Guides to commissioning a website

What is in here

These pages explain the work rather than sell it. They are grouped by the decision each one helps with. They assume no prior vocabulary — where a supplier’s word is used, it is defined at the point it appears.

Nothing here carries a price. Figures on this site live in one place and are governed by their own rules, set out in what the dataset does and does not cover.

If you have one specific question rather than a topic to read through, the FAQ indexes the most common ones — cost, ownership, hosting, accessibility — each pointing straight to its full answer.

This is website design for Australia written for the business owner, not the professional building it — small businesses commissioning their first site and larger ones replacing an old one both start from the same set of decisions covered here. Prices, where they appear elsewhere on this site, are stated in AUD and dated, for exactly the same reason a figure with no source is not evidence. Online marketing — SEO, paid advertising, social media — sits deliberately outside this guide, covered below.

The groups: a complete guide to web design for Australian business owners

Basics

What a website project involves for someone who has never commissioned one. The stages, the artefacts you will be asked to approve, and what a professional web design business hands over at the end.

The build process

The website build process, end to end — every stage from discovery to handover, and who is actually responsible for each one.

Design

The design decisions a website buyer actually has to make, distinct from the visual opinions a supplier will offer either way.

Website structure

Information architecture — how pages relate to each other, and why the structure decided early is expensive to change later.

Content

Who writes the words on a website, what that content actually has to do, and where a business’s own writing is enough.

Briefing a website

Writing a website brief that gets accurate quotes back, and what a supplier actually needs from a business before it can quote honestly.

Platforms and CMS

Website platforms and content management systems (CMS) compared honestly, including what a website builder trades away for its convenience.

Hosting and domains

Hosting and business email, and, on its own page, domain names and .au eligibility — the infrastructure underneath every Australian website.

Performance

What makes a site fast or slow, written for the person paying rather than the person building. Core Web Vitals, website hosting, images and how to measure your own site.

Accessibility

Accessibility in practice — who is affected by an inaccessible website, and what genuinely fixing it involves.

Mobile and devices

What actually breaks on a phone, and how to check your own site rather than trust a supplier’s word for it.

Search readiness

What a new website owes search engines at launch — deliberately bounded, and distinct from search engine optimisation as an ongoing service.

Conversion

Getting enquiries from a website, not just traffic — forms, calls to action and the honest limits of what conversion advice actually knows.

Ecommerce

Selling online — the mechanics of a store, distinct from a website that simply presents information.

Analytics

Measuring what your website actually does, in plain language, for a business owner rather than an analyst.

Security

Website security for a small business — why sites actually get compromised, and what genuinely defends against it.

Maintenance

What ongoing maintenance a website actually needs, and the commercial shapes — retainer, hourly, ad hoc — it is sold in.

Diagnostics

When something is already wrong: a practical starting point for a site that is broken, hacked, or simply not producing enquiries.

Redesign and migration

Redesign and migration — keeping what an existing site has already earned, rather than starting again from zero.

Industry

How the web design industry itself works — the roles, the standards, and how this site measures the figures it publishes.

This is the complete guide as it stands; a group not listed above is a group not yet written, not one that has been hidden.

How to read these web design guides for your business

Each page answers one question and says plainly where its facts came from. Where something is a judgement rather than a fact, it is marked as one. Where a figure was measured, the date and the method are stated next to it, because a number with no date is not evidence.

If a page contradicts what a supplier tells you, that is worth raising with them rather than assuming either party is wrong. The useful outcome of reading any of this is a better question, not a settled opinion.

What is deliberately not here: professional development and hosting services excluded

These pages explain the work of commissioning and running a website. They do not cover search engine optimisation as an ongoing service, paid advertising, social media management, or graphic design as a discipline. Each of those is a different trade with different practitioners. Covering them here would mean writing about work this site does not do.

Sometimes one of those subjects touches a website decision directly — what a new site owes search engines at launch, what a landing page for paid traffic has to do differently. Where that happens, there is a single page on it, and it says plainly where the boundary is.

How these differ from most writing on the subject

Two things, both of which make them slower to read and more useful to act on.

Figures are dated and sourced or they are not published. Where a number is a measurement, the page states when it was taken, with what tool and under what settings. Where a claim is a judgement, it is marked as one. There are no unsourced conversion statistics on this site, and the reason is set out in how this site measures things.

Nothing here is trying to close a sale. There is no advertising, no affiliate arrangement and no referral fee — the full position is on commercial relationships.