How long does a website take?

It's the most common question straight after price. Honestly, a simple site can be done in a couple of weeks, while a web shop or a booking system takes longer. The deadline depends far less on the technology than on the scope, the content and how quickly decisions get made. So let's look at how that works in practice and what you can do to make the project move faster.

Build time isn't a number you copy off a price list. It's more of a range, and it narrows as soon as we know exactly what the site has to do and how quickly you'll be able to take part. A project of the same size can be finished in three weeks, or it can stretch to two months. The difference is rarely in the code. So instead of a single number, we'll go through the phases, what stretches them and what you can do yourself to shorten the deadline.

The phases of a project

Almost every project goes through the same steps, whether we're building a simple site or a web shop. The only thing that changes is how long each step takes. Our order of work is also described in the process section, and here are the phases with rough timings.

After development come two more short phases that are easy to forget. The first is review and refinement, when we go through the site together, fix the small things and check the copy. The second is launch and setup. That's when we move the site onto your domain, set up analytics and basic SEO, and check that everything works properly on a phone and on a computer. Those two phases usually take a few days, but do count them in if you're aiming at a specific date.

Realistic timelines by type of site

The easiest way to judge your own project is to put it into one of these groups. The ranges come from experience rather than a rulebook, and they shift with the number of pages and features. There's more on scope itself on the web development page.

Say you run a guesthouse on the coast and want a gallery, a reservation enquiry and the site in Croatian and English. That realistically sits somewhere in the middle of the second range. If all you need is a good presentation with contact details, the same guesthouse easily drops into the first. It's the features, one by one, that move the deadline, not the design itself. With a web shop the same goes for the price, which we broke down in how much a web shop costs.

What speeds the work up and what slows it down

When a project runs late, the cause is almost always on the same list. The good news is that you can control most of it yourself.

You'll notice that four of the five rows are about people, not technology. Things most often get stuck on content. The design is practically finished, and the site is still waiting on the text about your services or the photos of the space. Decision making comes second. When feedback arrives from several people who don't agree with each other, every round of revisions takes twice as long.

The fastest projects are the ones where the content is ready, the scope is clear and decisions get made quickly. Technology rarely holds things up. Communication, sadly, can.

How to make your project go faster

You don't need to know anything about building websites to shorten the deadline. It's enough to get a few things ready before we start.

• Get the text and photos ready in advance. Or tell us right at the start that we should produce them, so nobody is waiting on materials later.
• Appoint one person for decisions and feedback. The whole team can make suggestions, but the final “yes” should come from one person.
• Start with a clear, realistic scope. Anything that isn't essential for the first launch goes into the phase after it, as a growth plan.
• Reply in one round. Gather all your notes on a draft and send them in one go, rather than drip-feeding them over several days.

It sounds simple, because it is. Projects that stick to these four rules regularly finish in the lower part of their range. With sole traders, we focus on getting to a working site as quickly as possible, without unnecessary steps. And if you're still weighing up whether you need a site at all, read does my small business need a website.

A deadline tied to a date: season, opening, campaign

Plenty of projects come with a hard deadline. The tourist season starts, a venue opens, or a campaign goes out on a set date. For tours and transfers that usually means the booking system has to be finished before June, not in June. In those cases we don't start from the question of how long it takes. We start from the target date and plan backwards. From the launch date we work out when development has to be done, when the design has to be done and when we need your materials. That way you can see straight away whether the deadline is doable at full scope, or whether we publish a narrower first version and add the extras after launch. The second option is often the smartest move. The site is online on time, and it keeps growing without the pressure.