Plan a small business website

What should you decide before building a small business website?

Decide who the website serves, what that person needs to do, and who will keep the information accurate. Then choose the pages, platform and support around those requirements. A clear brief is more useful than choosing a template first: it lets you compare different ways of delivering the same job.

For a business starting from scratch, business.gov.au's website setup guide is a useful reference for the domain, hosting and CMS decisions. The worksheet below turns those decisions into questions you can take to a provider or test in a website builder.

Write a one-page website brief

Your decision	What to write down	How to check it
Customer and task	Who visits, what they need to know and the next action	A person unfamiliar with the business can explain the offer and find the action
Essential pages	The offer, practical details, evidence and contact route	Each page answers a different customer question
Content ownership	Who supplies words, photos, permissions and approvals	Every item has an owner before the build begins
Accounts and access	Who controls the domain, hosting, CMS, billing and recovery	The business can recover access without a single supplier
Ongoing work	Updates, backups, enquiries and content changes	Named responsibilities and a realistic budget

Choose the simplest build that can do the job

A straightforward service website may only need clear pages and an enquiry route. A booking business also needs availability, confirmations and an exception process. An online shop needs product information, checkout, fulfilment and customer support. These differences matter more than whether a design looks fashionable.

Use our website-builder comparison to evaluate editing and ownership. If you need a provider, prepare questions about scope, handover and ongoing costs before comparing proposals. Our provider-selection guide helps with that decision.

A worked example: a local repair business

This is an illustrative brief, not a client case study. A repair business wants suitable enquiries, rather than as many form submissions as possible. Its website should explain the repairs offered, the area served, what information to send and what happens after contact. A simple enquiry form asks for the item, fault and suburb; it does not promise an instant price that the business cannot confirm.

The acceptance test is practical: can a new customer find their repair type on a phone, understand the service area and submit the information needed for a reply? That gives the owner a concrete way to judge the website before adding more pages or features.

Check the build before sending people to it

• Follow the main customer journey on a real phone and with a keyboard.
• Check contact destinations, forms, confirmations and failure messages.
• Make headings, labels and text easy to understand. Use W3C's accessible-design tips when reviewing contrast, controls and layout.
• Confirm the domain and accounts belong under the business's control, with a handover record.
• For a replacement site, record existing URLs and redirects before launch.

The five-phase website checklist is the detailed build review. After launch, use the SEO guide to help customers find the right pages and compare maintenance scope and costs before committing to support.