“How long will it take?” is usually the second question people ask, right after “how much will it cost?” And like the cost question, the honest answer is: it depends on what you’re building. But here’s a realistic breakdown:
[IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: A simple horizontal timeline graphic showing the phases below, with rough day/week ranges under each]
The quick-answer version
- Simple site (5-8 pages, no custom features): 1 to 3 weeks
- Standard business website: 3 to 6 weeks
- Online store (WooCommerce): 4 to 10 weeks
- Larger or highly custom site: 2 to 4+ months
Those ranges assume things move reasonably smoothly. What usually stretches them is content, feedback delays, and scope changes.
What actually happens during that time
Planning (a few days to a week). Figuring out what pages you need, what the site should actually accomplish, and how it should look.
Design (roughly 1 to 2 weeks). Either picking and customizing a theme, or designing custom layouts if you want something more distinct. This is usually where you’ll go back and forth a couple of times on colors, layout, and overall feel.
Development (1 to 4+ weeks, depending on complexity). The actual building; setting up WordPress, installing and configuring plugins, building out pages, connecting forms, setting up the store. This is where the bulk of the timeline lives for anything beyond a very simple site.
Content (can happen alongside development, but often the real bottleneck). Someone has to write the actual text and gather the actual images. This sounds simple and is often the slowest part of the project, not because it’s technically hard, but because it tends to get low priority of everyone’s to-do list.
Testing and launch (a few days to a week). Checking that everything works on phones, that forms actually send emails, that pages load quickly, and fixing anything that’s off before it goes live.
[IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: Icon row showing the five phases — planning, design, development, content, launch — as simple connected steps]
What slows things down
Most delays have very little to do with WordPress itself. In practice, the biggest timeline-killers are:
- Waiting on content. A developer can build a beautiful page in an hour. Writing genuinely good copy for it can take a business owner weeks, especially if it keeps getting bumped for more urgent things.
- Slow feedback loops. If a design review sits in someone’s inbox for a week before they respond, that week gets added straight onto the timeline, every time.
- Changing scope mid-project. Adding “Can we also add a booking system?” three weeks in is a completely normal thing but it’s going to add real time, and it’s better to flag it early than midway through.
None of that means the process is unpredictable, it just means the website part of the timeline is usually the reliable part, but it can be some variables that may appear along the way
How to actually keep it fast?
If you want your project to land on the shorter end of these ranges: have your content (or at least a solid draft of it) ready before development starts, respond to review requests within a day or two rather than letting them sit, and lock in the scope early.
If you’re planning a build and want a realistic timeline for your specific project rather than a generic range, that’s a normal thing to ask about upfront, we’re happy to give you a straight answer before you commit to anything.