The Great Dutch Website Audit Analysis (2025): 500+ Sites Scanned, Here’s What We Found
By Auditbly
•December 6, 2025
•10 min read
The digital landscape of the Netherlands is mature, competitive, and constantly shifting. Agencies, developers, and product teams diligently push updates focused on speed, compliance, and visibility. But how does that effort translate into tangible results? More importantly, how does your website truly compare to the competition?
Figure: Analyzing 500 Dutch websites to benchmark the national digital landscape against global standards.
For too long, performance and accessibility audits have been solo missions, benchmarking against abstract ideals. We wanted to change that. Auditbly executed an intensive diagnostic scan across 500 representative Dutch websites, covering key industries from e-commerce to public services, to uncover the collective reality of the Dutch web in 2025.
What we found is more than just a report card; it’s a strategic roadmap. This analysis reveals the exact, shared weak points that are costing organic traffic, degrading user experience, and creating accessibility barriers across the country. We can now move beyond guessing what to fix and focus on where the entire market is underperforming. The gap between ambition and execution is clearest in mobile speed and fundamental accessibility, and here is the data to prove it.
The Methodology: Understanding the Score
Before diving into the numbers, it’s crucial to understand how we got them. Our selection process focused on high-traffic, publicly visible Dutch domains.
The Auditbly platform executed a multi-layered scan on each site, focusing on a primary page and key subpages, generating aggregate scores across our three core pillars: Accessibility, SEO, and Performance.
- Accessibility: Based on a comprehensive subset of the WCAG 2.1 Level A and AA standards, focusing on common, high-impact errors like keyboard navigation, color contrast, and proper ARIA usage.
- SEO: Focused on technical SEO health: indexing status, structured data implementation, meta-tag completeness, mobile-friendliness, and internal linking structure.
- Performance: Heavily weighted by Google's Core Web Vitals (CWV) metrics; LCP, FID (or INP), and CLS, using both Lighthouse-based lab data and simulated field data models.
This analysis provides a snapshot, an honest X-ray of where the Dutch web is thriving and where, frankly, we need to roll up our sleeves.
Figure: Accessibility bridges the gap between users and content; 68.2% of Dutch sites still have critical barriers.
Accessibility: The Silence of the Screen Reader
Accessibility is not a feature; it’s a prerequisite for a truly functional web. Yet, it remains the area where most sites lose points and, more importantly, lose potential users.
| Metric | Dutch Web Average (Score/Sites) | Key Finding |
|---|---|---|
| Accessibility Score (0-100) | 79.4 | Slightly below the benchmark for acceptable WCAG AA compliance. |
| Sites with Critical Contrast Errors | 68.2% | Almost 7 out of 10 sites fail basic text/background contrast. |
| Sites with Missing/Empty Alt Text | 55.6% | Images often lack descriptive alternatives, breaking screen reader context. |
| Sites Failing Keyboard Navigation | 41.8% | Critical elements (like forms or navigation) are unreachable via Tab key. |
The average score of suggests a baseline effort, but the detailed breakdowns show deep-seated issues. Critical contrast errors (text too light against a light background, or vice versa) are the most pervasive issue. This isn't just a compliance failure; it's a direct exclusionary barrier for users with visual impairments or those simply viewing a screen in bright sunlight.
The Expert Take: "The average score hides the fact that most sites look good, but don't work well for everyone. When nearly half of all sites break basic keyboard navigation, we’re failing a huge segment of the user base. Developers, we must prioritize proper focus management. It’s foundational." (See our deep dive on Understanding and Fixing WCAG Contrast Errors)
SEO Statistics: Are We Indexable?
Technical SEO is the often-unseen foundation of organic visibility. It doesn't matter how great your content is if search engines can’t reliably crawl, interpret, and index it.
| Metric | Dutch Web Average (Score/Sites) | Key Finding |
|---|---|---|
| SEO Score (0-100) | 88.1 | The highest average score, indicating a strong baseline understanding of meta-tags and sitemaps. |
| Sites with Missing/Duplicate Meta Descriptions | 31.4% | A significant number of pages lack unique, compelling snippet text. |
| Sites Lacking Proper Structured Data (Schema) | 74.0% | The vast majority are missing rich snippet opportunities (e.g., FAQ, Review, Product markup). |
| Mobile Friendliness Score | 94.7 | Very high average, reflecting the ubiquity of responsive frameworks. |
The SEO pillar showed the strongest average score, suggesting that the industry understands and implements the basics like unique titles and meta descriptions.
However, the major missed opportunity lies in Structured Data. The deficiency means that most sites are leaving valuable "real estate" on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) on the table. Without Schema markup, search engines must guess the context of your content; with it, you explicitly tell them, opening the door for rich results like carousels, ratings, and instant answers. This is a crucial area for competitive advantage in 2025. (For a technical walkthrough, check out our guide on Implementing Advanced Schema for Modern SEO)
Figure: Dutch sites score highest on SEO fundamentals (88.1), yet 74% miss structured data opportunities for rich search results.
Performance Statistics: The Speed-to-Trust Equation
Performance is arguably the most dynamic pillar, heavily influenced by Google’s Core Web Vitals (CWV). In 2025, speed isn't a perk; it's a ranking factor and a fundamental driver of conversion.
We’re past the point where users tolerate a slow loading page. In the Dutch analysis, we specifically looked at the percentage of sites passing the CWV thresholds (LCP , FID/INP , CLS ).
| Metric | Dutch Web Average (Score/Sites) | Key Finding |
|---|---|---|
| Performance Score (0-100) | 64.3 | The lowest average score, confirming that performance optimization is the biggest challenge. |
| Sites Passing all 3 CWV Thresholds | 23.6% | Fewer than one in four sites offer a good experience across the board. |
| Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) Failure Rate | 61.2% | The dominant speed issue: the primary page content takes too long to load. |
| Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) Failure Rate | 38.0% | Too many sites suffer from annoying content shifts while loading. |
The average performance score of is a sober reminder that while our development tools are powerful, the resulting output is often bloated. The most concerning finding is the LCP failure rate. LCP measures the time it takes for the largest element (usually a hero image or primary text block) to load. When this fails, it signals a problem with critical resource loading, blocking CSS, or unoptimized images.
The second major issue is the layout instability measured by CLS. Seeing a button jump out from under your finger is frustrating, and it directly impacts user trust and task completion. This often stems from images without explicit dimensions, dynamically injected content, or unoptimized web fonts. (Dive deeper into optimization in our article on The Art and Science of Core Web Vitals)
Figure: Performance scores lowest at 64.3; only 23.6% of Dutch sites pass Core Web Vitals, with 61.2% failing critical load speed metrics.
Emerging Trends: The Common Denominators
Looking across the data, two significant trends emerged that developers and product teams in the Netherlands should be aware of:
1. The Mobile Performance Trap
While Mobile Friendliness scored high (nearly ), the actual Mobile Performance (measured by CWV) scored low. This means sites are responsive (they fit on a small screen) but they are slow on mobile networks and devices. The disconnect shows that simply using a responsive framework is no longer enough; true performance requires aggressive code-splitting, aggressive image optimization, and prioritizing mobile-first asset delivery.
2. The ARIA and Landmark Neglect
In the accessibility column, a recurring technical flaw was the poor use of ARIA roles and HTML5 landmarks. Many sites default to using <div> for structure instead of semantically meaningful elements like <nav>, <main>, <header>, and <footer>. This lack of semantic structure is not an error per se, but it forces screen readers and assistive technologies to process the page as a flat document, vastly increasing cognitive load. This is a case where the site passes the most basic accessibility tests but fails the usability test for a screen reader user. (Read more on semantic structure in our article on Building a Truly Accessible HTML Foundation)
Conclusion: The Path to a Better Benchmark
The 2025 Auditbly analysis of the Dutch web reveals a landscape of high intentions and varying execution. We are strong on basic SEO and mobile adaptability, but we are failing in two crucial, high-impact areas: true Performance and foundational Accessibility.
The average Dutch website is slow, and its core content often fails to load quickly enough to meet user expectations. Furthermore, it remains unnecessarily difficult for a significant percentage of the population to use.
This is not a condemnation; it is an invitation to action. Every audit, every flagged LCP violation, and every missing ARIA role is a specific, actionable task list waiting for a developer's attention. Understanding the average is the first step toward beating it.
Now you have the benchmark. The question is, how does your site stack up?