How long does it take to build a website?

For most small business websites: two to six weeks from starting to going live.

A single-page site can be done in a couple of weeks. A five-page site is usually three to four. Something larger, with a lot of content or anything that needs to actually do something, runs longer.

But the honest answer is that the timeline mostly isn’t up to the person building it, and that’s worth understanding before you start.

Where the time actually goes

A typical small business build breaks down roughly like this.

Working out what it needs to say (a few days). What you do, who for, what makes you the right choice, what you want visitors to do. Skipping this is why some projects go round in circles for months.

Design (about a week). The look of the thing, usually starting with the homepage and the main page layouts. This is the part with the most back and forth, and it should have.

Content. No fixed duration, because this is the variable. More on it below.

Build (one to two weeks). Turning the design into an actual site: every page, every screen size, forms, speed, accessibility, the technical groundwork.

Review and launch (a few days). You go through it, we fix what needs fixing, then domain, hosting and going live.

The thing that delays almost every project

Content. Specifically, words and photos.

It’s the same story on most jobs that overrun. Design is signed off, the build is done, and then everything stops for three weeks because the About page copy is still sitting in someone’s drafts and nobody has taken decent photos of the work.

Nobody means for this to happen. Writing about your own business is genuinely hard and it’s the thing that gets bumped when a real customer needs something.

There are two ways round it. Either block out proper time for it up front and treat it as a real task with a real deadline, or pay someone to write it. On my own projects copywriting is included precisely because this is where projects go to die.

Photos are the same. Real photos of your actual work are worth a great deal more than stock images, and organising them takes longer than you think. Start that in week one, not week four.

The other usual delays

Too many decision makers. One person deciding is fast. Three people with opinions and different availability is slow. Agree up front who signs things off.

Feedback in batches, not dribs. Notes arriving over ten days, one at a time, each one changing the last, stretches a two-day revision into a fortnight. Sit down once, go through the whole thing, send one list.

Scope growing quietly. “Could we also add a booking system?” is a reasonable question and a completely different project. Adding things mid-build is fine, as long as everyone says out loud that the date has moved.

Things you don’t control. Domain transfers, waiting on someone else’s system, a supplier’s API. Rare, but they happen, and they’re worth flagging early.

Can it be done faster?

Yes, in specific circumstances. A one-page site, with copy and photos ready on day one and one person making decisions, can be live inside a week.

What I’d avoid is rushing the middle. Sites built in two days to hit an arbitrary date tend to launch with placeholder text, no page titles, a contact form nobody tested and no thought given to whether anyone will find it. Then you spend the next six months fixing it, which is slower than doing it properly would have been.

If you have a genuine deadline, an event or a season you’re building towards, say so at the start. It changes how the work is sequenced. It’s much less useful to hear about it in week three.

How to be the client whose site launches on time

Genuinely, this is most of it:

1. Gather your content before the build starts. Words and photos. Even rough ones.
2. Decide who signs off, and make sure that person has time in the diary.
3. Give feedback in one go, in writing, in a single list.
4. Say what you actually think. “It’s fine, I suppose” costs a week later. Say what’s bothering you now.
5. Flag hard dates early.

Do those five things and a four-week project takes four weeks. That’s much more in your gift than most people realise.

What happens after launch

Going live isn’t the finish line. The first few weeks afterwards are worth paying attention to: checking enquiries actually arrive, watching how people move through the site, submitting it to Search Console, tidying up anything that reads oddly once it’s real.

And being found takes longer than being built. A new site doesn’t rank on day one. That’s normal, and it’s a reason to launch sooner rather than to launch worse.

If you’ve got a date in mind and want to know whether it’s realistic, tell me about the project and I’ll give you an honest timeline along with the price.