How long does it take to design and build a business website?

Websites are almost never late because of design. They are late because nobody wrote the About page, or because the person who can approve the homepage was on holiday during review week.

The ranges first, since that is what you came for. A landing page: one to three weeks. A standard marketing site of six to twelve pages: six to twelve weeks. A larger custom site, a store, or a product interface with logged-in areas: three to six months. Brand and website together: four to six months and up. Those hold when questions get answered in days rather than weeks, and when the scope agreed at the start is the scope you build.

• Landing or campaign page: 1–3 weeks.
• Standard marketing site, 6–12 pages: 6–12 weeks.
• Custom site, e-commerce or product interface: 3–6 months.
• Combined brand identity and website: 4–6 months or more.

Six things move the number

The count of unique page templates — ten pages sharing three layouts is quick, ten pages each needing their own is not. Whether the design is custom or sits on an existing system. Content readiness, which is nearly always the real bottleneck. Integrations, since a payment provider or a CRM each add a testing cycle. The number of stakeholders and review rounds. And scope change, the quiet killer of every date anyone agreed to.

Only two of those six sit on the studio's side of the table. The rest are decisions and materials that come from you. That is why the same team delivers one site in eight weeks and another in five months, with no difference in effort.

Where the weeks actually go

For a standard marketing site, the phases break down roughly like this — and content population is the one that reliably overruns its slot.

• Discovery and planning: 1–2 weeks.
• Design, wireframes through final layouts: 2–4 weeks.
• Build: 2–4 weeks.
• Content population: 1–3 weeks, usually overlapping the build.
• QA and cross-device testing: about a week.
• Launch and handover: 2–3 days.

We run discovery, design and build as connected phases rather than three handoffs, which removes the gaps where projects typically lose a fortnight — that is how our web and product design is structured. Even then, phases only hold when the inputs arrive.

How to actually make it faster

You cannot compress design much. You can remove the waiting around it, which is the larger share anyway. Three moves do most of the work: have the content ready before design starts, not after. Name one decision-maker who can approve without convening a committee. Agree scope in writing and treat every addition as a conscious trade rather than a free extra.

And batch the feedback. Ten comments across ten emails cost far more than one consolidated review, because every round carries its own turnaround. Decide who is in the review, give them a deadline, send one response.