RevenuePack Local Front Desk Index · Methodology
How the RevenuePack Local Front Desk Index is measured
The RevenuePack Local Front Desk Index (June 2026) measured 5,509 US local businesses with live, reachable websites across 40 metros, fetching each site and checking one practical thing: whether a customer who shows up after hours can get a question answered or book anything at all. This page documents exactly what was checked, on whom, when, what the numbers can and can't tell you, and how to cite them.
What was measured
Every business in the sample has a live website; each site was fetched and run through the same automated checks. Percentages in the reports are shares of each sample failing (or showing) a given check.
| Metric | The exact check |
|---|---|
| No chat | The site's HTML is scanned for the fingerprints of working chat and messaging widgets — Intercom, Drift, Tawk.to, Tidio, LiveChat, Crisp, Zendesk, HubSpot chat, Facebook customer chat, Olark, Podium, Birdeye and similar. No recognized widget means no way for a visitor to ask a question and get an answer. |
| No booking | The HTML is scanned for online booking and scheduling paths — Calendly, Acuity, Booksy, Vagaro, Square, Schedulicity, Setmore, Mindbody, Housecall Pro, Jobber, ServiceTitan, or an explicit “book now / schedule online / request appointment” flow. A plain contact form doesn't count as booking. |
| Neither | The share failing both checks at once: no chat and no booking. This is the “front door locked after hours” number quoted in every report. |
| DIY builder | The page source is checked for DIY site-builder fingerprints — Wix, Weebly, GoDaddy Sites, Squarespace, Duda, Jimdo, SITE123 — a proxy for how much attention the web presence gets. |
| Stale site | Copyright years on the page are parsed; a site counts as visibly stale when the newest year it shows is 2023 or older — the clearest public signal a site was set up once and left alone. |
| Mobile-ready | The page is checked for a mobile viewport tag — the baseline for rendering properly on a phone, where most after-hours visits happen. |
The sample
5,509 local service and storefront businesses — salons, restaurants, gyms, dentists, contractors, real-estate agents, auto shops and more — across 40 US metros, drawn from commercial map data and kept only if they had a live, reachable website. The metros:
Boise, ID · Charlotte, NC · Cincinnati, OH · Columbus, OH · Dayton, OH · Des Moines, IA · Fort Wayne, IN · Grand Rapids, MI · Greenville, SC · Indianapolis, IN · Kansas City, MO · Knoxville, TN · Louisville, KY · Nashville, TN · Oklahoma City, OK · Omaha, NE · Raleigh, NC · Toledo, OH · Tulsa, OK · Wichita, KS · Austin, TX · San Antonio, TX · Memphis, TN · Birmingham, AL · Richmond, VA · Little Rock, AR · Lexington, KY · Madison, WI · Salt Lake City, UT · Albuquerque, NM · Tucson, AZ · Spokane, WA · Greensboro, NC · Chattanooga, TN · Huntsville, AL · Lincoln, NE · Sioux Falls, SD · Peoria, IL · Fort Collins, CO · Springfield, MO.
Industries with at least 30 sampled businesses get their own line in the reports; smaller categories roll into the overall numbers. The industry samples:
| Industry | Sampled | No chat | No booking |
|---|---|---|---|
| dental practices | 75 | 97% | 72% |
| hair & beauty salons | 357 | 97% | 50% |
| barbershops | 167 | 99% | 60% |
| gyms & fitness studios | 185 | 97% | 85% |
| restaurants | 303 | 98% | 89% |
| auto repair shops | 58 | 95% | 78% |
| car dealerships | 126 | 90% | 95% |
| real-estate agents | 315 | 93% | 96% |
| painting contractors | 39 | 100% | 95% |
| nail salons | 33 | 100% | 64% |
| flooring companies | 31 | 81% | 90% |
| health-care practices | 96 | 98% | 82% |
When
All measurements were taken in June 2026 — the index's data month, and the date that appears in every citation. When the harvest is re-run, new numbers get a new data month; a June 2026 figure stays a June 2026 figure, so quoted stats never silently change under a citation.
Limitations
- Sampling, not a census. Businesses come from commercial map data, so the sample reflects what's listed there. Treat city-to-city gaps under ~5 points as noise, not a ranking.
- Websites only. Only businesses with a live, reachable website are counted. Businesses with no website at all aren't in the denominator, so the checks describe the online population, not every business in a metro.
- Automated checks. Every site went through the same scripted checks — consistent across all 5,509 sites, but a widget an automated fetch can't see is counted as absent.
- Whole-point rounding. All percentages are rounded to whole points; industry lines are only published where the sample is at least 30 businesses.
Citation policy
Free to cite and republish with attribution: "RevenuePack Local Front Desk Index, June 2026" linked to https://mail.revenuepack.com/reports. Every key finding on the national report and the per-city reports has a stable anchor you can link straight to. Journalists: for the raw per-city tables, a custom cut, or a quote, email press@revenuepack.com — we answer fast.
Who ran it
Adam Ferree
Founder, RevenuePack · Pendleton, Indiana
RevenuePack is an AI front desk for local businesses; the index exists because we kept watching the same after-hours customers go unanswered. Who's behind RevenuePack →