How long does it take to build a website? A realistic timeline

The stages of a website build

Almost every website project, big or small, goes through the same eight stages. Some take an hour, some take weeks. Knowing them helps you see where your project is and what it's waiting on.

• Brief or discovery: the designer learns what your business does, who your customers are and what the site needs to do, such as bring in calls, bookings or quote requests.
• Content gathering: collecting the words, photos, logo, prices, service list and contact details that will go on the site.
• Design: deciding how the pages look and how they're laid out, usually shown to you as a draft before anything is built.
• Build: turning the design into a working website, including forms, menus and anything that connects to other systems.
• Testing: checking every page on phones and computers, testing that forms send, links work and pages load quickly.
• Review: you look over the finished site and ask for changes.
• Launch: pointing your domain at the new site so customers see it. For a redesign, this is also when old page addresses are redirected to the new ones.
• Post-launch: fixing anything that turns up in the first days, and making sure Google picks up the new pages.

What decides how long your website takes

You'll find plenty of week counts online for each type of website, but they vary widely and are rarely backed by real data. A more useful way to think about it is what your site has to do. The more it does, the longer each stage takes.

A simple brochure site

A brochure site tells customers who you are, what you offer and how to contact you: a home page, a services page, an about page and a contact form. There's little to build beyond the pages themselves, so the timeline is mostly decided by how quickly the content and approvals come together.

A site with bookings or online sales

Online bookings and ecommerce (selling products through the site) add moving parts. Each product needs a photo, a description and a price. Payments need an account with a payment provider. Bookings need your services, staff and opening hours set up. All of that has to be tested end to end before launch, which adds time to the build and testing stages.

A site connected to other business systems

An integration is a connection between your website and another system, such as your CRM (the software that keeps track of customers and enquiries) or your accounting software. Each one needs access to that system, agreement on what data moves where, and careful testing. Integrations and custom features take the longest, and they're where timelines are hardest to predict.

What usually slows website projects down

When a website project runs late, it's rarely because the code was hard. It's usually one of these four things.

• Content and photos: the designer can't finish pages without the words and images that go on them. Writing service descriptions and finding good photos takes owners longer than they expect, and it often happens on evenings and weekends.
• Approvals: every round of feedback that waits a week adds a week. It's slower still when several people need to sign off and nobody has the final say.
• Domain and hosting access: to launch, someone needs to change where your domain points. If you don't know who registered it, or an old web designer holds the logins, launch stalls until that's sorted.
• Feature creep: new ideas added halfway through, such as a booking system, a blog or an extra set of pages. Each one sends parts of the project back to design and build.

None of these are unusual, and none of them mean the project is in trouble. They are simply the parts of the timeline that sit with you rather than the designer.

Sort out your domain and hosting access early

Your domain is your web address, such as yourbusiness.com.au. It's registered through a company called a registrar. Hosting is the service that keeps your website online. They're often with different companies, and both matter at launch.

For a .au domain, auDA (the body that runs .au) says you'll need a transfer authorisation code to move it to a new registrar. Your current registrar sends that code to the registrant contact email on record, or you can use auDA's password recovery tool. Once a transfer is approved, auDA says it can take up to three days to take effect, and there's no fee to move a .au domain between registrars.

That's why it pays to check now that the registrant email is one you still use. You don't always need to transfer the domain to launch a new site, but you do need to be able to log in and change its settings. If a previous designer controls it, our guide on what to do when your web designer won't give you access explains how to get it back.

What happens after launch

Going live isn't quite the finish line. Search engines need time to find and understand the new site.

• Google needs to crawl your pages. Google says crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. You can speed up discovery by submitting a sitemap in Google Search Console.
• Redesigns need redirects. Each old page address should point to its new page with a permanent (301) redirect. Google recommends keeping these for as long as possible, generally at least a year.
• Rankings can move around. Google notes that rankings may fluctuate while it recrawls a changed site, and that this settles over time.

If you're weighing up whether to redesign your current site or start again, our guide to website redesign vs a new website covers how to protect your rankings during the move.

How to get your website live sooner: an owner's checklist

You can't control how fast a designer works, but you control most of what slows a project down. Before your project starts, work through this list.

• Find your logins: domain registrar, current hosting, Google Business Profile and Google Search Console. Write down who holds each one.
• Check your domain contact email is one you can still receive mail at.
• Write your service list: each service in a sentence or two, with prices if you show them.
• Gather your photos: your team, your work, your premises. Real photos beat stock photos.
• Collect the basics: logo, opening hours, phone, address, service areas and any licence numbers customers expect to see.
• Pick one decision maker who can approve the design and the final site.
• Agree on what's in this version. Keep a list of later ideas and add them after launch instead of during the build.
• Reply to feedback requests within a day or two. Short gaps between rounds keep a project moving more than anything else.

At Lumeen, a new website or redesign under our free build offer is ready in about 10 business days, and your current site stays live until the new one launches. Our website cost guide covers what you can expect to pay across Australia, and our FAQ answers common questions about timing and hosting.

Key takeaways

1. (01)

   Every website build moves through the same stages: brief, content, design, build, testing, review, launch and post-launch.

2. (02)

   The biggest delays are usually content, approvals, domain access and features added halfway through, not the build itself.

3. (03)

   Bookings, online sales and connections to other systems add the most time, because each one needs setting up and testing.

4. (04)

   Find your logins, write your content and pick one decision maker before you start, and your site goes live sooner.

Frequently asked questions

More answers on price, hosting and timing in our FAQ.