How long does a website take, and what slows it down?

A marketing site with me takes 2–4 weeks from agreement to launch. Bigger projects — a site with a dozen subpages, or a web application — take longer, a month and a half and up. What stretches the timeline is almost never the programming. It is waiting: for copy, for photographs, for an answer to one question.

That is the short answer. Here is what actually happens in that time, and where it usually gets lost.

What happens during those 2–4 weeks

The work runs in four phases that partly overlap:

• Conversation and agreement. What you do, who your customers are, what the site needs to achieve. Out of that comes a page list and a concrete quote.
• Design. The look of the home page and one typical subpage. This is where you look and ask for changes — the best moment for them, because this is when they are cheapest.
• Build. The design becomes a working site: responsive layout on phones, load speed, technical SEO, contact form, sitemap.
• Checks and launch. Testing on phones and browsers, setting up the domain and hosting, submitting to Google.

When someone tells you "ready in three days", one of these phases has been skipped. Usually the design — because the template is already made and only your logo goes in.

What actually slows the work down

The order is nearly always the same:

1. Material. Copy and photographs. This is reason number one and it is far ahead of everything else. A site cannot be finished while nobody knows what it says.
2. Decisions. Which services go on the site, which phone number is the main one, whether prices are listed. Every question waiting for an answer is a day standing still.
3. Endless revisions. Two or three rounds of changes are normal and budgeted for. A seventh round means something was not agreed at the start.
4. Access. A domain registered five years ago, to an email nobody can get into any more. This can take a week, and it has nothing to do with the site.

None of those four things is programming.

What you can prepare in advance

Have this ready before the work starts and everything moves noticeably faster:

• A list of the services you want shown, in order of importance.
• A short piece of text about you or the business — let it be yours, I will polish it.
• Photographs at full resolution, exactly as they came off the camera or phone.
• Exact contact details: address, phone, opening hours, social media links.
• Access to the domain and hosting, if they already exist.
• Three websites you like, and one sentence on why.

That last item sounds trivial and saves the most. It is far easier to hit what you want from an example than from the description "modern and clean".

When the timeline goes past a month

These are the things that genuinely extend the work, and each one is agreed up front:

• More than one language. Bosnian and English is not the same job twice, but it needs its own round of writing and checking.
• A content editing system, so you can change text and images yourself.
• Integrations — online booking, payments, connecting to tools you already use.
• Photography, if the photographs still need taking. That depends on the weather and on schedules as much as on me.
• A mobile app. There you add the time for publishing on the App Store and Google Play, and that part is not under my control.

The deadline we agree at the start is the deadline I plan around. If something slips, you hear it from me the day it happens, not on the last day.

What next

If you need a site by a particular date, tell me the date first — see what I offer, then send me a message with what you do and when you need it by. I reply the same day and tell you honestly whether it is doable.

Frequently asked

Can you work faster if I need it urgently? I can, if the material is ready and answers come back the same day. I do not charge extra for urgency, but without speed on your side mine does not help.

What if I get stuck on the copy? Then I write it, based on our conversation. That is agreed at the start and included in the quote, so there is no surprise in the timeline or the price.