How Long Does It Take to Build a Website?
"Two weeks" is the answer most people are given and almost nobody experiences. The build itself is rarely the bottleneck. This guide gives realistic timelines by project type, shows where the weeks actually go, and names the three things that delay nearly every project.
Realistic timelines
| Project | Realistic timeline | Fastest sensible |
|---|---|---|
| Landing page | 5–7 days | 3 days |
| Brochure site (5–10 pages) | 2–3 weeks | 10 days |
| Business site (10–20 pages) | 3–5 weeks | 3 weeks |
| eCommerce (up to 100 products) | 4–8 weeks | 3 weeks |
| Custom application | 3–6 months | 10 weeks |
These assume content is ready or being written in parallel, and that feedback comes back within two working days. Both assumptions are optimistic, which is why the next section matters more than this table.
Where the time actually goes
Discovery — 2 to 5 days
Understanding the business, the audience, the competition, and what the site actually needs to achieve. Skipping this feels efficient and reliably costs more later, because design decisions get made on guesswork and then reversed.
Design — 1 to 2 weeks
Wireframes first, then visual design in Figma. This is where most revision rounds happen, and rightly so — changing a layout in Figma takes minutes, changing it after the build takes hours.
Development — 1 to 3 weeks
Turning approved designs into a working site. Counterintuitively this is often the most predictable stage, because by now the decisions have been made.
Testing — 3 to 5 days
Cross-browser and cross-device checks, form testing, speed optimisation, accessibility review. The stage most often compressed when a project runs late, and the one that most reliably causes post-launch embarrassment when it is.
Launch — 1 to 2 days
DNS, SSL, analytics, Search Console, redirects from old URLs. Short, but it needs to be done carefully — a botched redirect map can wipe out rankings built over years.
The three things that cause almost every delay
- 1Content. The single biggest cause. A build finished in three weeks can sit unlaunched for two months waiting on service descriptions and team photos.
- 2Slow feedback. A two-day turnaround on each review round keeps a project on schedule; a two-week turnaround on four rounds adds a month.
- 3Scope growth. "Could we also add a booking system?" mid-build is a new project, not a tweak — and it resets the timeline.
Can you build a website in a week?
For a single landing page, yes, comfortably. For a full site, a week is possible only when the scope is tight, content is ready on day one, the design uses an existing system rather than starting fresh, and feedback comes back the same day. All four conditions rarely hold at once.
Rushing is not free either. The parts that get dropped under time pressure are testing, SEO structure and accessibility — precisely the parts that are invisible at launch and expensive to retrofit.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to build a small business website?
Two to five weeks is realistic for a five to twenty page site, assuming content is ready and feedback comes back within a couple of days at each stage.
Why do website projects run late?
Overwhelmingly because of content and feedback delays rather than development. Waiting on copy, images and approvals accounts for most overruns on small and mid-sized projects.
Can I speed the project up?
Yes — have your content written before design starts, nominate one decision-maker for approvals, and return feedback within two working days. Those three habits routinely cut a third off the calendar time.