Why EOFY matters for your website in 2026
If your business takes orders, bookings, or enquiries online, EOFY week is the wrong time for a slow or shaky website. You have until 30 June 2026 to lock in the $20,000 instant asset write-off on eligible assets, and you have a few weeks of higher-than-usual traffic from EOFY sales hunters at the same time. The fix is not complicated, but it is time-bound: clean up speed, security, and conversion basics now, and talk to your accountant about whether a website investment can be claimed this year.
Why EOFY matters for your website in 2026
EOFY is no longer just a tax event. Australia Post’s 2026 eCommerce Report shows Australians spent $82.6 billion online in 2025, up 14% on the previous year, with 9.8 million households shopping online and 41% of them buying at least fortnightly. June is one of the busiest months of the year, alongside Black Friday and Christmas, and EOFY online purchases are up 75% since 2019 according to Australia Post.
Two things follow from that. Your website will see a traffic spike in June, and shoppers will judge it in seconds. Google’s own research on mobile pages found that 53% of mobile visitors abandon a site that takes longer than three seconds to load. If your store is slow on EOFY weekend, you are paying for ads to send visitors to a page they never see.
Can you claim a new website on the $20,000 instant asset write-off?
Sometimes, yes. Initial website build costs are treated by the ATO as in-house software. Under the simplified depreciation rules for small businesses with turnover under $10 million, an in-house software asset that costs less than $20,000 and is installed ready for use by 30 June 2026 can be immediately written off rather than depreciated over several years. Ongoing hosting, domain renewals, and routine content updates are claimed differently, usually as operating expenses in the year incurred.
The federal government announced in the 2026–27 Budget on 12 May 2026 that the $20,000 instant asset write-off will become permanent from 1 July 2026, so this is no longer a “use it or lose it” situation in the same way. But the asset still has to be installed and ready to use before 30 June if you want it on this year’s return. We are not accountants, and your circumstances matter, so confirm the treatment with your registered tax agent before you sign off on a project. The ATO’s in-house software guidance has the official position.
The 14-day EOFY website action plan
with MyWebs
Here is the order we run with our own clients in the weeks before 30 June. You can do most of it yourself in an afternoon.
| Day | Action | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Run a full off-site backup | If something breaks during a fix, you have a known-good copy to restore |
| 2 | Update WordPress core, plugins, and theme | Most hacks exploit outdated software; do this before traffic spikes, not during |
| 3 | Test PageSpeed Insights on three key pages | Get a baseline for mobile LCP and INP so you can measure improvement |
| 4 | Compress and lazy-load images | Image weight is the biggest speed win on most Australian small business sites |
| 5 | Enable caching and a CDN | Reduces server load and helps interstate and overseas visitors |
| 6 | Audit your checkout or enquiry form | Add field validation, remove anything you do not actually use |
| 7 | Test on a real mobile phone, not just desktop | 47% of Australian online shopping now happens on smartphones |
| 8 | Check your SSL certificate and renewal date | An expired certificate during EOFY weekend will sink conversion |
| 9 | Review Google Business Profile hours and EOFY promo info | This is what AI Overviews and Google Maps quote to local searchers |
| 10 | Set up uptime monitoring | Free tools like UptimeRobot will text you if the site goes down |
| 11 | Add or refresh EOFY-themed landing pages | Targeted pages convert better than sending traffic to the home page |
| 12 | Confirm payment gateway and Afterpay are tested end-to-end | A failed test transaction now is cheaper than a missed sale on the weekend |
| 13 | Brief whoever handles support on response times | Aim for inbox and chat replies within working hours during the rush |
| 14 | Final smoke test and go-live freeze | Stop pushing changes for the last 48 hours before peak trade |
Important Things
Speed: the single biggest lever in June
If you have time for one thing only, make it speed. According to Google’s research summarised by Cloudflare, conversion rates fall by an average of 4.42% for every additional second of load time between zero and five seconds. On a WooCommerce store doing $30,000 a month in EOFY trade, shaving two seconds off mobile load time is the difference between hitting your number and missing it.
The usual culprits on Australian WordPress sites are large unoptimised images, too many active plugins, a heavy page builder layered over a heavy theme, and shared hosting that buckles when traffic doubles. The quick wins are image compression with a tool like ShortPixel or Imagify, a lightweight caching plugin such as LiteSpeed Cache or WP Rocket, and turning off any plugin you have not used in the last 90 days. If your hosting is the bottleneck, EOFY week is not the time to migrate, but it is a good time to plan a move for July.
Security: do not let June be the month you get hacked
The Patchstack State of WordPress Security 2026 report identified more than 8,000 new vulnerabilities across WordPress plugins and themes in 2025. We have seen a noticeable uptick in plugin-based attacks in the last six weeks, including the actively exploited Burst Statistics flaw disclosed in late May 2026. Two simple rules during EOFY: update everything before the 22nd of June, and do not install any new plugin in the last 10 days of the month unless you have to.
A care plan, whether ours or someone else’s, gives you off-site daily backups, real malware scanning, and a number to call when something goes wrong at 9pm on a Sunday. EOFY weekend is exactly when you want that in place.
Common things to skip
Three things people waste time on in EOFY week that almost never move the needle: rewriting the home page from scratch, launching a brand-new theme, and changing payment gateways. Each one introduces risk right when you need stability. Save the redesign for July.
A note on AI search and EOFY queries
If you sell to Australian customers, a noticeable share of your June discovery is now happening inside AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. These engines lean on recent, well-structured pages with clear direct answers and FAQ schema. If your EOFY landing pages do not have a short, plain-English answer in the first paragraph and a small FAQ at the bottom, they are unlikely to be cited. The same hygiene that helps Google rank you helps AI engines quote you.
Frequently asked questions
Can I claim a website rebuild on the $20,000 instant asset write-off? If your small business has turnover under $10 million and the website asset costs less than $20,000 and is installed ready for use by 30 June 2026, the initial build can usually be claimed under the simplified depreciation rules. Confirm with your tax agent.
What is the deadline for EOFY website work in 2026? The site needs to be live and in use by 30 June 2026 for the asset to qualify for this financial year. From 1 July 2026 the $20,000 instant asset write-off becomes permanent under the 2026–27 Federal Budget.
Do I really need a WordPress care plan? If your website earns or generates leads for your business, yes. The cost of restoring a hacked or broken site, plus lost sales while it is down, almost always exceeds a year of care plan fees. EOFY is the worst time to find out.
How fast does my site actually need to be? Aim for a Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds on mobile and an Interaction to Next Paint under 200 milliseconds. Google publishes the current Core Web Vitals thresholds on web.dev.
Should I run EOFY ads if my site is slow? Fix the site first. Sending paid traffic to a slow page lifts your ad spend and your bounce rate at the same time. A free PageSpeed Insights run will tell you where you stand in under a minute.
Want a hand before 30 June?
We do a free 1-hour EOFY website audit for Australian small businesses. We will run your site through PageSpeed Insights, check for known plugin vulnerabilities, review your checkout or enquiry form, and give you a one-page summary of what to fix before the end of the month. No obligation. Book a time on the MyWebs contact page and we will get you sorted before the deadline.