How Long Does It Take To Create a Website?

Creating a website can take anywhere from a few days to a couple of years, all depending on the purpose and requirements of the website. The relationship between task complexity, execution difficulty, and time requirement is a crucial factor. For instance, using a modern website creation platform, a basic landing page can be completed in a few hours. In contrast, developing a website for a banking service provider, even when undertaken by specialists, can take several months. In this article, we aim to shed light on the time required to create a website tailored to your business.

Types of Websites and Main Steps of Website Creation

As discussed in previous articles, websites come in various types, offering different levels of functionality to users. Broadly, they can be categorized into:

Informational websites (like landing pages) which offer minimal functionality beyond a basic contact form.
Common websites with basic functionality such as online shops, appointment scheduling websites, and booking websites. These can be created using existing website creation platforms.
Websites or web applications with complex business functions.

Creating a website involves several key steps:

Understanding the website's goal, listing its requirements, and planning the work.
Creating content for the website, if necessary.
Designing the website layout and visual elements.
Conducting development research, if required.
Actual development based on the created design.
Testing the website and resolving any issues.
Deploying the website project to the internet.
Performing SEO optimization and making changes for marketing, if needed.

With these steps in mind, let’s examine each website type and determine the approximate timeline for website development. Remember, each idea, business, and website is unique, so the timeframe can slightly vary depending on the customer's specific needs.

Informational Websites

Informational websites are typically straightforward due to their lack of advanced functionality requirements. We break down the process into seven stages:

Determining the website goal: Most informational websites aim to provide essential company information and present the company to potential clients.
Content specification: This usually relies on the client’s business description and their perspective on the company's major strengths. Depending on the detail required, this step can take from a few hours to a few days.
Design planning: Modern web platforms allow for instant website design. However, a custom and more complex design could take a couple of days.
Actual development: The complexity of the design largely determines the duration of this step. Basic designs can be implemented within a few hours. Once the design is ready, it only needs to be populated with the necessary content. Therefore, the initial development may take 1-2 days.
Testing and issue fixing: If the website is built using website creation platforms, testing and issue resolution can be done quickly. These platforms are extensively used and tested, ensuring that your website will have few, if any, bugs to address. Hence, for informational websites, the testing and issue fixing stage should not exceed one day.
Website deployment: With website creation platforms, deployment is straightforward and swift, taking only a few minutes to select a domain and deploy the website.
SEO optimization: This step is typically automated for website builders. If not, it can take a day for a website with 1-3 pages.

In summary, compared to other types of websites, creating an informational website takes relatively little time, often not requiring a development team. However, the process will vary for other types of websites, as we will discuss in the following sections.

Regular Business Websites

Now, we turn our attention to regular business websites, such as online shops, scheduling appointment websites, or booking websites. These require more than just informational content and have specific business processes that need to be tracked.

The development timeline for these sites can vary greatly based on their unique requirements. Nevertheless, we assume these websites have a straightforward development process and can be built using website creation platforms. Such sites typically have basic requirements like a list of items, cart functionality, and email notifications about orders.

Understanding business processes and functionality: Though the goal of these websites is clear, the specific requirements can differ. The process of defining the functionality can take up to a day.
Content specification: This depends largely on the client providing essential information such as product names, descriptions, prices, and general information about the business. If prepared in advance, this step can take a few days.
Basic designing: Much like informational websites, creating a design for these websites is straightforward. However, a more custom and complex design can take up to a week, considering there are usually more pages and mockups required.
Development research: This might be necessary if custom emailing or specific payment methods are to be implemented. It should not take more than a working day.
Website development: This depends on the design complexity and the required features. On average, this stage can take a couple of days to a week.
Testing and issue fixing: As long as your website doesn't have major issues, this step will involve an end-to-end testing to ensure everything functions properly. A day is typically sufficient.
Website deployment: With a website builder platform, this process is typically straightforward and takes a few minutes to select a domain and deploy the website.
SEO optimization: This is usually included in the process of website builder platforms. If not, it may take a day or two.

Tasks can often be executed simultaneously if there are multiple people working on the project. For example, content creation, design, and development research can be delegated to different specialists. On average, creating a website like this may take 1-3 weeks, depending on the complexity and uniqueness of the website.

Fully Custom Websites

Last, but certainly not least, are fully custom websites. These are the most complex types of websites, requiring unique functionalities and tailored solutions.

As previously mentioned, time estimations for these websites can vary dramatically. Some projects may take weeks, while larger projects can extend to years. For an accurate time estimate, it's best to directly contact your development team.

For complex web applications, it's uncommon to use the Waterfall development method (a linear approach where each step is completed before moving on to the next). Instead, development often follows a cyclical process where each step can be repeated multiple times for each function of the website. Let's delve into each step:

Understanding website goal requirements and business model: This can take days or even weeks for larger companies with complex business structures.
Content creation: This could be undertaken by the client, the developer, or through a collaborative effort between both parties.
Custom design: This is essential for these types of websites. A one-page website design could be finished in a day, whereas more complex platforms requiring many pages can take weeks.
Development research: Not all websites require this step, but for those that do, the process can take several days, depending on the desired functionalities. Considerations might include the estimated number of daily users, diversity of the user interface, data model and structure, data size, and any specialized features such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, or blockchain technology. Different combinations of these elements yield a varied scope of tasks and tools required to fulfill them.
Website development: As alluded to previously, this stage is largely unpredictable. There is no 'one-size-fits-all' platform that can generate any desired website. Often, developers must write thousands, if not millions, of lines of code.
Testing and issue fixing: The duration of this stage largely depends on the developers' skills. Less qualified developers may produce subpar code that doesn't function properly and could lead to more time spent troubleshooting. This underscores why it might be more cost-effective to hire a skilled and experienced team from the outset. Generally, testing is carried out concurrently with development.
Initial deployment: This can be a relatively simple process but may take a couple of days for complex systems requiring many resources.
SEO optimization: This is usually hard to predict but should not take more than a couple of days if required.

Conclusion

In conclusion, estimating the timeline for website creation is not an exact science. A multitude of variables can affect each stage of the process, from creating a simple one-page informational site to building a complex, feature-rich website. Our recommendation is to invest wisely in a seasoned team of specialists from the outset. At IllitDev, we leverage our extensive experience to anticipate and navigate potential issues. Our team is more than happy to provide a consultation on how long it may take to build your website. After analyzing your project expectations, we can advise on what can be realistically achieved within the desired timeline.