Most small-business websites have the same problem: they were bought as a design, not as a tool. They look fine in the proposal, then load slowly, rank for nothing and send enquiries to an inbox nobody checks.
Here's what a website for a service business actually needs, in roughly the order it matters.
1. A first screen that answers three questions
Within five seconds, a visitor should know what you do, where you do it, and how to get in touch. That means a plain headline ("Electrician on the Sunshine Coast", not "Powering your tomorrow"), your service area, and one obvious button.
If your homepage opens with a slideshow, a video or a mission statement, you're asking people to wait before they find out whether they're in the right place. Most won't.
2. Speed you can measure
Google's own research has found that the chance of someone leaving rises sharply as load time goes from one second to three. On a phone, on a 4G connection, your site should show its main content in under two and a half seconds.
You can check this yourself. Run your homepage through PageSpeed Insights and look at the mobile score. Under 50 is a problem. Under 90 is worth fixing.
The usual culprits are page builders, uncompressed photos, chat widgets, and five different tracking scripts nobody remembers installing.
3. One page per service
If you offer bathroom renovations, kitchen renovations and decks, you need three pages, not one page called "Services" with three paragraphs. Each page should say what's included, roughly what it costs, which suburbs you cover, and what happens after someone gets in touch.
These pages are what rank. They're also what people forward to their partner before deciding.
4. Proof close to the button
Reviews, photos of real jobs, licence numbers and the names of people who'll turn up. Put them next to the contact button, not on a separate testimonials page nobody visits.
5. A contact form that reaches you
It sounds obvious, but test it. Send yourself an enquiry from your phone today. Check it arrives, check it isn't in spam, and check the visitor gets a confirmation. A surprising number of forms have been quietly broken for months.
What you can skip
- Sliders and carousels. People rarely click past the first slide.
- A blog you won't update. One useful article a quarter beats twenty thin ones.
- Animations for their own sake. If it doesn't help someone understand something, it's just slowing the page down.
- Cookie banners you don't need. If your analytics don't use cookies, you may not need a banner at all. Check with your privacy adviser.
What it should cost
For a well-built five-page site with custom design, expect somewhere between A$4,000 and A$8,000 from an independent developer, and more from an agency with account managers to pay. Below that you're usually buying a template; well above it, you should be getting a CMS, migration from your old site, integrations, or all three.
Whatever you pay, make sure you own the domain, the hosting account and the code. If you can't take your website with you when you leave, you're renting it.
If you'd like a second opinion on your current site, send us the link. We'll tell you what we'd fix first, even if the answer is "nothing much".