How long a business website takes, and what slows it

“How long will it take?” is one of the first questions owners ask, and the most honest answer starts with “it depends on what you send me and how quickly you answer”. That is not evasion. Most of the elapsed time in a website project is spent waiting, and what is waited for is usually not the design.

No standard figure exists

Agency guides quote anything from a few weeks to several months for a small business site. Those numbers come from companies that sell the work, they rest on different definitions of “a website”, and none of them is a standard. A ten-page site with every photograph and paragraph ready is a different job from a seventy-page catalogue whose data sheets are on paper.

For that reason this note gives no number. It tells you what to look at instead.

What decides the schedule

1. How many pages, and how different they are. Pages built from one template, each with its own content, go faster than pages that each need their own layout. The number of pages matters mostly because each one needs its own content.

2. Whether the content exists. The text, photographs, documents and prices for each page. Content that is ready can be built straight away. Content that has to be written, photographed or retyped from a printed catalogue adds the time it takes to produce it, plus the time for you to check it.

3. How fast decisions come. A design that waits a week for a reply loses a week. One person who can say yes saves more time than any tool. Several people sending separate, conflicting comments cost the most.

4. Access. Domain and hosting logins that nobody can find are a classic delay on launch day.

5. Changes of scope. Adding pages or features after the plan is agreed moves the dates. That is normal, but it should be said out loud.

6. Extras. Anything beyond presenting information, such as a booking system, payments or a database, adds design, building and testing. Those items are quoted separately, and the guide to backends explains when they are needed.

A way to estimate before you ask

Make a list of your pages. Next to each, mark where its content stands:

Ready: text, photographs and facts exist and you have checked them.
Needs writing: the facts exist but the wording does not.
Needs producing: photographs, data sheets or documents must still be made or found.

The more pages in the second and third group, the longer the calendar, whoever builds the site. Then name the one person who approves each stage and check that they can reply within a day or two.

What to ask a developer

Which dates depend on me, and what happens to the later dates if mine slip?
How many rounds of changes are included, and what counts as a round?
When does the clock start: when I pay, when I send the content, or when we agree the plan?
What is the date for each stage, written down?

What Website Craft Room says

The schedule is agreed in your written proposal. It depends on the number of pages and on how quickly content, photographs and approvals reach me. What to prepare before a website project lists what shortens it.