listed here with its original source, so you can check it yourself.

  1. [1] 53% of mobile site visits are abandoned when a page takes longer than three seconds to load.

    DoubleClick by Google, "The Need for Mobile Speed", September 2016. Aggregated, anonymised Google Analytics data, n≈3,700 opted-in mobile sites, March 2016.

    https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/_qs/documents/2340/bc22e_The_Need_for_Mobile_Speed_-_FINAL_1.pdf

    Accessed 2026-07-16

    Google has not re-measured this figure publicly since 2016. Its current Core Web Vitals guidance is stricter still — the "good" threshold for Largest Contentful Paint is 2.5 seconds.

  2. [2] Google treats a performance score of 90 or above as "good".

    Google, PageSpeed Insights scoring documentation. Bands: 90–100 good, 50–89 needs improvement, 0–49 poor.

    https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/v5/about

    Accessed 2026-07-16

  3. [3] Visitors form credibility judgments about a website from its visual design within milliseconds, and those judgments persist.

    Lindgaard, Fernandes, Dudek & Brown (2006), "Attention Web Designers: You Have 50 Milliseconds to Make a Good First Impression!", Behaviour & Information Technology 25(2); Fogg et al. (2003), Stanford Web Credibility Project; Tuch et al. (2012), International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 70(11).

    https://credibility.stanford.edu/guidelines/index.html

    Accessed 2026-07-16

    This research establishes that visual design drives instant trust judgments. It does not establish any particular refresh cadence — the two-year mark in our question is our own judgment, not a research finding.

  4. [4] Google indexes and ranks sites based on their mobile version.

    Google Search Central, mobile-first indexing documentation.

    https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/mobile/mobile-sites-mobile-first-indexing

    Accessed 2026-07-16

  5. [5] Chrome marks pages served over HTTP as "Not Secure", and HTTPS is a Google ranking signal.

    Google Security Blog, "HTTPS as a ranking signal" (August 2014) and "A secure web is here to stay" (February 2018).

    https://security.googleblog.com/2018/02/a-secure-web-is-here-to-stay.html

    Accessed 2026-07-16

  6. [6] Incorrect or inconsistent contact details are a leading cause of lost consumer trust in a business.

    BrightLocal, "Business Listings Trust Report" 2021. Survey of 1,141 US consumers.

    https://www.brightlocal.com/research/business-listings-trust-report/

    Accessed 2026-07-16

    A vendor-run consumer survey, not peer-reviewed research, and it measures trust in business listings broadly rather than website layout specifically.

  7. [7] 11,334 new security vulnerabilities were disclosed across WordPress plugins and themes in 2025 — more than 10,000 of them in plugins alone, which is 91% of the total. WordPress core itself accounted for six.

    Patchstack, "State of WordPress Security in 2026". Of 11,334 new vulnerabilities logged across the WordPress ecosystem in 2025, 91% were in plugins and 9% in themes; WordPress core accounted for six, all rated low priority.

    https://patchstack.com/whitepaper/state-of-wordpress-security-in-2026/

    Accessed 2026-07-26

    Patchstack sells WordPress security software, so the report is vendor-published rather than independent. The plugin-versus-core split is consistent with Sucuri and Wordfence reporting for the same period. The figure counts disclosed vulnerabilities, not successful attacks.

  8. [8] Squarespace sites cannot be fully exported — design, styling and several page types are left behind.

    Squarespace Help Center, "Exporting your site". Squarespace's own documentation lists what does not export: album, cover, index, info, portfolio and store pages; content in page-specific headers, footers and sidebars; more than one blog page; dropdowns; audio, product and video blocks; drafts; style settings; and custom CSS.

    https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/206566687-Exporting-your-site

    Accessed 2026-07-26

    Squarespace may change its export capability at any time; this reflects its documentation as accessed.

  9. [9] A Wix site cannot be exported to run anywhere else.

    Wix Help Center, "Exporting or Embedding Your Wix Site Elsewhere": "Your Wix site is a standard HTML5 site, and is built with Wix's technology. In order for your site to work properly, it needs to be hosted and operated on Wix's servers."

    https://support.wix.com/en/article/exporting-or-embedding-your-wix-site-elsewhere

    Accessed 2026-07-26

    Wix may change this at any time; this reflects its documentation as accessed.