How long should a website take?

A five-page business website is somewhere between a few days and three weeks of actual work. If you are being quoted three months, that is a scheduling decision — your project sitting in a queue behind other projects — not a statement about how long the work takes.

The gap between the two columns is the interesting part, and it is almost never the developer.

Where the weeks actually go

• Waiting for photographs. Consistently the biggest single delay.
• Waiting for copy, when it was unclear who was writing it.
• Revision rounds with no defined limit, particularly once a second decision-maker appears.
• Deciding things that should have been decided at the start — the name, the services list, the phone number that goes on it.

What a sensible schedule looks like

1. 01Week 0 — scope agreed in writing, content and photographs handed over.
2. 02Week 1 — design of the key pages, reviewed on a phone as well as a laptop.
3. 03Week 2 — build, with one consolidated round of changes.
4. 04Week 3 — domain, launch, Search Console, and a look at it on real devices.

If a quote does not come with dates attached, ask for them. A fixed price with no timeline is only half a commitment, and the half that is missing is the one that tends to slip.