A business is incomplete without a website. A website is not only the status symbol for a business but it also makes the business easily accessible to its potential users.

How Long does it Take to Build a Website?

Naturally, every business owner wants a piece of the pie that is the internet, but an important question arises, “how long will it take to build a website?” We can never expect an actual amount of time which can be spent to build a website. Thus, the time taken to build a website is directly proportional to the quality of the website.

Factors Which Can Affect the Time to Build a Website

There are websites which can be created in a day and also there are numerous websites which may require a couple of months to build. It all depends on quality, functionality, and aesthetics.

There are numerous factors which can affect the time required to build a website. The most common factors are as follows

• Website requirements
• Type of website
• Design of the website
• Services you are going to provide via your website
• Testing and launching of your website
• The platform on which your website would run
• Which web developer you are going to hire
• Website links to a back-end server

Requirements For Your Website

Major Web development projects may take several years to complete. Also, you’ll see many other organizations which can offer you, that they can build your website in just a week. It might be true but your website will not be of that good quality you’re seeking for.

You need to research on your own, what are the requirements you’ll need to fulfill to build a website? The more time you take to fulfill that requirement, more time it will take to start building your website.

Type of website you want to build

There are different types of website you can build. If you’re building a gaming website you’ll need more time. If you’re building a blog writing website, it would probably take less time. Also if you want to create an enormous online e-commerce website that would probably take more than a year to build. You need to have a clear idea and decide what type of website you want. A website like Facebook which is a social networking site took approximately 1-2 years to build and run in the demo phase and still it is developing.

Flipkart which is an online shopping e-commerce website took almost 14-16 months to run and it is still continuously growing.

There are various sites which can run just in a couple of months but still, it will take a huge amount of time to get it growing. As the customer’s feedback and needs of improvement a website are continuously built and updated regularly.

Designing of the website

This factor is the important aspect which can affect your building time to a huge extent. The design of the website is the main concern for every business. The design should be appealing and creative which suddenly needs more time and creativity to build.

The designers spent their time and thoughts to come up with a suitable design for the company. Hence it can still take at least 1 week to come up with an idea to design an attractive website and to build it; a web designer might take another 1-2 weeks.

Services you are going to provide via the website

Time consumption to build a website also depends on the services you are going to create which will help the consumers. Services like creating a profile, creating a notification for news or sending messages over the internet or any other service.

If you want to create a service in which users can create their account and send emails and chats to other users, It will take a long time to create a website which will be end-to-end encrypted.

This type of coding generally takes approximately 4-5 months to become effective. Other services in which you are providing the information about something might take less time to build such as an article or content writing blogs. This website generally needs a content which can hardly take less than 4-5 hours. So if you want to build blog writing website you can run it in just a couple of months.

Testing and launching of your website

If your website is completed in the expected time frame, do not think you’ve successfully built the website. A successful website is free from any errors or bugs. Thus the big issues lie in the testing of your website. Is your website fully functioning and responding accordingly? Or the services you have created for the users are properly working or not?

There might be errors or bugs in your website which can hold the completion of your successful website. If your website is completed but contains errors and bugs, do you think the project has finished? Removal of the error and going through all the coding will take a huge amount of time before you can call your website complete.

To properly test your website it will need approx 8-9 weeks to have feedbacks and improvements. After successful test without any errors, you can state your website as completed.

Different platforms for your website

If you want to build a website which can easily run on different platforms, it would probably take a few tests and code to perfectly run on different platforms like Windows, MAC or Android web browsers.

The estimated time is still expected to be 1 month to make a better version which can runs smoothly on phone or laptops.

Linking your website to a backend server

Linking your site with the backend server needs a little amount of time and tests. Approx 1-2 week would be needed for proper functioning of a back-end server in the website. The database which has to be stored in the server goes through the website itself.

If you want users to create an account in your website, the account details will be saved to the back-end server. This process needs to be properly functioning and hence running several tests might take 2-3 weeks.

Should I Hire freelancers or a web development company?

Both have their own perks and disadvantages. But, if we think about the reliability factor, Web Development Company has more weight age.

Their main advantages include,

• They already have a fully functional and strategically formed team
• They might use the same development methodology and tools used by a freelancer but it will be more effective, will be on time and within the budget as they have experienced personnel who can expertly calculate the entire process.
• The entire web development process can be summarized into planning, development, user experience (UX) design, user interface (UI) design, testing, launch, Ongoing maintenance, and support.

Imagine you have to hire experts in every aspect of web development. It would be a herculean task to coordinate everything. When it comes to a web development company, such issues will never surface.

• WordPress is great but it tends to be poor when it comes to maintenance and in accordance with the size of the website. An experienced web development company will have robust frameworks which can help in the creation of a stable website.
• Custom packages, they are a relief for people who are concerned about budget. Freelancers might not be able in the luxury to offer that.
• Project management is the key to the successful deployment of a website. When the project tend to be complex, web development companies will be able to help effectively than that of a freelancer

There are other factors which can affect the time to build a website. If we took an estimation of these factors and contributes to a single conclusion, the time would be different for different websites. If you’re still looking for a simple number here is an approx estimation of time to build a website of different types.

• Beginner Websites: Generally the beginner website comprises of blogs or information provider. To build this type of website it would take at least 2 weeks to build and run smoothly.
• Intermediate websites: This websites consist of information and links to different web applications. This website requires multiple frames and multiple web pages in the website. It would take approximately 12-13 weeks to build this type of website.
• Professional websites: This websites includes many back-end servers and are mostly used among the business. Websites like Facebook, Twitter or Google are such websites which use many backend servers and network. To build a website which contains several servers and networks would take approximately 6-13 months.

For general considerations, it takes 2-3 weeks for discovering the idea, 3-4 weeks for design, 3 weeks for the revision, 9-12 weeks for the development, 7-8 weeks for testing and modification and the final launch of a typical website (approximately 7 months).