How long does it take to build a website?

"Can you deliver the site by next week?" It's a question we hear often, and the honest answer is: it depends. Not as a way to dodge it, but because the timeline depends as much on the type of site as on your availability to feed it. Here are realistic ranges, with no empty promises, and the levers that genuinely shift the schedule.

Honest ranges, by type of site

A timeline quoted without context means nothing. Here's what we actually see, for a project run properly, from first conversation to going live.

A landing page (a single page, one goal). Allow 1 to 2 weeks. It's the fastest format: one message, one design, one call to action. If the content is ready and the target is clear, you can move fast without cutting corners.

A brochure website (5 to 8 pages). Allow 3 to 6 weeks. It's the most common format for a business: presentation, services, about, contact. The time goes into custom design, careful build, and rounds of review. For us, the average is around 3 weeks, we explain why below.

An e-commerce site. Allow 6 to 12 weeks, sometimes more. Product catalogue, product pages, cart, payment, stock management, shipping: every building block adds complexity, testing and edge cases. Product content (photos, descriptions, prices) also weighs heavily on the schedule.

A redesign of an existing site. Allow 4 to 10 weeks depending on scope. A redesign has a false reputation as a shortcut: "the content already exists". In reality, you have to audit the old site, salvage what's worth keeping, rethink the structure, and manage redirects so you don't lose your search ranking. It's often a full project in its own right.

A timeline only means something relative to a scope. "Three weeks" for a brochure site and "three weeks" for a 200-product shop don't describe the same project.

The stages that genuinely take time

A website isn't just "coding pages". The schedule splits across several phases, and some take longer than people imagine.

Scoping

Before the first line of code, you need to know what you're building: goals, audience, structure, key messages, visual references. This phase looks incidental; it's decisive. Rushed scoping is paid for later in endless back-and-forth. Done well, it takes a few days and saves weeks.

Design

This is where your identity takes shape. Mockups, typographic choices, visual hierarchy, mobile layouts. Custom design takes time because it starts from your brand and not from a template, which is exactly what makes the difference in the end.

Development

The build turns mockups into a real site: clean code, responsive, fast, accessible. A custom build aims for the best performance scores, which means careful work rather than an assembly of generic modules.

Content

This is the blind spot of almost every project. Copy, photos, legal notices, service descriptions: without content, a site stays an empty shell. And content depends very largely on you.

Review

Your feedback, the corrections, testing across every screen and browser, the final adjustments before launch. This phase is quick if feedback is clear and grouped, endless if it trickles in.

What depends on you (more than you think)

Here's the truth few agencies say plainly: the main cause of delay is almost never the agency. It's client availability. Two areas in particular:

• Content. If your copy and photos aren't ready, the project waits. It's the number one cause of schedule slippage. Preparing your content up front, or delegating it, can save several weeks.
• Feedback. A review cycle where you reply within two days with clear, grouped feedback moves fast. A cycle where each round takes a week and arrives piecemeal stretches out mechanically.

None of this is a criticism: you have a business to run. But being aware of it lets you organise your availability at the right moments and hold the timeline.

What speeds things up, and what slows them down

Speeds the project up: a clear, stable scope, content that's ready or delegated, a single decision-maker on the client side, fast grouped feedback, and a provider with a proven method.

Slows the project down: a scope that widens mid-project ("what if we also added…"), late content, several reviewers with conflicting opinions, scattered feedback, and complex custom features bolted on after the fact.

The most underestimated factor is scope creep. Every mid-project addition doesn't just lengthen development: it reopens the design, the review, the testing. A solid first site, launched on time, beats a perfect project that never ships.

Our approach: three weeks on average for a brochure site

If we hold an average of three weeks on a brochure site, it isn't by working faster at the expense of quality, it's thanks to a method that removes the dead time. Tight scoping from the start, clearly mapped stages, clear review points, and a single point of contact who owns the whole project end to end. No cascading subcontracting, no waiting on handoffs between people passing the ball back and forth.

The result: a timeline that holds, and a site aiming for 100/100 performance with no compromise. We lay it all out in our method.

Timing matters, but it's only part of the equation: budget does too. We explain how much a site really costs in this dedicated article, and you can explore the details of our brochure website offering.

In short

A landing page ships in one to two weeks, a brochure site in three to six, an e-commerce site in two to three months, a redesign in one to three months. But these ranges only hold if the scope is clear and you're available at the key moments, content and feedback. The best way to hit a deadline is to prepare it together from the start.

Have a date in mind? Let's talk: we'll tell you honestly whether it's achievable, and how to organise things to get there.