I’ve done a National speaking tour talking about NDIS provider websites. About the generic non-language they all had. In fact, after reviewing more than 100 NDIS provider websites, not a single one stands out to me, I don’t remember anything at all. Why? Most NDIS provider websites try to do too much and achieve very little.
They have 12 pages, a news section that hasn’t been updated since 2021, stock photos of smiling people in scrubs(?!), and a contact form buried in the footer.
In short, they look forgotten.
Your website has one job: convert the right visitors into enquiries.
Everything else – the about page, the team page, the blog – exists to support that one goal.
The questions your website must answer
In the first 10 seconds, a visitor should be able to answer:
- What do you do?
- Who do you do it for?
- Where do you operate?
- Why should I choose you?
- What do I do next?
If your homepage doesn’t answer all five clearly and quickly, people leave. It needs to be clear, the information should flow and be written in a way to provides a clear brand voice. That an actual person wrote this for me.
What your website actually needs
Must have:
- Clear headline that intrigues as well as explains
- Specific services and locations
- Social proof (testimonials, outcomes, recognitions)
- A single, clear call to action
- Mobile-optimised design
- Fast load time
- Accessible design (WCAG compliance)
- Contact information that’s easy to find
Nice to have:
- Team profiles
- Case studies
- Blog/resources
- FAQ
Don’t bother:
- Animated banners
- Rotating sliders
- Generic stock photos that look like every other provider
- Seriously, I would rather bad photos of the business than amazing stock imagery
- News sections you won’t update
The one-primary-action rule
Every page should have one primary action you most want the visitor to take. Usually that’s ‘Enquire’. Everything else on the page is secondary to that. All roads lead to the CTA, there should be multiple opportunities for me to perform that CTA.
When you give people one obvious thing to do, more of them do it. When you give them five equally-weighted choices – ‘enquire’, ‘read the blog’, ‘follow us’, ‘download this’, ‘watch that’ – they get overwhelmed and tune out. This is a real effect: more choices can mean less action.
That doesn’t mean you only ever have one button. It means the primary action is visually dominant (bigger, brighter, repeated) and the rest are clearly secondary. Decide your one primary action for each page before you design it, and let everything else support it rather than compete with it.
Think in a hierarchy, not a pile
A good website isn’t a pile of equally-important things. It’s a hierarchy. The most important message (what you do, who for, and the invitation to act) comes first and is the biggest. Supporting detail comes below it. The deeper, less-critical material lives on inner pages.
A quick way to picture this: if someone only read the top of your homepage and nothing else, would they understand what you do and how to reach you? If yes, your hierarchy is working. If they’d have to scroll and hunt to get the basics, the most important things have been buried under less important ones.
This matters especially in the disability sector, where many visitors arrive stressed, on a phone, with limited time. They won’t dig. Put the essential things where they can’t be missed, and let the nice-to-haves sit further down or deeper in. I shouldn’t have to work hard to find out how to give you business, it needs to be there and simple.
Exercise
Visit your current website as if you were a participant’s family seeing it for the first time. Answer the five questions above. How quickly can you find the answers? What’s missing?
Then name the one primary action you want visitors to take on your homepage. Is it the most visually obvious thing on the page right now? If not, that’s your first fix.