NDIS Website Design That Support Coordinators Can Actually Use

Why most NDIS provider websites do not produce referrals

We see the same five problems on provider sites again and again:

1. Services are listed as feelings, not supports. "We change lives" tells a coordinator nothing; "Assistance with daily life, SIL and community participation in Penrith and the Blue Mountains" tells them everything.
2. No registration detail. The site never says which registration groups you hold or links to the NDIS provider finder.
3. The referral path is "contact us". A generic form with no fields for the information a coordinator needs to send.
4. Accessibility was never tested. Low contrast, tiny tap targets, image-only text and forms a screen reader cannot follow, on a site for disability supports.
5. Slow on mobile. Large sliders and stock video push the first useful sentence below the fold on a mid-range phone.

Any one of these costs referrals. Most sites we review have three or more.

What an NDIS provider website must show

Build the site around the questions coordinators, plan managers and families ask, in this order:

Be specific about cost. The Code of Conduct guidance says people with disability have a right to accurate, accessible and timely information about the cost of supports, including a clear quote and an easily understood breakdown of costs for different options (Code of Conduct guidance). A pricing section that explains how you charge, and offers a written quote, answers that before anyone asks.

Add an Easy Read summary of your main service pages. It helps participants with intellectual disability and shows coordinators you take accessibility seriously.

What an NDIS website must not say

A website is advertising, so the NDIS and consumer rules apply to every page.

• No NDIS logo without written NDIA consent, and no "Registered Provider" logo or wording unless you are registered with the NDIS Commission (NDIA logo guidelines).
• No "NDIS approved" or "100% NDIS funded". Funding depends on each participant's plan; say "can be funded through NDIS plans where the support is in the participant's plan".
• Be careful with the domain name. The same NDIA guidelines give "NDIS" in business, trading or domain names as an example of a misleading affiliation. If you are building a new site, choose a domain under your own business name.
• No clinical testimonials on pages for therapy delivered by Ahpra-registered physiotherapists, occupational therapists or psychologists. Comments about service and communication are allowed (Ahpra).
• No services you are not registered for. The NDIS Commission's Code of Conduct guidance describes a provider told to stop advertising services until it was registered to deliver them (Code of Conduct guidance).
• No countdowns, "limited spots" banners or sign-up bonuses. False urgency and inducements are exactly what regulators are pursuing.

What changes by provider type: SIL, coordination, therapy and plan management

An NDIS provider website for a SIL operator should not look like one for a plan manager. The core pages stay, but the emphasis moves:

Supported independent living

Families compare homes and housemates as much as services. Show vacancy status by location, the support model (shared or individual), how housemate matching works and how you handle a participant who wants to leave. Some SIL providers must be registered from 1 July 2026 (NDIS Commission); state your registration clearly.

Support coordination

Your readers are participants and plan reviewers. Explain how you stay independent from the providers you recommend, and publish your conflict of interest policy in plain words; the Practice Standards expect it to be explained to each participant.

Allied health and behaviour support

Name the practitioners, their profession and registration where it applies, waitlist times by service, and whether you visit homes, schools or clinics. Keep testimonials off these pages.

Plan management

Show invoice turnaround, how participants see their budget, and who answers the phone. Plan managers win on reliability, so make response times visible.

Accessibility: building to WCAG 2.2 AA

WCAG 2.2 became a W3C Recommendation on 5 October 2023 and added nine success criteria to WCAG 2.1 (W3C). Level AA is the practical target for a provider site. The new AA and A criteria that matter most for NDIS audiences:

Under the Disability Discrimination Act, the Australian Human Rights Commission has said a complaint is much less likely to succeed if reasonable accessibility steps were taken at the design stage (AHRC advisory notes). Those notes date from 2014 and the Commission marks them as no longer current, so treat WCAG 2.2 AA as the working benchmark. Overlay plugins do not make an inaccessible site accessible; fix the code and test with a keyboard and a screen reader.

Build the referral path coordinators want

The referral page is the most valuable page on an NDIS provider website. Make it short, private and predictable:

• Ask only for what you need to respond: referrer name, organisation and contact, participant first name, suburb, support type, how the plan is managed (NDIA, plan or self-managed), preferred start date. Leave diagnosis and plan documents for the intake call.
• Show a collection notice next to the form saying why you collect the information and how it is used, as APP 5 requires (OAIC), and confirm the referrer has the participant's consent.
• Send the form to a system, not an inbox. Each referral should create a CRM record with an owner and a due time.
• Tell the referrer what happens next: "We reply within one business day and call the participant or nominee within two."
• Offer a phone and email route too, for coordinators who prefer them, and log those the same way.

How to wire this into tracking is covered in our NDIS CRM and referral tracking guide.

NDIS website design in eight steps

1. List your registration groups, supports, service areas and current capacity. This becomes the site map.
2. Write one page per support type in plain English, then an Easy Read summary for the main ones.
3. Build the referral page and form first, and test it with two coordinators you already work with.
4. Choose an accessible theme or build: high contrast, visible focus states, real text instead of text in images, large tap targets.
5. Remove anything the rules prohibit: logos without consent, "approved" wording, clinical testimonials, urgency banners.
6. Test with a keyboard only, a screen reader (VoiceOver or NVDA) and a mid-range Android phone on mobile data.
7. Set up analytics events for referral form submits, phone taps and email clicks.
8. Connect the form to your CRM and assign an owner for each new referral.

For a small provider with five to eight pages, steps 1 to 5 are mostly writing and decisions, not code. The build itself is the shorter part.

NDIS website marketing: connecting the site to search, ads and referrals

A website on its own is a brochure. NDIS website marketing is what sends the right people to it:

• Search: each support page targets "support plus area" phrases. See SEO for NDIS providers.
• Ads: paid search sends clicks to the matching support page, not the homepage. See Google Ads for NDIS providers.
• Referrers: your monthly capacity update to coordinators links to the referral page.
• Speed: every second of load time costs visitors; our guide to medical website speed covers the fixes that apply here too.

How to know your NDIS website is working

• Referral form submissions and phone taps per month, tracked as events in Google Analytics 4.
• Share of enquiries that are in your area and for supports you offer. A rising share means the pages are filtering well.
• Accessibility issues found in testing, tracked to zero for WCAG 2.2 AA failures on key pages.
• Largest Contentful Paint on mobile in Search Console's Core Web Vitals report, aiming for the "good" band.
• Coordinator feedback. Ask two referrers each quarter whether anything was hard to find.

Common NDIS website mistakes

• Copying a competitor's service text. It reads generic and can cost you rankings.
• A capacity note that has not changed in a year, which coordinators notice.
• Asking for diagnosis, NDIS number and plan documents on the first form, which collects sensitive information before you need it.
• Stock photos of people who do not work for you.
• Hiding the complaints process. The Practice Standards expect each participant to have knowledge of and access to your complaints system, including external avenues (NDIS Practice Standards).

Where Devvista fits

Devvista designs and builds NDIS provider websites in WordPress or as custom builds, writes the support and referral pages, tests to WCAG 2.2 AA and connects the referral form to a CRM. We work remotely with Australian providers and you own the domain, hosting and content.

A good fit if you want a site that coordinators can use and your team can update. Not a fit if you need a same-week template site with no content work; a website builder will be faster.

Related: WordPress development, UI/UX design, WordPress vs a custom website, the NDIS marketing guide and the Australia hub.