The val­ue of a strong online pres­ence can’t be under­es­ti­mat­ed. Hav­ing a well-built web­site is essen­tial if your busi­ness is to suc­ceed – whether it’s an e‑commerce, blog, or port­fo­lio site.

A well-designed and good-func­tion­ing web­site will demon­strate to cus­tomers, clients, and read­ers that your com­pa­ny is trust­wor­thy and knowl­edge­able. In fact, good design­ers and devel­op­ers can take your com­pa­ny val­ues, what­ev­er they may be, and reflect those in your site’s design.

Smooth­ly func­tion­ing sites retain prospec­tive cus­tomers for longer and are more like­ly to gen­er­ate con­ver­sions and sales. Did you know that a one-sec­ond delay in your site’s load­ing speed can reduce con­ver­sions by 4.42%?

The ben­e­fits of a high-qual­i­ty site are bound­less – so how quick­ly can you achieve them? Whether you’re build­ing your first ever web­site or you want to start afresh, you’re prob­a­bly won­der­ing how long it’s going to take.

When think­ing about how long it takes to make a web­site, there are sev­er­al fac­tors that will change the answer. It real­ly depends on what you want to get out of it, your busi­ness’s size, and the bud­get you have available.

This arti­cle will delve into these fac­tors so you can have a bet­ter idea of how long this project will take. First­ly, let’s look at what you’ll be spend­ing your time on.

What does building websites involve?

The way in which you choose to build your site will dic­tate the length of the process, as well as its over­all cost. As much as you might like to keep the project short, there are some stages that can’t be skipped.

Gen­er­al­ly, there are about sev­en steps involved in build­ing a web­site. Let’s dive in:

     1. Initial admin (1 week)

Here’s where you can get the ball rolling your­self. You’ll need to choose a web host­ing, a domain name, and install a con­tent man­age­ment system.

Web host­ings can usu­al­ly get up and run­ning with­in 48 hours. How­ev­er, the deci­sion process could take you up to a week because there are so many options.

     2. Hiring and research (2 to 4 weeks)

You obvi­ous­ly want to find the best peo­ple for the project, and find­ing the per­fect design­ers and devel­op­ers may take time. You’ll want to look at their port­fo­lios to see if their pre­vi­ous work aligns with your vision for the site and if they have the rel­e­vant expe­ri­ence. Before you can do that, though, you’ll need to have done some research into the kind of site you want, the fea­tures it will need, and the designs you have in mind.

In this phase, you may con­sid­er going with free­lancers or an agency, and you’ll take the time to do inter­views. There’ll be dis­cus­sions about your bud­get and project expec­ta­tions, as well as induct­ing new staff onto project man­age­ment sys­tems such as Asana or Slack.

Allow about a month for all the above – hir­ing the A‑Team isn’t instantaneous.

     3. Planning (1 to 5 weeks)

Once you’ve got your team in place, you’ll want to have dis­cus­sions about your aims and vision. First of all, you should get across your goals, ide­al design styles, and brand val­ues. Your new design­ers might pro­pose some ini­tial plans for you to approve before they cre­ate offi­cial mock-ups.

When you’re on the same page, you can make an action plan – with times and dead­lines laid out. These dis­cus­sions will save time down the line, as your new hires will have more to work with.

     4. Mock-ups (2 to 3 weeks)

This stage is when you sit back and leave the design­ers to do their work. In a few weeks, you’ll get a mock-up for each page of your site, which you’ll pro­vide feed­back on. In addi­tion, the devel­op­ers will need to check that the designs are finan­cial­ly and tech­ni­cal­ly feasible.

If you or the devel­op­ers aren’t pleased with the mock-ups, this phase could become longer whilst you wait for revisions.

     5. Web development (1 to 2 months)

So, you’ve final­ly agreed on your designs. Now it’s time for your developer/s to turn those mock-ups into a real­i­ty. Since the speed of this process depends on the size of your web­site, it’s the hard­est to give a time esti­mate for. How­ev­er, if the plan­ning and mock-up stages have gone accord­ing to plan, the devel­op­ment stage should­n’t have any delays.

At this time, your input should be min­i­mal since every­thing’s already been planned. Ide­al­ly, the most you’ll be doing is receiv­ing updates from your developer/s.

Towards the end of this phase, there’ll be some test­ing done to ensure the site func­tions correctly.

     6. SEO and content creation (3 to 8 weeks, then ongoing)

With­out con­tent, you’ll just have a pret­ty site full of Lorem Ipsum. Whilst your design­er or devel­op­er is bad­ger­ing away, it’s a good time to get start­ed on your site’s content.

You’ll at least need web­site copy for your home page, prod­uct pages, about us page, and con­tact page.

Fur­ther­more, blog con­tent strate­gies are a high­ly pop­u­lar (and reward­ing) part of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, so you might con­sid­er hir­ing blog con­tent writ­ers to cre­ate this for you.

To pro­duce a suf­fi­cient amount of reg­u­lar site con­tent and blog con­tent, you’ll need a few weeks. You might also con­sid­er hir­ing an SEO strate­gist who can help with opti­mis­ing your con­tent for SEO.

They’ll be able to con­duct key­word research to help opti­mise each page of your site. Plus, they can set you up on Google Ana­lyt­ics and Google Search Con­sole to mon­i­tor and analyse your progress.

Blog con­tent won’t be essen­tial for all web­sites – it’s gen­er­al­ly used by e‑commerce sites, infor­ma­tive blogs, or blogs earn­ing mon­ey via affil­i­ate links.

     7. Review (1 to 3 weeks)

Now that your site has been devel­oped, it’s time to do your checks. Does it look how you want­ed it to? Does it per­form as you intended?

If not, now’s the time for cor­rec­tions. But if it does, it’s time to launch!

From start to fin­ish, the above sev­en steps could take between 14 to 32 weeks (3.5 to 8 months).

Who should I hire to build my website?

When there are mul­ti­ple con­trib­u­tors work­ing on a project, the process can be slowed down. Since these team mem­bers will have to col­lab­o­rate, it’s inevitable that indi­vid­u­als will some­times be wait­ing for respons­es, sign-offs, edits, and oth­er peo­ple’s work.

The project of build­ing a web­site isn’t exempt from this issue, as there are sev­er­al peo­ple you’ll need to hire. Here’s who you can expect to need on your team:

• Web design­er (trans­lat­ing your brand’s vision into visu­al ele­ments on the site, focus­ing on opti­mis­ing user experience)
• Front-end and back-end, or full-stack web devel­op­er (code how your site func­tions and bring the design­er’s con­cepts to life)
• SEO spe­cial­ist (on and off-page SEO, site struc­ture, key­word research, and set­ting up tools such as Google My Busi­ness, Google Ana­lyt­ics, and Google Search Console)
• Con­tent spe­cial­ist (work­ing along­side the SEO spe­cial­ist to pro­duce SEO-friend­ly web­site copy and CTAs)
• Project man­ag­er (to man­age the entire process, although you could do this yourself)

How many hours does it take to build a website?

If 35 hours are worked each week, and the project takes between 3.5 and 8 months (14 and 32 weeks), you’re look­ing at a fig­ure between 490 and 1120 hours.

How long does it take to make a simple website?

When you don’t require that many fea­tures or pages, the process of build­ing a web­site is much quick­er and simpler.

For exam­ple, one-page sites might take only a month to build. Sim­ple sites with mul­ti­ple pages might take as lit­tle as three months.

How much does it cost to build a website?

The cost of build­ing your web­site will vary depend­ing on the meth­ods you choose.

Build­ing your site your­self, with the help of a web­site builder, will be sig­nif­i­cant­ly cheap­er than hir­ing a web design­er. For exam­ple, build­ing an ad-free site with a tem­plate from Wix or Square­space can cost as lit­tle as $16 p/m.

Your domain will cost around $10 to $15 per year, and web host­ing can cost any­where between $3 and $70 per month.

Web design and devel­op­ment will be your largest out­go­ings. Depend­ing on the size and type of your web­site, the amount you pay will vary:

Web design costs:

• Small sites (8 to 16 pages) $1000 to $5000
• Large sites (20 to 70 pages) $9000 to $30,000
• E‑commerce sites (under 1000 prod­ucts) $5000 to $50,000
• Data­base sites (25 to 2000 pages) $7000 to $70,000

Web development costs:

• Blog or news web­site (around 120 hours) $4500 to $5000
• E‑commerce web­site (between 900 and 1200 hours) $36,000 to $48,000

Adding more func­tions to your site will raise the cost:

• Mem­ber­ship por­tals could cost between $90 and $400 to run each year.
• E‑commerce util­i­ties are essen­tial for online stores, but a ful­ly cus­tomised e‑commerce site can cost at least $2000.
• Cus­tomised pro­gram­ming is often need­ed by larg­er busi­ness­es, and this can add many hours to your devel­op­er’s con­tract – this cost will depend on the devel­op­er’s rate and the required hours.
• Sub­scrip­tion ser­vices could cost you around $50 per month to run.

Once your site is fin­ished, there’s the issue of web­site main­te­nance. It’s a good idea to keep a web­site devel­op­er on board to han­dle any main­te­nance issues when they arise. The cost of this will vary depend­ing on what the devel­op­er charges and how many issues come up.

Best website builders

There are sev­er­al web­site-build­ing tools on the mar­ket. Most are very easy to use and come at a rea­son­able price. The fol­low­ing are the top 10 web­site builders accord­ing to Web­site­Builder­Ex­pert:

1. Wix was vot­ed the best overall
2. Square­space had the best tem­plate designs
3. GoDad­dy was vot­ed the fastest to build with
4. Shopi­fy was best for sites sell­ing ten or more products
5. Wee­bly had the best free plan
6. Zyro was best for busi­ness­es on a budget
7. Jim­do Cre­ator was vot­ed best value
8. Duda was best for a pol­ished web­site design
9. Word­Press was best for con­tent-heavy sites such as blogs
10. Strik­ing­ly was vot­ed most easy to use

The web­site builder you choose will depend on your cir­cum­stances. Whether you’re on a bud­get or you plan to put out a lot of con­tent, there’ll be one for you. But if you’re unsure about using a tool at all, read on to learn the pros and cons of DIY web­site building.

Should you build your website by yourself?

If you’re think­ing about DIY web­site build­ing, there are a few things you should know:

Pros of doing it yourself

1. You’ll save a lot of money
2. You can work at your own pace
3. You won’t have to give away cre­ative con­trol to some­one else
4. You know your com­pa­ny and its needs bet­ter than anyone

Cons of doing it yourself

1. It will take much longer
2. You’re like­ly to make mis­takes if you’re not an expert in design or development
3. You prob­a­bly don’t have spe­cial­ist design/development soft­ware or tools
4. You won’t have the experts read­i­ly avail­able to help you when issues arise

So, there you have it. You might be bet­ter off going it alone, and you can always hire help in the future if things don’t go to plan.

One thing’s for sure – there’s a lot involved when build­ing a web­site. If your site is to turn out the way you want it, you’ll have to spend the required amount of time.

If you need help build­ing your web­site, you could hire us: pur­ple­plan­et. Our team of experts can bring your vision to life every step of the way – with­out any time wast­ed. Click the link below to learn more about our services.