Fremantle sits at the mouth of the Swan River, 19 km south-west of the Perth CBD. The City of Fremantle is compact, at 19 square kilometres and 31,930 residents at the 2021 census, and takes in Fremantle itself plus Beaconsfield, Hilton, North Fremantle, O'Connor, Samson, South Fremantle and White Gum Valley. East Fremantle has its own town council, and the Cities of Cockburn and Melville share the City's borders, so a business here often serves customers from three or four council areas. The Fremantle line ends at Fremantle station, and passenger ferries leave the port for Rottnest Island. Our Perth web design page covers the metro area as a whole; this page is about Fremantle.
The port shapes the economy. More than 99 per cent of Western Australia's container trade comes through Fremantle, according to the WA Government's Westport program, and the Inner Harbour also handles vehicle imports and livestock exports. Fremantle Ports puts the port's trade at $45.2 billion a year, supporting about 6,000 direct and indirect jobs. That will shift over time, because Westport plans to move container trade to new port facilities in the Kwinana Outer Harbour. Victoria Quay also holds the Fremantle Passenger Terminal. Fremantle Ports says getting a ship of more than 2,000 passengers and their luggage ashore can take four to five hours, and that the walk to the train station will probably take about 20 minutes. Logistics and marine firms need sites that answer a buyer's technical questions, while a cruise day can send a stream of people on foot past the cafés and shops near the quay, many of them checking their phones as they go.
Visitors come for the history and the food. Fremantle Prison, used as a prison until 1991, was World Heritage listed in 2010 as one of the Australian Convict Sites and is Western Australia's only World Heritage-listed building. The Round House, finished in 1831, is the state's oldest colonial building. Fremantle Markets has traded at 74 South Terrace since 1897 and now has more than 170 traders, open Friday to Sunday and on public holiday Mondays. Add the outdoor tables of the Cappuccino Strip, the restaurants and fish and chip shops of the Fishing Boat Harbour and the WA Maritime Museum on Victoria Quay. The University of Notre Dame Australia occupies and has restored many West End buildings, which has made Fremantle a university town as well.
This year has tested how well businesses keep customers informed. The old Fremantle Traffic Bridge closed to all traffic on 1 February 2026, sending drivers between Fremantle and North Fremantle around via Stirling Highway, and Main Roads set Sunday 1 November 2026 as the opening day for its replacement, Walyalup Bridge, funded with $215 million each from the Australian and WA Governments. The City offered marketing grants to small retail, hospitality and tourism businesses through the closure. For businesses on both sides of the river, it showed that a website's directions and parking notes need to change when the roads do, and promptly.
We're an Adelaide team and work with Fremantle businesses by phone and email, sending a draft link you can check between customers. We haven't built a site for a WA client yet, so the examples below are from New South Wales and South Australia. For the coast further south, see our Rockingham page, and for the South West, our Bunbury page.