Patients read the websitebefore the chartand most cannot find the answer they came for

A1. The research question

When someone needs an eye exam, new glasses or contact lenses, or has a red or injured eye, and looks an independent optometrist up online, usually on a phone, can they find out whether they can book online, whether their vision plan is taken, what it will cost, whether the practice sees children and fits contact lenses, whether it can see them today, which frames it carries, who will examine them, how to reach it and when it is open, and whether other patients vouch for it?

Population. Independently owned US optometry practices with one to three locations and their own website, in four groups: family optometry practices, pediatric and vision therapy practices, specialty contact lens and dry-eye clinics, and independent optical boutiques with an optometrist on site. These are the eye-care businesses a small or mid-size web agency can realistically win as clients.

A2. Who was studied

The sample was built from local search listings, city by city, then screened so that every site in it is one an independent agency could realistically win.

Source	What it contributes	Sites
Local search, family optometry	Independent family and general optometry practices found in local search results, city by city	99
Local search, pediatric and vision therapy	Pediatric optometry, vision therapy and myopia-control practices found in local search results, city by city	42
Local search, specialty contact lens and dry eye	Specialty contact lens (scleral, ortho-k, keratoconus) and dry-eye clinics led by optometrists, found in local search results, city by city	31
Local search, optical boutiques	Independent optical boutiques and eyewear studios with an optometrist doing eye exams on site, found in local search results, city by city	26

From list to sample	Sites
Candidates listed	150
Removed at screening: the site refused automated visitors or served them a bot challenge instead of the page (22)	−22
Removed at screening: parked or placeholder (1)	−1
Removed at editorial review: a second website of a practice already listed (1)	−1
Cohort	126

Region (US Census)	Family optometry practices	Pediatric and vision therapy	Specialty contact lens and dry eye	Optical boutiques with an optometrist	All
Northeast	11	5	8	6	30
Midwest	8	8	5	8	29
South	13	7	6	7	33
West	11	7	6	7	31
All regions	43	27	25	28	123

A3. How the sites were read

Pages. The home page, then for each of twelve topics (services and eye exams, insurance, payment and prices, frame brands, eyewear, contact lenses, children's eye care, emergencies, doctors and about, reviews, booking, contact) the best-matching link on the home page.

Speed and accessibility. Google PageSpeed Insights (Lighthouse) on a mid-range phone profile and on desktop, plus Chrome UX Report data from real visitors over the previous 28 days where Google publishes it for the site.

Crawler conduct. One request at a time to each site, at least 400 ms apart, at most thirteen pages per site; robots.txt is read and obeyed for every page requested; a site that refuses is left out and never retried. The crawler identifies itself as Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; ClikitiResearch/1.0; +https://clikiti.com).

A4. What was measured

10 questions patients ask before they book an eye exam or buy glasses, answered from what each site publishes, and 4 technical checks against published standards. A check passes only when the rule below is met; anything the crawler cannot confirm counts as not answered.

Question	Counts as answered when	Standard
Can I book an eye exam online?Eye exams can be booked or requested online	A link, button or embedded scheduler lets the visitor book or request an eye exam or appointment online (a phone number or a 'contact us' link alone does not count; patient forms, bill payment and portals do not count).	Clikiti patient question 1 of 10
Do you take my vision plan?Vision plans named (VSP, EyeMed and so on)	At least one vision or medical plan the practice takes is named (VSP, EyeMed, Davis Vision, Spectera, Superior Vision, Avesis, MES, NVA, Medicare, Medicaid, Blue Cross and so on), or the practice says plainly that it takes no insurance.	Clikiti patient question 2 of 10
What will an eye exam cost me?A price shown: an exam, a fitting or eyewear	A dollar price is shown for an eye exam, a contact lens fitting, a vision therapy evaluation, a dry-eye treatment, or a pair or package of glasses (discounts, savings and financing limits do not count).	Clikiti patient question 3 of 10
Do you see children?Children's eye exams offered	The practice says it examines children: a children's or pediatric eye exam, an infant (InfantSEE) or school-age exam, a starting age, or exams for children and adults. Myopia management alone does not count.	Clikiti patient question 4 of 10
Can I get contact lenses fitted?Contact lens exams or fittings offered	The practice says it examines patients for or fits contact lenses (a contact lens exam, fitting or evaluation, or specialty lenses such as scleral or ortho-k). Selling lenses online alone does not count.	Clikiti patient question 5 of 10
Can you see me today for a red or injured eye?Eye emergencies or same-day visits stated	The practice says it sees eye emergencies or urgent problems, or offers same-day or walk-in visits, for example a red eye, an eye injury, a foreign body or sudden flashes and floaters.	Clikiti patient question 6 of 10
Which frames do you carry?Frame brands named	Three or more eyewear brands are named on the home, eyewear or about page.	Clikiti patient question 7 of 10
Who will examine me?Optometrists named, with their training	At least one optometrist is named with a qualification, their profession or their training: O.D., 'Optometrist' beside the name, an optometry school, a residency, or fellowship of a professional academy (FAAO, FCOVD, FSLS).	Clikiti patient question 8 of 10
How do I reach you, and when are you open?Tappable phone plus opening hours	The home page has a tappable phone link, and the home, contact or about page states opening hours (a day and a time range).	Clikiti patient question 9 of 10
Do other patients vouch for you?Reviews marked up, in a widget or quoted	Patient reviews are marked up for search engines (Review or AggregateRating structured data), shown through a review widget, or at least two patient testimonials are quoted on the home, about or reviews page. A link to a review site alone does not count.	Clikiti patient question 10 of 10
Technical checks
Loads in under 2.5 s on a phoneLoads in under 2.5 s on a phone	Real visitors on phones see the main content within 2.5 seconds (Chrome UX Report, 75th percentile). Where Google publishes no visitor data, the phone lab test is used.	Core Web Vitals · LCP
Text contrast passes 4.5:1Text contrast passes 4.5:1	No text on the home page fails the WCAG 1.4.3 minimum contrast of 4.5:1, in either the phone or desktop test.	WCAG 1.4.3
Images have text descriptionsImages have text descriptions	Every meaningful image on the home page has a text description (WCAG 1.1.1).	WCAG 1.1.1
Optician, Optometric or MedicalClinic structured dataOptician, Optometric or MedicalClinic structured data	The site describes the practice to search engines with Optician, Optometric, MedicalClinic, MedicalBusiness or Physician structured data.	Schema.org · Optician

A5. The website score

Each site's overall score (0 to 100) is Clikiti's website score, rubric 2.0.0. It measures the website, not the practice, and the patient questions above do not feed it. It is a weighted mean of five pillars:

Pillar	Weight	Based on
Usability	30%	Checks of the home page for broken links and images, and an expert review of the page as rendered on a phone and on a desktop screen, against Jakob Nielsen's ten usability heuristics. Each issue must name the heuristic, a severity on the Nielsen Norman Group scale and the exact element or wording; issues without all three are discarded, and two independent passes must agree.
Speed	25%	Google Lighthouse on a mid-range phone (60%) and on desktop (20%), and real-visitor Core Web Vitals from the Chrome UX Report (20%) where available.
Accessibility	25%	Google Lighthouse accessibility audits (70%) and Clikiti's own WCAG checks of the served page (30%).
Search	10%	Google Lighthouse SEO audits (60%) and Clikiti's own search checks of the served page (40%).
Trust	10%	Google Lighthouse best-practice audits (40%) and security header checks (60%).

Within a pillar, each issue costs points by severity (critical, high, medium, low) and by how many times it occurs; issues based on judgement count at 70% of measured ones, and duplicates of the same root cause count once. On the four practice profiles, the number out of 100 is this overall score, and each dot is one check in its group: filled when the site passes it, hollow when it does not.

A6. Precision

With 123 sites, a share reported for the whole sample is precise to within ±8.8 percentage points at 95% confidence (worst case, a 50% share; 1.96 × √(0.25/n)). By type: family optometry practices ±14.9 (n = 43); pediatric and vision therapy ±18.9 (n = 27); specialty contact lens and dry eye ±19.6 (n = 25); optical boutiques with an optometrist ±18.5 (n = 28). Differences between types smaller than these margins should be read as similar. Percentages are rounded to whole numbers; medians are the middle value of the sites in a group.

A7. Quality control

• Every home page in the cohort was fetched and its title checked against the listed practice before scanning
• Every home page was checked for hijacked content (gambling, pharmacy, adult and crypto spam) before scanning
• Every home page was checked for a second website of the same practice (shared phone numbers and names)
• Detection rules were checked against the evidence they record for a sample of practices in every group, and revised before the final run
• Every published figure is recomputed from the data at build time, and a statement in the text that the data does not support stops the build
• Results are published only after automated checks for missing data, anonymity, accessibility of the report itself and the margin of error statement pass

A8. Limitations

• A point-in-time snapshot: sites change, and a site may have improved or declined since it was read.
• Only public pages were read: the home page and pages it links to. Patient portals, online stores and multi-step booking flows were not tested.
• Answers are read from the page as a server delivers it. Content that only appears after scripts run in the browser (some schedulers and review widgets) is not seen, which the study counts as a gap a search engine or a slow phone would also meet.
• 22 candidates blocked automated visitors or served them a bot challenge and are not in the study; sites behind such protection may differ from those studied.
• The study reports what a website shows. It does not judge any practice's eye care, eyewear or prices, and it is not medical advice.
• Automated accessibility tests find only part of what WCAG covers; keyboard and screen-reader use need a manual audit.
• The sample is a structured list of real, independent practices, not a random draw. Margins of error are given as a guide to precision, not as a guarantee that the results hold for every practice in the country.

A9. Data, licence and corrections

The aggregate results are published as CSV and JSON beside this report under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence: you may reuse, adapt and share them, including in client proposals, with a credit to Clikiti and a link. No per-site results are published. Corrections and removal requests are reviewed and answered personally; see the end of this report.