Process3 min read
How long does it take to build a website?
Weeks, not days, and the weeks are not where most people expect them to be.
The build is rarely the slow part. Ask a studio how long a website takes and the honest answer includes the time it takes to decide what the site is for, to gather the words and pictures it needs, and to review it properly. Our timelines below include all of that, because a launch date that excludes it is not a launch date.
Typical timelines by project
- Digital Edition, an existing design adapted to your brand: two to three weeks.
- Brand and website foundations: five to seven weeks.
- Growth website with strategy and a content architecture: seven to ten weeks.
- Signature experience with custom art direction and motion: ten to fourteen weeks.
- Digital products and platforms: from twelve weeks, depending entirely on scope.
These are the ranges on our pricing page and they assume a client who can review work within a few days and who has, or is willing to produce, the content the site needs.
Where the weeks actually go
For a strategy-led site, the shape is roughly this. Discovery and definition take the first fortnight: a workshop, then the positioning, audience, journey, and success measure written down and agreed. Structure follows: the sitemap, the content plan, wireframes. Design takes two to three weeks with a review in the middle. Development runs alongside the back half of design and for a couple of weeks after. Refinement, testing across devices, accessibility, and performance take a week that is often cut and should not be. Launch is a day, with support for the fortnight after.
Notice that design, the part most people picture when they imagine a website being built, is a third of the time at most. This is deliberate. We wrote about why in strategy before aesthetics.
What slows a project down
- Content. Waiting for copy and photographs is the single most common cause of a slipped launch. Decide early who is writing what, or scope it into the project.
- Decisions. A review that takes ten days instead of two, or a stakeholder who appears at the end with new opinions, adds weeks. Agree who decides before the work starts.
- Scope that grows. Every good idea added mid-project costs the time it takes plus the time to rework what it touches.
- Access. Domain registrars, hosting accounts, and third-party services with lost passwords have delayed more launches than any technical problem.
Launching on a date that matters
If you have a real deadline, a trade show, a season, a fiscal year, say so at the first conversation. A fixed date changes how a project is planned: we scope to the date rather than scoping and then discovering the date, and we agree up front what gets cut if something slips. What we will not do is cut the testing week to make a date; a site that launches broken on time has not launched on time.
For Canadian businesses, the launch date can also matter at tax time, because a website's capital cost is claimed from the year it becomes available for use. We explain that in our guide to writing off a website.
Questions people ask
- Can a website be built in a week?
- A landing page can. A business website that has to convert, load fast, work on every phone, and be found in search cannot be done well in a week, and the shortcuts taken to do it will show. Our shortest honest timeline is two to three weeks for an Edition.
- What do I need to have ready before starting?
- Ideally: a clear sense of what the site has to do, any existing brand assets, the best photographs you have of your work, and a decision about who writes the copy. Everything else we can work out together in discovery.
- What happens if I am slow to review?
- The timeline moves by the same amount. We build review windows into the schedule and tell you when they are; a project only launches on time if both sides keep to them.
Put it to work