How long does it take to build a website?

Most agencies answer this with a range and leave it there. The more useful answer is where the weeks actually go, because one of them is yours.

Typical timescales

• A small brochure site: 3 to 5 weeks
• A larger site with service pages: 5 to 8 weeks
• Ecommerce: 6 to 12 weeks
• Bespoke or headless: 10 weeks and up

These assume a project that starts when it is supposed to and a client who answers. Both assumptions fail regularly.

Where the time goes

Week one: working out what it is. What the site has to do, who it is for, what pages exist, what each one is for. Skipping this does not save a week; it moves it to the end and makes it more expensive.

Weeks two and three: design. The key pages drawn in Figma and agreed. Changing a design is cheap, changing a build is not, which is why nothing should be built before this is signed off.

Weeks three to six: build. The actual coding, which is the part everyone pictures and is rarely the longest.

The last week: checking. Real devices, the redirect map, forms tested end to end, analytics confirmed. The week that gets cut when a project is late, and the one you will most regret cutting.

The thing that delays almost every project

Content.

Not design, not development. Copy, photographs, logos, staff details, product information. The client owns this, it is always harder than it sounds, and it is almost never ready when the build is.

A project with content ready on day one runs to schedule. A project waiting on “the team bios, when people get a minute” adds a month, and nobody budgets for it.

Two ways to fix it: have an agency write the copy, which costs money and saves weeks, or treat it as a real task with a real deadline and a name against it.

Can it be done faster?

Sometimes, and usually by reducing scope rather than working harder. A focused five-page site in a fortnight is a sensible thing to want. A twenty-page site in a fortnight is somebody agreeing to something they should not.

If you have a hard date, a trade show or a rebrand or a launch, say so at the first conversation. A project planned backwards from a date is a different project from one that discovers the date in week four.

What to ask for

A schedule with your deadlines on it as well as the agency’s. If what you get back only shows their milestones, the content delay is being quietly priced into your timeline rather than managed.

That is how ours work, and it is on the pricing page alongside what each tier costs.