Websites for health and therapy practices in Brisbane

What goes into a practice website

How much does a website for a health practice cost?

With us, $2,500 to $4,000. Where it lands depends mostly on how many services, practitioners and locations get a page, and whether the site is in one language or two. A sole practitioner with four services and one room sits near $2,500. A practice with several practitioners, a dozen services and two locations sits near $4,000. The website cost guide compares that with what DIY builders, freelancers and agencies charge.

Hosting, SSL, updates, backups and small changes are $79 a month on the care plan, with 2 hours of changes each month included. A booking system of your own, with its own payments or a client portal, is custom software, from $3,000.

What can a health practice website say under AHPRA's advertising rules?

If you're a registered health practitioner (physiotherapists, psychologists, occupational therapists, chiropractors, osteopaths, podiatrists, dentists, doctors, nurses and the other professions on AHPRA's register), your website is advertising, and section 133 of the National Law applies to it. In short, it can't be false or misleading, can't use testimonials about clinical care, can't offer a gift or discount without stating the terms, can't create an unreasonable expectation that treatment will help, and can't encourage people to use services they don't need.

That shapes the build. No patient reviews or stories about treatment on the site, including Google reviews pulled in through a widget. No "specialist" unless you hold specialist registration, and only the titles your registration allows. No before-and-after photos that promise a result, and no claim that a treatment works unless acceptable evidence backs it. AHPRA publishes its advertising guidelines and resources for checking your own advertising. What's here is how we build, not legal advice: when in doubt, your board or professional association has the final word.

What if my profession isn't registered with AHPRA?

Plenty of health professions aren't. Counsellors, psychotherapists, dietitians, exercise physiologists, speech pathologists and massage therapists are self-regulated through a professional association. The rules are different, not absent: your association's code of ethics usually covers advertising, the Australian Consumer Law applies to every business, and in Queensland the Health Ombudsman oversees a code of conduct for health workers who aren't registered.

Wise Beginning is a good example. Alpha Ponce is a PACFA Registered Clinical Counsellor and Somatic Psychotherapist, and the site uses those exact words. Her pages say plainly that her sessions carry no Medicare rebate, and there are no testimonials anywhere on the site. We hold every practice site to that standard, registered or not: accurate titles, no promised outcomes, fees in plain sight.

NDIS providers have one more layer. Registered and unregistered providers both work under the NDIS Code of Conduct, and only registered providers should call themselves registered. An unregistered provider's site can still say clearly that it works with self-managed and plan-managed participants, which is what those participants look for.

Should the website take bookings, or link to my practice software?

Link to it, almost always. Cliniko, Halaxy, Zanda, Power Diary and Nookal already hold your calendar, your reminders and your patient records. The website's job is to get someone to that booking page ready to book: they've seen the fees, the cancellation policy and which location suits them.

That's how Wise Beginning works. Alpha asked that anyone who presses "Book" sees the fees and cancellation policy first, so every booking button on the site leads to the fees and booking page, and from there one button opens her Zanda client portal. A booking system of your own only makes sense when the practice software can't do something you need, like group programs with payments, and that's custom software.

How should a health practice website handle privacy?

Carefully, because anything a person types about their health is sensitive information under the Privacy Act. The forms we build for practices ask for a name, a way to reply and a short message, send it straight to your inbox and keep no copy on the website. If the site uses analytics that set cookies, they load only after consent.

On Wise Beginning the form sends an email and stores nothing, and the privacy page asks people not to send detailed clinical information through it: a sentence about what brings them is enough.

Does each location need its own page?

Yes, if you see people there. Someone choosing between two rooms wants the address, the days you're in, parking and the nearest bus stop, and Google wants a page it can match to each Google Business Profile.

Wise Beginning has two: West End on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Milton on Wednesdays, plus sessions online. Each has its own page with its hours and a map. The hours live in one place in the code, so the location page, the footer and the structured data Google reads can't disagree. Keeping the Google profiles themselves in shape is ongoing work, and it's what our local SEO service does.

How long does it take, and what do you need from me?

2 to 4 weeks from the first call to launch for most practices. Bigger sites take longer: Wise Beginning, with 42 pages in English and Spanish, took about eight weeks from kickoff to launch. What slows a project down is almost always content, so it helps to have your services, fees, cancellation policy, registration details and locations ready, plus a photo of yourself you actually like.

You review every page before it goes live. If you already have a site, we redirect the old pages to the new ones, so the Google traffic it earned doesn't vanish on launch day. Wise Beginning had 57 old WordPress addresses, and every one of them now lands on a live page.

A practice website we've built

Wise Beginning Counselling

Somatic psychotherapy practice in West End and Milton, Brisbane. A new site in English and Spanish, with fees before booking, a page per location and every old address kept.

Read the case study

Questions people ask