Building a website requires careful planning, research, design, development, testing, and launching. The timeline to build websites varies greatly depending on the website’s purpose, features, and tools used.
Overall, creating a fully functional website takes 2-6 months. However, the timeline can be shortened or extended depending on the choice of goals, budget, resources, domain and hosting package.
Steps for Creating a Website
Let’s look at a more complete explanation and average timeline for creating a website.
1. Defining Goals and Requirements
To plan a website, first identify its purpose, target audience, necessary content, and features. Conduct market research to understand users’ needs. Outline technical requirements for functionality, hosting, and security.
Thoroughly planning these key elements in the initial 2-4 weeks for a simple site or up to 2 months for a complex one helps ensure smooth and focused development down the road.
2. Choosing a Platform
Next, you need to decide whether to use a website builder, CMS, or custom code:
Website Builders
- The fastest option takes just 1 day to 1 week for simple sites
- Limited customisation and design options
- Best for basic websites like portfolios or small business sites
Content Management Systems (CMS)
- Flexible platforms like WordPress allow more design control
- A steeper learning curve, adding 1-8 weeks for development
- Ideal for blogs, small online stores, and business websites
Custom Code
- Full design flexibility but requires advanced coding skills
- Typically, it takes 12-26 weeks for development and testing
- Best for complex web apps, custom platforms, or large enterprise sites
3. Creating a Sitemap and Wireframes
Before visual design, create a website sitemap to outline the page structure and navigation flow. This ensures all pages are interconnected logically.
Develop basic wireframes to map page layouts. Wireframes allow you to visualise space allocation for elements like menus, content, forms, etc. Sitemap and wireframe creation can take 1-3 weeks.
4. Design and Development
For visual design, you can use premade templates or create custom designs. Templates speed up development, while custom designs allow more branding and design flexibility.
With the design direction set, actual development and coding work begins based on wireframes and requirements. This stage involves:
- Front-end development – HTML, CSS, JavaScript
- Back-end development – CMS/framework customisation, integrating APIs or databases
- Performance optimisation – compressing images, minifying code, caching, etc.
Testing and bug fixing are done in parallel to ensure features work correctly. For medium complexity sites, allot 2-3 months for design and development.
5. Content Creation and Optimisation
Create and optimise all text content, images, videos, etc., needed as placeholders during the website build timeline. For an average 10-15 page site, allow at least 3-4 weeks for content creation, including keyword research and SEO optimisation.
Consider using AI writing tools to generate initial drafts that you can edit and refine based on brand voice. This can cut content creation time significantly.
6. Pre-launch testing and Security Audits
Conduct comprehensive tests to identify bugs, broken links, performance issues, etc. Testing takes 1-3 weeks for medium-complexity sites.
It’s also recommended to perform security auditing and fix any vulnerabilities before launch.
7. Launch and Promotion
Once tested, you can officially launch the website. Promote the launch through social media, email campaigns, PR outreach, and other marketing channels.
Allocate at least 2-3 weeks for launch planning and promotion. Monitor analytics to see post-launch traffic and engagement.
Conclusion
You need at least 2-6 months to create a professionally designed website. Use platforms like website builders to launch simple informational sites faster.
For advanced platforms with extensive customisation, be prepared for a longer website-building timeline. Good planning, testing, and project management are key to keeping website creation on schedule.