How long does it take to build a website?
Building a website can take anything from 3 to 12 weeks depending on what your website requires. Some websites only require a few pages of content, others can include a few thousand pages pr products, following is a summary of expected time frames.
Basic 3-10 page brochure style website
A brochure style website normally includes 3 to 10 pages. Some can include many more though as a start up business 3 to 10 pages is a ballpark page count. Estimated time required can take 3-4 weeks and this includes 1-2 weeks to design the website, then allow a few more weeks to build the website, populate with content, images and anything else required. Keep in mind that the time frames mentioned are based on us having all of the information that we need at the beginning of the project. If you provide your content in batches and do revisions of content already provided, this will delay the project. In some cases we have seen a website which normally takes 3-4 weeks to build take up to 6 months, this was due to delays in providing content required and content was not finalised before sending it to be used. Its always a good strategy to have the layout and finalised content ready before starting the project.
10-30 page brochure style website with add-ons
Similar to the 3-4 weeks mentioned above, if you are looking for 10-30 pages of content and include add-ons to the project such as forums, customer login sections, event managers or any type of add-on that does not come with a normal website, you would expect add 1-3 weeks to the the 3-4 week time-frame mentioned. All of the content that you provide needs to be uploaded to the website, formatted to suit the website, images placed per page and add-ons generally take time to install, configure and fine tune so that you are happy with the final result. 4 to 7 weeks is the average time required as long as you have all of the information we need at hand.
Basic eCommerce website with 10-20 products
Basic eCommerce websites are normally built using WooCommerce which is an add-on for WordPress and VirtueMart and add-on for Joomla. Both require extensive setup to get working, setup can include information pages, product pages, freight charges, banking information, payment gateways, SSL certificates and much more. An estimated time frame fr a basic eCommerce website is normally 4 to 6 weeks as long as you have all of the information we require ready to use. eCommerce websites normally require a lot of planning before hand as they are not normally ready to go when initially setup so its good to have a brief read of what you want so that we can provide you with the best advise before the project starts.
eCommerce site with 500-1000 products with add-ons
With an eCommerce website that has many products it is difficult to estimate the expected time-frame as a site with many products also comes with many add-ons. You can expect a good 6-12 weeks for a larger website that comes with add-ons. To get a better understanding of the time-frame required its best to provide your web developer with a full brief on what you need so that they can estimate time required. We have seen websites with thousands of products take 3 to 6 months due to the amount of product information collected and customers customisation requests.
Summary
Small websites can take 3 to 4 weeks to build, larger websites possibly 3 months though if you are looking for a website to be built in a faster time-frame its best to include this in your brief and ask if your developer can build the website within the time-frame required. Also keep in mind that websites take time to build so expecting your website to be built within an extremely short time frame means that you will end up with a website that has lots of short cuts taken.