---
title: "How long a website takes to build, and what moves the deadline"
canonical: "https://en.prostor-agency.com/blog/website-timeline-what-moves-it"
summary: "Where the weeks actually go on a marketing or property website, which stages cannot be compressed, and the three client-side habits that push launch dates back."
publishedAt: "2026-10-12"
---

## Why "how long will it take" is the wrong opening question

A number on its own tells you nothing. The same "site in a month" can mean a template
with swapped photos or a landing page built around your own argument. The useful
question is what the number is made of — that is where you see whether a deadline is
real or a sales answer that will slip in week two.

We quote by stage, and each stage has a floor below which work does not speed up,
it just gets worse.

## Where the weeks go

**Structure and wireframes — one to two weeks.** This is where you decide what a
visitor sees and in what order they get the argument. It is the cheapest stage to
change and the most expensive to get wrong: moving a block on a wireframe takes
minutes, moving the same block after build takes a day.

**Design — two to four weeks.** Driven by the number of distinct screens, not the
number of pages. A two-hundred-item catalogue is two layouts, not two hundred. A
landing page with seven unlike sections is seven separate decisions.

**Build — from a week and a half.** Markup, assembly, forms, analytics. The number
grows with integrations: every external system means agreeing a format, getting
credentials and handling the case where it goes quiet. Why we build on code rather
than a builder is covered in [Next.js versus website builders](/blog/nextjs-vs-website-builders).

**Content — parallel, but not free.** Copy, photography, specifications. On paper it
runs alongside design. In practice it is the single most common reason a project
stalls: the layouts are ready and there is nothing to put in them.

## What actually moves the date

In our projects deadlines are rarely lost in design or build. They are lost in three
places, all of them on the organisation side.

**Diffuse sign-off.** When five people review a layout and each sends notes
separately, every review round doubles. The working arrangement is one owner who
collects opinions internally and brings back a single decision.

**"We'll send the content later."** The most common cause of dead time. We put the
required materials and their due dates into the brief up front. If the substance is
not there, moving the start is more honest than designing around placeholders and
redoing it later.

**Late scope changes.** Adding a section during design costs days. Adding the same
section after build costs a week, because everything around it has to be reassembled.
That is not a contractor being difficult; it is how the work stacks.

## The quiet time sinks

Three things eat weeks without anyone noticing until the end.

**Credentials.** Domain, hosting, mail, CRM, inventory system — each has an owner,
and the owner is rarely in the thread on day one. Requesting access belongs in week
one of the plan, not the week it is needed.

**Legal copy.** Privacy policy, terms, company details. Half a page of text and a
lawyer with their own queue. The site cannot go live without it, and it is regularly
the last open item.

**Photography.** A shoot has its own schedule: the location, the weather, the people,
the retouching. If the project depends on original images, book the date at the start,
not when the layouts are waiting.

## Rough figures

- **Single-project or product landing page** — four to five weeks.
- **Corporate or manufacturer site** — six to eight weeks.
- **Online store** — from eight weeks, then it depends on catalogue and integrations.
- **Property sales site with unit selection** — from ten weeks, and most of it is data.

These assume the substance is ready and one person on your side can decide. We fix
the estimate and the date before we start: if our own estimate slips, that is our
problem, not a reason to invoice more.

## Three questions for any contractor

Ask what stages the number is made of, what has to be ready on your side and by when,
and what happens to the date if your feedback arrives a week late. A clear answer to
the third question is what separates a plan from a promise.