Web design in Perth for trade businesses: agency, DIY or Studio?

Written by the EasyDone team. Last checked 10 October 2026.

For most Perth trade businesses, the website that wins is the one that keeps up with the work, not the one that looked best on launch day. An agency gives you the most custom look, a do it yourself builder costs the least in dollars and the most in Saturdays, and EasyDone Studio does the ongoing words, case studies and search work for you. Below is the head to head, area by area, with the two year costs at the end.

The example is a made up business: Lee Davies runs Davies Fencing & Gates out of a yard in Armadale: Colorbond, pool fencing, a lot of retaining walls with fencing on top, and more work in Byford, Piara Waters and Harrisdale than he can get to. His website was built by a Perth agency three years ago. It was lovely on launch day. Then Lee asked for a new gallery of pool fences, got a quote, didn't get round to approving it, and the site has been frozen in time ever since.

Now he's choosing between three doors: another agency, a do it yourself builder, or EasyDone Studio. Studio is ours, so we'll say where we reckon it wins and give the other two their due where they're strong.

What does Lee's website actually need to do?

Before the comparison, the job. A Perth trade website needs to tell a local customer three things in about five seconds: you do my kind of job, you come to my suburb, and here's how to ask. Business.gov.au's guide to setting up a business website covers the basics of planning the site and the domain,¹ and it's worth a read before you talk to anyone.

For Lee, the list of ongoing work looks like this:

1. New fence photos every month, with a line about each job.
2. Suburbs kept honest: the growth corridors he wants, not everywhere south of the river.
3. A page per service that answers the questions people ring about: pool fence rules, retaining wall heights, dividing fences with the neighbour.
4. Showing up when someone in Harrisdale searches for a fencer, or asks an AI assistant for one.
5. Changes made the week he needs them, not the quarter.

Now, who does each of those? That's the comparison.

Round 1: getting it built

Agency. A designer and a developer work from your brief. You get a site that looks like nobody else's, and a project manager to chase you for the content you haven't written. An independent Perth cost guide puts a five to ten page small business site at $2,000 to $6,000, and a custom build at $6,000 to $15,000.²

DIY builder. You pick a template and fill it in. Squarespace's Australian pricing starts at A$24 a month on Basic, billed monthly, (Squarespace: Pricing, read 10 October 2026) and Wix says a Premium plan is needed to connect your own domain. (Wix: Premium plan pricing, read 10 October 2026) Quick to start. Then it's you, a Saturday and a lot of placeholder text.

EasyDone Studio. Studio builds your website from your business details, from a template, then you edit every page, word and photo yourself.⁵ Hosting and publishing are included, and you connect your own domain, with the domain registration itself paid separately.⁵

Verdict: the agency gives you the most custom look. Studio gets Lee from nothing to a real, accurate site fastest, and DIY gets him there only if he finds the Saturdays.

Round 2: the words

This is where most trade websites die. The agency builds the frame and asks you for the words. The DIY builder gives you an AI writing helper and a blinking cursor. Either way, Lee has to sit down and explain pool fencing to a computer at nine at night.

Studio's Website Plus adds AI writing for pages and case studies, and AI rewriting of what's already there.⁵ Lee gives it "1.8 m Colorbond, Harrisdale, 22 metres, two gates, old timber removed" and four photos, and gets back a case study that sounds like him on a good day.

Verdict: Studio, because the words are the bit Lee was never going to write.

Round 3: changes after launch

Agency. You email a request, it goes into a queue, and it comes back as a quote or a care-plan hour. Fine for a big change. Painful for "swap the phone number" or "add Mundijong to the suburbs".

DIY. Instant, if you remember your login and how the editor works. Most owners forget both between visits.

Studio. Every page, word and photo is yours to edit on every plan, Free included,⁵ and Website Plus adds automatic blog posts and AI ideas for what to add next.⁵

Verdict: Studio and DIY both let you change things the same day. Only Studio also does some of the changing for you.

Round 4: getting found

Google says local results come down to relevance, distance and prominence.⁶ No agency can move your yard closer to Harrisdale, and no plugin can either. What you can do is make your pages relevant and your details consistent. Google's guidelines are clear that your business should be represented as it really operates, including hiding your address if customers don't come to you.⁷

Agency. Search work is usually a separate monthly service, quoted on its own.

DIY. Builders give you settings for titles and descriptions. Knowing what to do with them is up to you.

Studio. Growth adds SEO, ongoing website checks and improvements, and Agent Optimisation so AI assistants understand what you do and where.⁵

Verdict: Studio, because the search work is part of the plan rather than a second supplier.

Round 5: photos and proof

Fencing sells on photos. A customer in Byford wants to see a Colorbond fence on a sloping block, with a retaining wall under it, that looks like their backyard. Ten good job photos with honest captions beat any amount of "quality workmanship" on a home page.

Agency. They'll make the gallery look gorgeous on launch day, using the photos you had on launch day. Adding more is usually a request.

DIY. You can upload as many as you like. Writing a line about each one is where it stalls, and an uncaptioned gallery of forty grey fences tells a customer nothing.

Studio. Case studies are on every plan, Free included, and Website Plus writes them for you from your notes and photos.⁵ So every job can become proof without Lee sitting down at the computer.

Verdict: Studio, because the proof keeps arriving after launch day.

Round 6: how it looks on a phone

Most of Lee's customers find him on a phone, standing in the backyard looking at the old fence. So check every option the same way: open the site on your own phone, on mobile data, and try to find the pool fence page, a photo of a job like theirs, and the call button.

Agencies design for phones as a matter of course; ask to see their last three trade sites on your phone, not on their big screen. DIY templates mostly handle phones well, until someone adds a giant banner or a slider. With Studio, test the preview on your phone before it goes live, the same as any other, and Growth's ongoing website checks keep an eye on the site after launch.⁵

Verdict: close. Whoever builds it, test it on your own phone before you pay the final invoice.

Round 7: owning it and leaving

Ask every supplier the same three questions, including us: who controls the domain, can I take my words and photos with me, and what does it cost to leave? Get the answers in writing.

With Studio you connect your own domain,⁵ so the address stays yours. With an agency, check whether the domain is registered in your business's name or theirs; plenty of Perth tradies have found out the hard way when they tried to move.

Verdict: a draw on paper. Whoever you choose, make sure the domain is in your name.

The two-year cost, side by side

Here's Lee's honest two-year sum. Dollars where they're published, hours where they're his.

The hours are Lee's estimates, not a study, but they're the line that matters. Sixty hours is more than a week of fencing he didn't do. At his day rate, the DIY site was the most expensive option on the table.

Studio's plans and inclusions are on the pricing page, in plain numbers.

One honest limit: Studio builds from templates. If you want a one-off design with custom illustrations and your brand built from scratch, an agency gives you more of that.

The verdict

If you want a one off design and you're happy to keep paying for changes, an agency is the pick. If you've got the Saturdays and enjoy it, a builder will do. For a trade business whose website has to keep up with the work, Studio wins most rounds: the words, the proof, the changes and the search work. For Lee, that means keeping his logo and colours, cutting the suburb list to the eleven he actually wants to work in, and turning the fence photos in his camera roll into a case study a week that he approves from the ute.

Your turn

Count the hours your website has cost you in the last year, including the ones you spent feeling guilty about it. Then see what EasyDone Studio builds for your business, with your services, your suburbs and your jobs. If you're still weighing up how much work your current site needs, the refresh or rebuild guide is the next read.

Researched and written with AI for EasyDone Studio. Every figure links to the source it came from.