Most company websites take nine to seventeen weeks, and most of that is spent waiting for content and approvals rather than on design or build. Here is where the weeks actually go.

For a company website of ten to forty pages, nine to seventeen weeks from first conversation to launch is realistic. Design and build account for perhaps six of those weeks. The rest is discovery, content production and waiting for decisions, which is why timelines slip on the client side far more often than on the supplier side.

Discovery and objectives: one to two weeks

What the site is for, who it is for, what is failing now, and what will be measured afterwards. If analytics and Search Console are not set up, this phase includes setting them up and waiting for enough data to be useful. Skipping discovery does not save two weeks; it moves them to the end of the project, where changes are more expensive.

Structure and content plan: one to two weeks

The page map, the job of each page, the URL plan and redirect map, and the content status of every page with a named owner and a date. This phase produces the document the rest of the project depends on. It is also the last cheap moment to add or remove a page type.

Design: two to four weeks

Wireframes, visual direction, then full designs for each page type with responsive states. The variable here is almost never design speed. It is how long feedback takes to arrive and whether it arrives consolidated. One approver responding within two days turns a four-week phase into a two-week one.

  • Design one page type fully before designing the rest.
  • Review with real content wherever it exists.
  • One consolidated round of feedback per page type.

Build: two to four weeks

The approved design becomes a working site with a CMS, forms, analytics and redirects prepared. This phase can only finish when content is complete, which is why the content dates set in the structure phase matter more than any other date in the plan. A build waiting on three missing pages is a build that has stopped.

Pre-launch checks: three to five days

Redirects tested against the full list of old URLs, metadata on every page, forms delivering to the right inbox, analytics receiving events, mobile checked on real devices, accessibility basics, legal pages present. This is short but not optional; most of the damage a redesign can do to search traffic is prevented here.

Post-launch: two weeks of monitoring

Search Console watched for crawl errors and lost pages, redirects verified again after 48 hours, first-week numbers compared with the baseline from discovery, and a snag list cleared. Then a review at 30 and 90 days against the objectives, which is the only point at which anyone can honestly say whether the project worked.

The three things that actually cause delays

First, content assigned to nobody: the plan says the client provides text, no names or dates are attached, and the build waits. Second, approval by committee: five people respond at different times and each round reopens the last. Third, scope added after the structure is agreed, usually a new page type that seemed small. All three are client-side, all three are preventable, and none of them are visible in a supplier’s proposed timeline.

When a faster timeline is real

A landing page with finished copy can go from brief to live in a week or two. A site with an existing design system, agreed content and one decision-maker can run at the short end of the range. What does not compress is discovery on a project where nobody has written down what the site is for; that work happens either at the start, deliberately, or in the middle, expensively.

Practical decision checklist

  • Ask which phases the quoted timeline includes.
  • Name the content owner for every page before design starts.
  • Appoint one approver and agree a response time.
  • Book the launch date away from a Friday and away from holidays.
  • Treat the redirect map as a structure-phase output, not a launch task.
  • Put the 30- and 90-day reviews in the calendar at the start.

Frequently asked questions

Can a website be built in a week?

A single page with finished copy, yes. A company site, only if the design already exists, the content is written and one person approves everything. The build is rarely the constraint.

Does a bigger team make it faster?

Up to a point, and then it makes it slower. More people on a small website project means more coordination and more handoffs, each of which is a place where intent gets lost. Content and approvals set the pace, and neither is solved by adding designers.

What is a realistic launch date to promise internally?

Take the supplier’s timeline, identify every point where it waits on your team, and add your real turnaround times rather than your optimistic ones. That number is the one to tell colleagues.

Can we launch in stages?

Often yes, and it is underused. Launching the core pages and adding secondary sections afterwards gets the value earlier and reduces the content bottleneck, provided the structure and redirect plan account for it from the start.