How Long Does It Take To Create Website?
Long story short: from a couple of days to a couple of years. All depends on the website goal and requirements. The basic principle can be described by the correlation: task complexity – performing difficulty – time requirement. For example, using modern website creation platform you can get a basic landing page in a couple of hours while developing website for some banking service provider can take months even if performed by the specialists. The following article is intended to help you better understand how long it can take you to create a website exactly for your business.
As it was said in one of the previous articles there are different types of websites with different amount of functionality offered to a user. In short here are the main types:
- Informational websites (like landing pages). Such pages don’t have any functionality except basic contact form.
- Common websites with basic functionality (online shops/scheduling appointment websites/booking websites, etc.). Such websites can be created by means of existing website creation platforms.
- Website/Web applications containing some complex business functions.
- Understanding website goal, enumerating website requirements, planning the work.
- Create content that should be specified at the website (in case it is needed).
- Creating design of future website.
- Development research (if needed).
- Actual development based on the created design.
- Testing the website and fixing the issues.
- Deploying the website project to the Internet.
- SEO optimization and changes for marketing (if needed).
Informational Websites
Firstly, let’s take a look at Informational websites. Because of the absence of high-functional requirements the process is quite straightforward and will not take a lot of time. We divided 7 stages of this process that you can see below.
- Determination of the website goal. As we already noted, usually it is giving a client key information about the company and presenting the company itself. This works for the majority of such websites.
- Content specification. Usually it is based on the client’s business description and their vision of company’s major advantages. This step can take from a couple of hours to a couple of days. It mainly depends on how good the customer is at describing the details that require specification.
- Design planning. This step generally doesn’t take much time. Modern web platforms allow you to create a design for your website almost instantly. But in case you’d like some more custom and complex design, it can take a couple of days to complete.
- Actual development depends on the complexity of design. Basic designs can be implemented within couple of hours as well. The only thing left is to update it with the necessary content. So in total initial development might take 1-2 days.
- Testing and issue fixing. It can be done really quickly if the website was built using website creator platforms. They are so commonly used that you can be sure it will not have any bugs that need to be dealt with. The website work with the most of search engines. So for informational websites testing phase and issues fixing will not take more than a day.
- On website constructor platforms deployment is a really straightforward thing. It will take a couple of minutes to select a domain and deploy the website.
- SEO optimization. It usually goes under the hood for website builders. If not, it will take a day if there are only 1-3 pages on your website.
As a result you can make informational website almost in no time (comparing to other types of websites) and even without hiring development team. The process will be different for the other types of websites and we will discuss it in the following parts of this article.
Regular Business Websites
Let’s go on with overviewing basic timelines of website creation. This time let’s take a look at websites that have requirements besides the informational content, but still with pretty clear and regular business processes need to be tracked (i.e. Online Shops/Scheduling Appointment Websites/Booking Websites, etc.).
The key point is that the timeframe can be really different for different ideas. For this type of websites we assume that it is pretty straightforward in the process of development, so they can be built by means of website creator platforms. The basic online shop or such-like website requirements are the following: list of items, ability to add items to the cart and purchase, receiving emails about order being placed, sent and delivered. If your project expectations exceed the above-mentioned, it will fall into the third category that has special requirements exactly for the certain type of company and that requires programming. We will discuss such websites with high requirements a bit later; now let’s focus at not so complicated ones.
We can single out the following steps of the creation process for Online Shops/Scheduling Appointment Websites/Booking Websites.
- Understanding business processes and functionality your website needs to have. Even though the goal of the website is obvious, the requirements can vary. Usually, the process of the functionality definition can take up to a day.
- Content specification. It mostly rests on the client’s shoulders. They should provide all the necessary information like the list of product names, product description, price, etc. Also they can provide some general information about the business itself on this stage. If the following list is prepared by the client in advance, this step will take a couple of days
- Basic designing. It is easy to create a design for this type of websites as well as for informational pages. More custom, complex and attractive design can take up to a week because there usually are much more different pages and mockups required for the online shop.
- Development research. It might be required in case some custom emailing should be provided or some specific payment types will be used. But it shouldn’t take more than 1 working day.
- Website development itself. The length of this process depends on the complexity of design and number of features required. In average it takes a couple of days (one week at max) to complete this stage.
- Testing and issue fixing. This stage is also quick to complete as usually your website won’t have any issues so the only thing that is required is to perform end to end testing to make sure that everything works properly. We can say that 1 day is enough for this step.
- Website deployment. Using development platform usually makes this process really straightforward thing. It will take a couple of minutes to select a domain and deploy the website.
- SEO optimization. It is usually included into the process on website builder platform. If not, it will take a day or two.
You should also take into consideration that some tasks can be done simultaneously in case more than one person is working on this project. For example content creation, design and development research can be split between different specialists. All in all, it will take 1-3 weeks to create a website like this. The more complex and unique it should be – the more time it will take (and the more it will cost).
Fully Custom Websites
Finally we got to the most complicated type of websites that can be created – website with special requirements that need some unique functionality.
As it was mentioned it the previous part of the article, the time estimation for such websites can vary widely. There can be short projects that can be brought into life within weeks and large projects that can last for years. So, in case you need a precise estimation for your website, it is better to contact the project executor directly. You should also understand that for complex web applications Waterfall development is rarely used (Waterfall process is when one step is done after the previous one and there is no step repeated). In most of the cases, the process of development looks like a cycle where each step can be repeated multiple times for each website function. Let’s go through each step and understand what is going on every one of them.
- Understanding website goal requirements and business model. This process can take days or even weeks for some large companies with complex business structure.
- Content creation. This can be performed a) by the client himself b) by the developer c) in cooperation of the client and the developer
- Custom designing is required for this kind of website. It can be finished in one day for one-page website. Or can take weeks for complex platforms with many pages.
- Development research execution. For some websites development research is not required at all. For others it can take many days depending on the functionality that it should have. Here are some examples that can be taken into the consideration: number of daily users, diversity of UI (user-interface), data model, data structure and approximate data size, presence of features like artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, etc. Different mixes of this functionality produces different scope of tasks and different tools that can solve these tasks.
- Website development itself. As you can understand from the previous point, this step is unpredictable as well. There is no magic platform that can create any website you want. In most of the cases you should write thousands (or even millions) of code lines to create a website.
- Testing and issue fixing. There, it usually depends on the quality of developers’ skills. Poor qualified developers will produce very shitty code that won’t work in most of the cases. By fixing one thing they’ll usually break some other part. That is why hiring cheap developers can cost more in total than hiring skilled and experienced team. In general, testing goes simultaneously with the development.
- Initial deployment. It is an easy thing but can take up to a couple of days in case the system is quite complex and requires lots of resources.
- SEO optimization. It can’t be predicted as well. But it shouldn’t take more than a couple of days in case it is required.