Website Design Checklist for Wollongong Small Businesses

Your website is often the first real impression a customer gets of your business. Someone in Figtree needs a plumber, someone in Shell Cove is looking for a physio, someone in Kiama wants a venue for a birthday. They search on their phone, tap a few results, and decide in seconds who to contact.

Whether you’re planning a new website or wondering if your current one is letting you down, this checklist covers what a small business website in Wollongong and the Illawarra needs to turn visitors into enquiries.

Before you start: know the job your website does

Every page should help a visitor do one thing: call you, book online, request a quote, or buy. Before thinking about colours and fonts, write down:

• Who your best customers are
• The top three services you want more of
• The areas you want to work in
• The one action you want visitors to take

Everything else on the checklist follows from these answers.

The first five seconds: above the fold

The part of the page people see before scrolling decides whether they stay.

Checklist:

• A clear headline that says what you do and where, for example “Electrician in Wollongong and the Northern Suburbs”
• A short line about why choose you (licensed, local, same-day service, family-owned, whatever is true)
• A phone number visible at the top, with click-to-call on mobile
• One main button, such as “Get a free quote” or “Book online”
• A real photo of your team, your work or your premises

Pages every small business site needs

Checklist:

• Home: a clear overview with links to your main services
• A page for each main service. This matters for both customers and Google. One long “Services” page can’t rank well for everything. Our on-page SEO checklist explains why.
• About: who you are, how long you’ve been operating, your team, and why you do what you do
• Areas you serve: with genuinely useful information for each main area, not copy-and-paste pages
• Reviews or testimonials: real ones, ideally linked to your Google reviews
• Contact: phone, email, a short form, your hours and your service area or address
• Privacy policy: required if you collect personal information through forms

Optional but useful: FAQs, a gallery of your work, prices or a price guide, and a blog for helpful articles.

Trust signals

People buy from businesses they trust, especially when they’re letting you into their home or trusting you with their health or money.

Checklist:

• Google reviews shown near your enquiry buttons
• Licences, insurance and memberships (where they apply)
• Real photos of your team, vehicles and finished jobs
• Your ABN and business details in the footer
• Clear, honest information about prices or what affects the price
• Up-to-date content (an old “latest news” post from years ago makes a site look abandoned)

Enquiry forms and calls to action

Checklist:

• A short form: name, phone, email and what they need. Every extra field loses enquiries.
• A clear button on every page, not just the contact page
• A thank-you message or page after the form is sent, so people know it worked
• Form enquiries going to an inbox someone actually checks
• An instant reply to every enquiry, ideally by email or SMS. Lead automation can do this for you.

Mobile first

Most local searches happen on phones. Design for the phone first, then make it look great on bigger screens.

Checklist:

• Text readable without zooming
• Buttons big enough to tap with a thumb
• Click-to-call phone number
• No pop-ups covering the page
• Nothing spilling off the side of the screen
• Menus that are easy to open and close

Speed

A slow website loses visitors, and Google takes speed into account.

Checklist:

• Images compressed and sized correctly
• No giant videos or sliders at the top of the page
• Fast, reliable hosting
• Test your pages with Google PageSpeed Insights and fix the biggest issues first

SEO from day one

Building SEO into a new site is much easier than fixing it later.

Checklist:

• Unique page titles and meta descriptions for every page
• One H1 heading per page that says what the page is about
• Your business name, address and phone the same on every page and on your Google Business Profile
• LocalBusiness schema markup
• Clean URLs like /hot-water-systems-wollongong/
• An XML sitemap submitted to Google Search Console
• Google Analytics and conversion tracking set up, so you know which pages bring enquiries
• If you’re replacing an old site: 301 redirects from every old page to its new address, so you keep your rankings

Content that answers questions

The best local business websites answer the questions customers ask before they call.

Checklist:

• What’s included in each service
• How the process works
• How long it takes
• What affects the price
• Which areas you cover
• Common questions, answered honestly

Write like you talk to customers. Short sentences, plain English, no jargon.

Ownership and access

Checklist:

• Your domain registered in your name (or your business’s name)
• Logins for your website, hosting, domain, Google Analytics and Search Console
• Backups running regularly
• A security certificate (https)
• Someone responsible for updates and security

Accessibility

A website that works for people with disabilities works better for everyone.

Checklist:

• Good contrast between text and background
• Alt text on images
• Forms with clear labels
• Pages that can be used with a keyboard

Redesign or refresh?

You don’t always need a brand-new website. If your site is reasonably modern, a refresh can be enough: faster loading, clearer service pages, better calls to action and updated photos. A rebuild makes sense when the site is slow, hard to update, not mobile-friendly, or simply doesn’t reflect your business anymore.

Need a hand?

Our web design service in Wollongong builds every site against this checklist, with SEO set up from day one. If you need a logo or a fresh look too, see our branding and logo design service, and if you’re just starting out, our Business Setup package covers your brand, website and Google profile in one go. You can see some of the sites we’ve built on our work page, or book a free chat about your website.