How long does it take to build a website? A realistic timeline

A typical small business website takes us about 8 to 12 weeks from first meeting to launch, and a small online shop usually takes 12 to 16. When people ask “how long does it take to build a website?”, the honest answer is that the building is rarely the slow part. Content and decisions are.

We’ve been building websites since 2015, and the projects that run late almost never run late because of the code. They run late because something is waiting on someone.

How long does it take to build a website, stage by stage

This is roughly how a project runs with us for a small business site of five to fifteen pages. Some stages overlap, so the total is a little shorter than adding them all up.

1. Brief and research, one to two weeks. We learn about your business and competitors, look at what your customers search for, and plan the pages around that.
2. Design, two to three weeks. We design the key pages, you give feedback, and we revise.
3. Build, two to four weeks. The approved design becomes a working site on a private staging address.
4. Content and testing, one to two weeks. Copy and images go in, forms are tested, and the site is checked on phones and different browsers.
5. Launch and training, about a week. The site goes live, we check Google can find it, and we show you how to run it yourself.

Design is where most of the conversation happens. Our web design process starts with the homepage and one inner page, and once those are agreed the rest of the site follows much faster. Getting those two right is worth an extra few days.

Why online shops take longer

An e-commerce site adds products, payments, shipping and a great deal more testing. We’d plan for 12 to 16 weeks for a typical small shop, and longer if you have hundreds of products with sizes and colours, or need the shop to talk to a stock or accounting system.

Product information is normally the bottleneck. Photos, descriptions, prices, variations, weights for shipping. Somebody has to gather all of it, and it’s rarely ready when the project begins.

What actually causes delays

The build itself seldom runs over. The waiting does.

Content is the most common delay we see, by a long way. Writing the words for a whole website is harder than most people expect, and it has to compete with running a business. Finished designs sit with empty pages for weeks. If writing isn’t your thing, hand it over. Our copywriting service exists largely for this reason, and it’s often the single biggest thing that keeps a project on schedule.

Feedback rounds come next. Two rounds of design feedback is normal. Five rounds usually means the brief wasn’t clear, or new people joined the conversation halfway through.

That leads to decision-makers. If three partners all have to approve the homepage and one of them only sees it at the end, expect to go back a step. We’d much rather know at the start who signs off.

Smaller things add up as well. Waiting for logins to the old hosting or domain. A logo that is still being designed. A third-party supplier who takes a fortnight to answer an email.

How to speed it up

You can’t rush good work much, but you can stop it stalling.

Start on the content early, ideally before design begins. Rough drafts are fine. The design can then be built around your real words rather than placeholder text that gets swapped out later and suddenly doesn’t fit.

Choose one person to give feedback, and give them the authority to make decisions. Collect everyone else’s comments and send them as one set.

Send links to a few sites you like, with a sentence on what you like about each. It’s much quicker than trying to describe a feeling.

Gather your domain and hosting logins, brand files and photos in one place before the kick-off meeting.

And be honest about deadlines. If the site has to be live for a launch event or a trade show, tell us at the start. We can plan a smaller first phase that goes live on time and add the rest afterwards, which is far better than squeezing everything in and testing nothing.

The last stretch before launch

Going live isn’t flicking a switch. We check redirects from the old site, page titles, forms, speed, mobile layouts and whether Google is allowed to index the site at all. Our list of final checks before your site goes live covers what we look at.

Even after launch, Google still has to visit the new pages. Google says crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, so don’t worry if you can’t find the new site the morning after.

Every website development project we take on starts with a fixed quote and a realistic timeline, worked out around your content and your deadlines.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to build a small business website?

For a typical site of five to fifteen pages, plan for about 8 to 12 weeks from brief to launch. Having your content started early is the biggest thing that keeps it on schedule.

How long does an e-commerce website take?

Usually 12 to 16 weeks for a small online shop, and longer for large product ranges or shops connected to stock or accounting systems. Gathering product information is normally what takes the longest.

Can a website be built in a week?

A very simple site can be, if the content is ready and decisions are quick. But skipping research, feedback and testing usually costs you later, especially in how well the site shows up on Google.