A five to fifteen page business site usually takes six to twelve weeks from the first real conversation to a live domain. Anyone promising two weeks is either using a template with your logo dropped in, or has not accounted for the part where you have to read things and say yes.
The design is rarely what takes the time.
Where the weeks actually go
Discovery, about a week. What you sell, who buys it, what has to keep working, what cannot break at launch. Short, but skipping it costs more later than it saves now.
Structure, one to two weeks. The page list, what each page is for, how navigation works. Boring and decisive. Every argument you have here is an argument you do not have in week eight when it is expensive.
Design, two to four weeks. Type, color, and layout on real pages at real widths. Rounds should be bounded: structure first, look second, corrections third. Open-ended feedback is how a four week stage becomes ten.
Build, three to six weeks. Templates, the editing tools, forms, and anything the site has to do beyond display information. This runs alongside content.
Content, the whole time and usually the holdup. More on this below.
Launch, a few days. Redirects, domain, certificate, forms tested on the live site, error pages, analytics. Then a week or two of snagging, because something always turns up that staging did not show.
What actually causes delays
In order of how often we see them.
1. Content. Not the design. Content. The site needs your prices, your staff names, your service details, your photos. Every project that runs long runs long here. If you can do one thing to keep a project on schedule, write the words early or pay someone to write them.
2. Too many approvers. Three people with opinions and no decision maker turns a two day review into three weeks. Name one person who can say yes.
3. Feedback that arrives as a list of preferences. “Can we see it in blue” is a request. “Our customers are contractors and this reads as a boutique” is a decision. The second one moves a project. The first one loops it.
4. Access. The domain registrar login nobody has. The old host that stopped answering. The Google account belonging to an employee who left in 2021. Find these in week one, not launch week. This one alone has added a month to more projects than any design disagreement.
5. Scope that grows quietly. “While we are in there, can it also do bookings.” That is a different project. It might be a good idea. It is not free, and it is not the same timeline.
What you can do to make it faster
- Gather logins before the first meeting: domain, hosting, Google Business Profile, analytics, any email tenant.
- Take photos now. Your building, your team, your work. Photography waits on weather and schedules, so start it early.
- Write the awkward pages first. Pricing, service details, anything with a policy in it. Those are the ones that stall.
- Decide who approves. One name.
- Say what you do not want, early. “No stock photos of handshakes” saves a round.
What a realistic schedule looks like
For a ten page site with a booking form, content mostly written by us, and one approver:
| Stage | Weeks |
|---|---|
| Discovery | 1 |
| Structure | 1 to 2 |
| Design | 3 |
| Build | 4 |
| Content | runs alongside from week 2 |
| Launch and snagging | 1 to 2 |
Call it nine to eleven weeks. Add a month if the content is coming from you and you have a business to run, which you do. That is not pessimism, it is arithmetic.
The launch date question
Pick a launch window rather than a launch day, and never put it the night before something that matters. Not the day before a trade show. Not the Friday before a holiday weekend. Launch on a Tuesday morning when everyone is around, watch the forms, and keep the old site on standby until the new one has been quiet and correct for a few days.
A site that goes live three days late and works is better than one that goes live on schedule and drops half its inquiries.
