Nobody phones an NDIS provider cold. Before a family calls you — often before a support coordinator adds you to a referral list — they open your website and run a fast, quiet check. It's not deliberate and it's not fair. It's five seconds of gut feel, and the decision is made before they've read a full sentence.

The uncomfortable part: if you fail the check, nobody tells you. There's no complaint and no feedback. The enquiry simply goes to the next provider on the list, and you never find out it existed.

The good news is the check isn't mysterious. These are the five things they're looking at, each one scannable in seconds — and how to tell right now whether your own site passes.

1. Is the phone number staring at them?

A family doing this research is often stressed and often on a phone. If they can't see how to contact you within seconds of the page loading — a visible phone number, a clear contact link — a share of them will not go hunting. They'll go back.

Run the test: open your homepage on your phone. Without scrolling, can you tap to call? If the number lives only on a contact page three taps away, that's a quiet fail.

2. Do the photos look like real people, or placeholders?

Families are choosing someone to trust with a person they love. They're remarkably good at spotting stock photography — the same smiling models they've seen on a bank ad and a dentist's website. Stock photos don't say "we're professional." They say "there's nobody real here yet." Genuine photos of your actual team, your office, your work — even imperfect ones — build more trust than polished strangers ever will.

Run the test: look at your homepage image. Could a sceptical visitor believe these are your actual people? If the honest answer is no, a phone photo of your real team beats it.

3. Can everyone actually use the site?

This is the check most providers never think about, in the sector where it matters most. Some of your visitors — participants, family members, coordinators searching on someone's behalf — use screen readers, magnify text, or navigate by keyboard alone. If your site doesn't work for them, the tab closes. And even for visitors without a disability, the signs of an accessible site — clear text, good contrast, obvious structure — simply read as "these people have their act together."

Run the test: put your mouse away and try to reach your contact form using only the Tab key. If you get lost or stuck, some of your visitors are too. Our free accessibility checklist walks through around 40 checks like this one.

4. Does the site look alive?

Visitors read decay fast, and they read it as risk. A copyright footer from three years ago. A "news" section whose last post is ancient. A services page describing a program you've stopped running. Broken links. None of these are big faults on their own — together they whisper "if this is how they run their website, how do they run their service?"

Run the test: check the date in your footer and click five links at random. Everything current, everything working? If not, you've found the cheapest trust-repair job in your business.

5. Is the next step obvious and easy?

Interest is fragile. A visitor who's decided you might be the one will still drift away if enquiring feels like work — a form with twelve fields, a PDF referral form to print and scan, no clear statement of what happens after they get in touch. The best sites make the next step small, obvious and welcoming: a short form, a phone number, and a plain sentence about what happens next.

Run the test: count the fields in your enquiry form. Every field beyond name, contact detail and "how can we help" is a small door closing.

Passing all five is a system, not a lucky template

None of these fixes are expensive on their own — but they compound, and they're exactly what we build into every site as standard: visible contact paths, honest imagery guidance, WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility with a written audit, and an enquiry path with no dead ends. That's the NDIS Front Door System, and it's why we only build for this sector.