As a rule of thumb, to build a website, you need to allocate about a week of time for each $500 that you spend on the website. So, if you are spending $2,000, it will take approximately four weeks to build a website. This is a general guideline and the website building process can move faster, but often it will take longer. Generally the client is the one to blame (sorry). In our experience, building websites in Winnipeg for almost a decade and for half of that time in Kelowna, getting required feedback and information from the client is what eats up most of the time, and extends the time it takes to build a website. Here’s a common scenario:
Common Issues When Building A Website
A client wants to save money on building a website (well, who doesn’t?). So when talking about content and images a client tells us that they will be providing all the content for the site. Cool. The content then ends up being some old word documents from their computer and images end up being small resolution pictures, copyrighted images from the web, and grany photos from the phone. We then have to tell this client to go back and rework the content so that it can be used on the site (which they don’t have time for) and to source new pictures by hiring a photographer or buying stock images (which they don’t have the money for). So in this scenario it takes a lot longer to build a website than it really should.
What You Can Do When Building A Website
The lesson? First, make sure that you have a concrete plan for how you are going to create and source the content for the website, including images. If you are going to do it yourself, please allocate adequate time to do it right. Second, make sure that you leave some time to provide us with feedback when it’s required. If we send you previews of the home page and it takes you a week to get back to us, your project comes to a grinding halt during that time, extending the timeline to build a website. You can accelerate the process tremendously by providing feedback within 24 hours.
In Conclusion
So when you average all the web development projects over time, it roughly takes one week to build a website for every $500 spent. But your timeline will largely come down to how well organized and prepared you are. We had one website that took over 18 months to launch because the client disappeared for weeks at a time. On the other end of the spectrum, we launched a $2,500 website in 4 days because the client was on the ball and most attention was on that client for those few days. Hopefully now you understand why your preparation and responsiveness are huge factors in how long it takes to build a website.