How long does it take to build a website?

People judge a business by its website. In fact, 88% of people are unlikely to revisit a site after a single bad experience.

If your site doesn’t present your business in the best possible light, you should do something about it sooner rather than later.

But what sort of timescale is realistic? How long does it take to build a website from scratch? How long will you be waiting to reveal your new and improved online experience to the world?

This is one of the questions our clients ask most frequently. So we decided to put together this post detailing website timelines for a range of different projects.

• Building a website can take anywhere from a few days to several months. The average time to create a website is around three months.
• DIY and AI tools can help you design and build websites quickly. But these approaches don’t tend to get the best results.
• Professional designers and developers will take between six weeks and several months to design and build a website.
• Website complexity also affects timescales. A small brochure website can be completed in a few weeks but a large e-commerce store will take much longer.

How long does it take to build a website?

The more complex a website is, the more time a designer and developer will spend crafting it. Here at Radical, we’ve built websites in a couple of weeks. And we’ve had projects that lasted for almost a year.

Here’s what timescales look like for different types of website projects when you’re working with a web design and development agency.

How long does it take to make a simple website?

A simple brochure website, with just a handful of pages and limited functionality, usually takes a web design and development team two to eight weeks to design and build.

How long does it take to build a large brochure website?

A large brochure website, with around 50 separate web pages, takes between two and four months to build.

How long does it take to build an e-commerce website?

E-commerce websites generally take at least three months to build. That’s because they need to incorporate website extras like product pages, an account dashboard, a basket, checkout and integration with chosen payment providers.

A completely bespoke application with extensive custom development will take longer still.

Website build times: AI vs DIY vs agency

The way you choose to build your website also affects the timeline. Here’s how long it takes to build a website using AI, DIY tools and a professional web agency.

Building a website with AI

Using AI tools, you can build a simple website in just 10 minutes.

Your AI assistant can produce the design, code and content. You just need to brief your AI tool, then instruct it to make changes where necessary.

More complex sites will require a longer time investment, but you’re still looking at hours and days rather than weeks and months.

The trade off? AI-built websites may look okay on the surface but they’re unlikely to get results for your business.

That’s because they’re not built with usability, SEO, security or maintenance requirements in mind. AI content is unoriginal and not optimised. AI images look fake and untrustworthy. And because AI website builders rely on predefined layouts, AI-built sites tend to look incredibly similar to one another.

All this makes it harder for your target audience to find your website — and to trust your brand when they do.

Building a website using DIY tools

Using DIY tools and templates, you can build a simple website in a couple of days or weeks. The more familiar you are with the software you’re using, the faster the process will be.

Building a website yourself is cheaper than working with design and dev professionals. But, as with AI website building, there are downsides to this approach:

• A steep learning curve. Getting your site to work well across different devices and ensuring it has the functionality you need can be seriously challenging.
• A website that blends in with the crowd. You’ll be using templates that thousands of other business owners are using, and there are limited customisation options if you don’t know how to code.
• Poor website performance. Your site is too slow because templates come loaded with unnecessary functionality and require clunky third-party plugins.

Building a website with an agency

When you work with a web design and development company, building a website usually takes an average of two to four months.

This is longer than building with AI or a DIY website tool, but there are clear benefits to this approach.

With a professional website team at your side, you get a high-quality website — a bespoke web design, designed to maximise traffic and sales, and adapt as your business grows.

How long does it take to build a website, stage by stage?

Here, we take a deep dive into the website creation process. The stages of of building a website are:

• Discovery
• Design
• Development
• Adding content
• Reviewing and testing
• Launch

Here’s how long each website milestone takes, using the example of an agency-built brochure website with around 50 pages.

Discovery phase: 1 to 3 weeks

Let’s presume you’ve already found the web design and development company you want to work with.

After you’ve got in touch to say you want a sparkly new website, your agency will ask you questions — lots of questions — about your business and your new website.

They’ll ask about your offering, your audience and your competitors. They’ll find out about the problems you currently face and the things you want your website to do.

Based on all of the info you share with your web agency, they’ll put together a plan of action.

This plan will outline the scope of the project. It will incorporate a site map and all ideas for functionality, UX and SEO. And it will describe a timeline of activities along with approximate deadlines.

This part of the website building process usually takes around 1 to 3 weeks, with back-and-forth conversation between the client and the agency.

You can help to speed things up by prepping the information and resources your web agency is likely to need.

For example:

• A comprehensive website brief (including details of your target audience, competitors, goals and website functionality requirements)
• Any brand guidelines you already have in place
• A proposed site map
• A draft of your written content
• A gallery of high-quality images
• Other content you want to include — for example, videos or downloadable resources

An agency can work with you to create all the above from scratch. But anything you can do in advance of the discovery phase will help you to shave time off the project length.

Website design phase: 4 to 6 weeks

Next, web designers take all of the information you’ve provided and — using their UI and UX expertise — they create a wireframe.

This is a basic version of your website that lets you see what your site will look like for users across different devices. You get to see how pages relate to one another. And how elements will be sized and placed within each page.

Depending on the complexity of the website, an agency will sometimes skip the wireframe step and go straight into design. They’ll prepare desktop versions of each webpage and, once you’ve approved them, they’ll create mobile and (where necessary) tablet versions too.

Hopefully, you like what you see. But this is the time to raise any and all questions, queries and concerns regarding the design. It’s much easier (and faster) for designers to adjust the website design now, rather than making changes later in development.

This part of the website design process tends to take upwards of a month as you go back and forth with your web design and development agency to agree and make changes.

Website development phase: 4 to 6 weeks

Once you’ve approved the prototype website, your web development team will begin building your website for real.

This is the coding bit. Developers will use approved designs to create a fully functioning, pixel-perfect website.

During this phase, a project manager is likely to be in touch every week or so to share how the design is coming along. This is another opportunity for you to point out any issues you’ve identified or request changes.

So, how long does it take to develop a website?

All in all, web development takes around 4 to 6 weeks. At the end of this phase, you’ll have an almost-finished website, ready for final content additions and testing.

Adding content phase: 1 to 2 weeks

A web design and development agency can simply leave placeholder content and stock images on your website pages. You can then replace this content via your CMS at a later date. But that’s the worst-case scenario.

To ensure that everything fits perfectly and supports a great user experience on launch day, you should try to provide written website content and imagery at the very beginning of the website-building process.

Then, at this penultimate stage, your web agency will take a week or two to upload final, additional content and images.

Testing and delivery phase: up to 2 weeks

Time to iron out any problems before your site goes live.

Your web development team will run a website quality assurance process. That means conducting extensive tests on your website to check that everything is working as it should.

They’ll check that the website is responsive and functions correctly across all devices. And they’ll optimise loading speeds to ensure the very best UX.

Your project manager will then send over the finished product so you can make your final checks.

If there’s been good communication between you and your project manager up to this point, only minor changes should be necessary (if any at all).

But this is your opportunity to ask for any last-minute amendments before you show your site to the world.

Launch phase: from 1 day to 1 week

Once you’re 100% happy with the finished website, it usually takes around a day to get it live.

For more complex websites, launch tends to take a little longer. But you’ll still usually have an up-and-running website within a week.

Find out how long it would take us to build your website!

Here at Radical, reliability and customer care (as well as impeccable web design) are our priorities. So when we provide a website design timeline, we do our best to stick to it.

We’ve built hundreds of brochure and e-commerce websites for our clients, which means we have a pretty good idea of how long any given project is likely to take.

Dreaming of getting your website off the ground? But want to know how long the web design and development process will take? We can help!

Simply fill in our contact form, tell us about your business, and we’ll be in touch soon.

FAQs

How long does it take to create a website from scratch?

How long it takes to build a website depends on the complexity of the website.

A brochure website with a site map that includes around 50 pages will usually take a web design and development agency between two and four months to build.

Business owners can speed up the process by having all of the right resources ready to go. That means, before you approach an agency, you should try to collate the following:

• A detailed website brief
• A bank of high-quality images
• Written webpage content

What happens if I want to make changes to my website after it goes live?

There are lots of opportunities for you to raise issues and suggest changes during the website design and development process.

But sometimes it’s only when a site is up and running that you spot an issue or want to add new functionality.

The best website agencies will offer a website maintenance service, providing ongoing expertise and support, and making website changes where you need them.

How long does it take to redesign a website?

The answer to this question depends upon how extensive a website redesign you need.

For example, if you’re simply updating colours and fonts to fit with new branding, this can be done in a matter of weeks.

But if you’re redesigning your site because of more serious issues – such as low levels of traffic, an ineffective user journey or poor functionality – it will take a little longer (a month or two at a minimum).

It’s also worth bearing in mind that if a website is in really bad shape, it’s sometimes quicker to simply start afresh.

How long does it take to make a WordPress website?

It depends on the complexity of the website and the number of pages you need. A small WordPress brochure site will take between two and six weeks. A large e-commerce store is likely to take around four to six months.

Work with an expert WordPress website agency and the process will be quicker.

Do website projects that involve new branding take longer?

Yes, branding adds time to a website project. If you don’t already have branding you’re happy with, the right web agency can develop a new visual identity for your company.

This involves logo, typography, colour scheme and imagery design, and it typically adds an extra two weeks to the web design and development process.