This is the long-form view of how I approach a small business website project. Every project flexes to fit the business in front of me, so this isn't a rigid template — but the principles below show up in almost every build I do. If you're considering working together, this is the read that gives you a feel for whether the approach lines up with what you're after.
1. Who this is for
This way of working is built for Melbourne small businesses where the website is going to do real marketing work — not sit there as a brochure. The typical fit is a service business (trades, clinics, professional services, hospitality) somewhere in the A$300k–A$3M revenue range, where the owner sees the site as a meaningful channel and wants the result to drive enquiries, bookings or visibility over the next 12–24 months.
It's probably not the right fit for businesses shopping primarily on lowest price — there are good template-based options that deliver a working site at lower price points, and that's the right call in that scenario. It's also not built for enterprise organisations needing an agency with multiple disciplines under one roof, or for projects where the website is being commissioned mainly for compliance rather than growth.
If you're somewhere in the middle, a 15-minute discovery call is the cleanest way to figure out whether the fit is there. No pressure, no upsell.
2. The discovery phase
Every project begins with structured discovery before significant design or development effort goes in. For some projects this is a couple of weeks of dedicated workshopping; for others, where the brief is already clear and the owner is decisive, it moves faster. The shape stays the same — the time taken flexes with the project.
Discovery produces three things:
- The marketing brief — who your customer actually is, what they Google before they buy, where current leads come from, what's worked or failed in the past, and what the next 18 months need to look like. Usually 5–10 pages once it's finished.
- The site map and conversion model — which pages exist, what each page is trying to make the visitor do, where the friction sits in the current flow.
- The keyword and content baseline — what your business currently ranks for, what it should rank for, and a realistic 12-month trajectory.
At the end of discovery, you have a brief in hand. If at that point you decide the website isn't actually the right next step — maybe brand work needs to come first, maybe a content programme without a rebuild — you walk away owing only the workshop fee, and the project deposit is refunded in full. The discovery is honest work whether or not it leads to a build.
3. The build approach
The platform decision happens during discovery, based on what the project actually needs — not on what I default to in the abstract. The discovery brief makes the recommendation explicit and explains the reasoning, so there are no surprises later.
Broadly, the options break into three categories:
- Modern static frameworks. Fast, lean, very low long-term maintenance burden. Editing happens through a defined process rather than a self-serve dashboard — better for some businesses, worse for others. My usual recommendation for service-business sites where speed and reliability matter more than self-serve editing.
- Hosted commerce platforms. When the project is genuinely an online store, a properly-built theme on an established commerce platform is almost always the right call. Trying to roll your own e-commerce on a non-commerce stack ends badly.
- WordPress. Sometimes the right tool. Particularly when the project needs deep CMS workflows, complex content authoring, multi-author editing, or sits inside an existing WordPress ecosystem you already maintain. I'm happy to recommend it when it genuinely fits the brief — it just isn't my default for a typical small business marketing site.
A few practical things worth knowing about up front, because they shape the recommendation:
- Editing model. Some platforms put you in the driver's seat for content updates; others put a developer in that seat. Both have trade-offs — self-serve is faster but more error-prone, developer-led is slower but cleaner. We'll match this to how you actually want to maintain the site.
- Maintenance posture. Some stacks need active ongoing care (security patches, plugin updates, version bumps); others are largely set-and-forget. The right answer depends on whether you have, or want, someone responsible for ongoing maintenance.
- Performance ceiling. Lighthouse 95+ on mobile is achievable on any platform if it's built well — but some stacks make it dramatically easier to hold that line over time than others.
If you have a strong preference on platform when we get to discovery, we'll talk through the trade-offs and either align on it or have an honest conversation about why I'd push in a different direction. The platform recommendation is never the headline of the project — the result is.
4. The copy framework
A lot of websites that look great still don't convert, and it's almost always the copy. I draft copy before design starts, not after. The discipline is the same on every project: every page gets written in plain text first, in a shared document, with you. Design then follows the copy.
For service pages I work to a three-paragraph structure:
- The problem the visitor came with. Named explicitly, in their language, not yours. By paragraph one the reader should be thinking "this is for me."
- What's distinct about how you solve it. Not features. Not adjectives. The specific decision or approach that makes your version of the service different from the next provider in the search results.
- What the next step is. One clear action. Not three competing CTAs.
For homepage hero copy, the working pattern is: problem → distinct approach → specific deliverables → price → location. Generic hero copy gets stripped out — if a sentence could appear on fifty different sites in your category, it doesn't earn its place on yours.
On AI: it's genuinely useful for outlining, useful as a first draft to react against, useful as a thinking partner. It's not useful as final copy — small business readers can usually tell when copy was written by a machine, and on a founder-led site the voice has to feel like a person for the trust signals to land.
5. SEO from day one
"We'll do SEO after launch" is a common framing, and it usually means the real foundation never gets laid. Most of the SEO that matters is design, structure and copy decisions made during the build — not a separate engagement layered on three months later.
What gets done as part of every build:
- Keyword research and prioritisation, as part of the discovery brief
- Page titles, meta descriptions and H1 hierarchy locked at the copy stage
- Schema markup where it earns its place (LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage and similar)
- Image alt text written deliberately, not auto-generated
- Open Graph and social card meta on every page
- XML sitemap generated and submitted to Google Search Console
- Canonical URLs locked, redirects mapped from any old domains
- Google Business Profile set up and connected, where relevant to the business
- Performance optimised because Google measurably rewards fast pages
The post-launch SEO work — content cadence, ranking improvements, link building — sits in the retainer if you want that level of ongoing support. But the foundation is part of the build, regardless of what happens after.
6. Performance benchmarks
Every site I ship is built to clear these targets on launch day, measured on mobile with realistic 4G throttling:
- Lighthouse Performance: 95+ (most builds land in the high 90s)
- First Contentful Paint: under 1.0s
- Largest Contentful Paint: under 1.5s
- Cumulative Layout Shift: under 0.05
- Time to Interactive: under 2.0s
The things that get traded off to hit those targets: heavy JavaScript frameworks where they aren't needed, third-party chat widgets that auto-load on every page, embedded video players that initialise before the user asks for them, hero carousels, decorative animation libraries. In most cases these add to the page weight without adding to the conversion rate.
The things that don't get traded off: design quality, real photography, custom typography, considered interaction. Good design and a strong Lighthouse score aren't in tension — most slow sites are slow because of add-ons that crept in, not because the design itself is ambitious.
7. Post-launch reporting
Every project includes a 6-month post-launch reporting cycle. The monthly report covers:
- Search Console performance — queries, clicks, impressions, position changes
- Google Analytics 4 — sessions, top pages, conversion events
- Core Web Vitals from real users (Chrome UX Report data)
- Google Business Profile insights where relevant — calls, direction requests, photo views
- Ranking position for the priority keywords agreed in discovery
- One specific recommendation for the coming month — content, technical, or campaign
At the 3-month mark we have a working call to check whether the assumptions in the discovery brief are holding up against what's actually happening. At the 6-month mark we review whether an ongoing retainer makes sense. For some businesses it clearly does; for others the launched site does its job without further investment. The right answer is the one that fits your situation — not the one that's most lucrative on my side.
8. Patterns I'd usually steer you away from
A handful of decisions come up on most projects, and these are the ones I'll typically push back on if asked to include them. None of these are absolute rules — context matters — but the default position is to leave them out, because the cost they impose usually outweighs the benefit on a small business site.
- Chatbots or AI assistants in the hero. They can work in some categories, but on a founder-led small business site they often undercut the personal-service positioning the rest of the site is making.
- Email-capture popups on first visit. The conversion lift rarely justifies the friction, particularly on mobile. Worth trying later if there's a specific reason — not as a default.
- Image carousels in the hero. Engagement data on carousels is consistently weak; users tend to ignore content that moves, and the performance cost is real.
- "As featured in" logo strips without genuine placements behind them. When the placements are real, this is one of the strongest trust signals available. When they aren't, it reads as fake and undermines everything else on the page.
- Counter widgets with inflated numbers. If the real number is impressive, show it. If it isn't yet, don't fabricate.
- AI-generated copy passed off as written. AI is a good thinking partner. It isn't ready to be the final voice of a small business site — readers can usually tell.
- Animation that exists for its own sake. Subtle micro-interactions, fade-up reveals, considered page transitions — yes. Bouncing arrows, parallax everywhere, motion that competes with content for attention — usually no.
If your business genuinely benefits from one of these, we'll talk through it in discovery. The list above isn't a wall — it's the starting position.
9. A clear read on pricing
Pricing is published on the services page. The short version: website builds start around A$3,000, larger e-commerce and B2B/portal projects are quoted to scope, and care & growth retainers run from A$300 per month — month-to-month, no lock-in.
The reason the entry price sits where it does: this is genuinely a one-person operation, and the hours that go into a project — discovery, copy, design, build, SEO and AI-visibility foundation, reporting — don't compress below a certain level without quality starting to drop. The pricing reflects what's actually involved, not what the market expects.
If your budget is below that range, there are template-based options that deliver a working site at lower price points, and I'd genuinely point you towards one if that's the right fit. If your budget is well above the typical range, I'd want to use discovery to be honest about whether a larger agency would serve you better — there's a point above which scale matters more than what a solo operator can deliver, and over-promising on that helps nobody.
If this lines up with how you'd want a project to run, the 15-minute discovery call is the next step. If parts of it don't quite map to your situation, the call is still useful — we can talk through whether a tweak to the approach makes sense for your project, or whether you'd be better served by a different kind of setup.