Simple Site (1–3 Pages): 1–2 Weeks

A homepage, a contact page, and maybe a services page — this is the minimum viable website for a local service business that needs to get online quickly. When all content is ready before work begins, a competent designer can deliver this in 5–10 business days.

What "all content ready" means:

  • Your logo (or a clear brief for a simple wordmark)
  • A short description of your services and service area
  • 5–10 photos of your work, team, or equipment
  • Your phone number, email, and address

If those four things exist on day one, a simple site can be live in under two weeks. Most delays on simple sites come from waiting for one of them.

Standard Business Site (5–8 Pages): 3–4 Weeks

A full business site — homepage, about, services (with individual service pages), service area, and contact — typically takes 3 to 4 weeks from kickoff to launch. This timeline assumes:

  • A clear brief delivered at the start of the project
  • Content and photos provided within the first week
  • Feedback turnaround within 2 business days at each review stage
  • No major scope changes after work has begun

With all of those conditions met, 3–4 weeks is realistic and achievable. Miss any of them and the timeline extends accordingly.

Larger sites with multiple service area pages, a photo gallery, blog, booking integration, or custom functionality require more time. 6–8 weeks is typical; more complex projects run 10 weeks or longer.

The timeline on larger projects is most sensitive to content volume. Ten service area pages require ten times the content of one. If that content is not ready, the project stalls regardless of how fast the designer works.

What Actually Slows Things Down

After hundreds of web projects, the bottlenecks are consistent — and they almost always sit on the client side, not the designer side.

Content is the bottleneck on almost every web project. The designer cannot build pages around content that does not exist yet. The single best thing you can do to accelerate your project: have all your text, photos, and business info ready on day one.

The most common delay sources in order of frequency:

  • Missing photos — "I'll get some taken this weekend" pushes the project back weeks
  • Waiting for copy — the designer builds placeholder content, revisions multiply
  • Slow feedback rounds — a 5-day turnaround on a review adds a week to every stage
  • Scope changes — adding pages or features mid-project resets timelines and budgets

Your Role in the Timeline

The client's contribution to timeline is underappreciated. A highly available client who provides complete content upfront and turns around feedback within a day or two consistently sees their project finish ahead of schedule. A client who goes quiet for a week at each review stage doubles the effective project length.

Scope creep — adding features or pages after the project has started — is the number one cause of timeline overruns. Decide what you need before work begins and stick to it until after launch.

Before any project starts, gather: your logo in vector format, 10–20 photos of your work, bullet points about your services and service areas, and 3–5 competitor or inspiration sites. Show up ready on day one and your project will finish on time.