Web design for professionals: a site that agrees with everything else you send.

The website is one document among several. A professional practice is sold through a sequence: a referral or a search, the site, a conversation, a proposal, and then the work itself. Each step is read as evidence of the next. If the site looks considered and the proposal that follows it does not, the impression weakens at the point when the relationship is becoming more serious.

Your buyers know the territory. A consultant, adviser, or accountant is often hired by someone who knows the field: a director, a programme manager, another professional. In one observational study of people choosing a named expert from an online profile, better-informed visitors relied more on evidence of work actually delivered and less on the profile’s popularity score (Cao et al., 2017). The study was of physicians, not your profession, and it did not measure what any one visitor knew. We take a direction from it rather than a rule: lead with the work, and keep the badges out of the way.

The decision may not be made on the page. In the same study, people facing a higher-stakes choice gave no more weight to the evidence of work delivered. They gave less weight to the reputation score, and the authors suggest they may have preferred to meet in person. We read that, for a professional practice, as meaning the site’s job is to make the conversation easy to start. It does not have to win the engagement on its own.

Can the documents match the site? Yes, when the project needs it. Proposals, reports, presentations, and templates can be brought into the same visual and verbal system as the site. It is written into the proposal, not added afterwards. What a project can include is on How it works.

Will it look right for my field? It should. Research into bank, university, and two kinds of retail website found that how typical a site looked for its category affected whether people found it trustworthy (Miniukovich & Figl, 2023). Professional practices were not among the categories tested. Our view is that a practice whose site looks like a creative agency’s spends trust to look different, so we establish what a credible site in your field looks like before we depart from it.

How much should it say? More than you might expect. In the same research, longer pages were rated harder to use but more trustworthy. That is one finding, not a settled rule, and other work treats ease of use as a source of trust. We take it as permission to give the detail your buyers’ decision turns on, and to structure it so they can find the part that applies to them.

Do I own it? Yes. The hosting account is in your name from the first day. The source is kept in our GitHub account and transferred to you whenever you ask. The site does not need a care plan to keep running. The terms are on How it works.

What does it cost? Sites for one person start at $4,800, excluding GST. Every project has a fixed price agreed before work begins. The bands, and what shapes the price, are on How it works.

Every project begins with written research, shown to you before design begins. For a professional practice it reads three things.

Who is buying, and what they check. Who your clients are, how they arrive (a referral, a tender, a search), and what they look for before they get in touch.

What your field looks like online. The sites of the practices your buyers will compare you with: what they show, what they leave out, and what a credible site in your field is expected to carry.

Everything else you send. The proposals, reports, and presentations you already use, read as a set, and where they disagree with each other or with the site.

The research remains yours whether or not we build the site.

Macaulay Consulting is a Brisbane strategy and facilitation practice. Caroline works with clients in health, education, and human services, and her credibility is carried by more than her website. We built the site and brand system, then carried that system through the proposals, reports, and other documents she uses with clients. The result is a consistent visual and verbal system that works wherever the business meets a client.

Read the case study →

If you think the studio might be a fit, send a short description of what you need. Andrew will reply within one business day. If it looks suitable, the next step is a free thirty-minute conversation. There is no obligation until you accept a written proposal.

Start a conversation →