How long does it take to design a website?

Layn

Member
From start to finish, how long does it take to design a website, including sourcing or creating the images and graphic elements, some articles and anything else associated such as writing the code?
 

rmmfree

New Member
It depends. You can create it from scratch or using an existing framework or template. Also for some people it can be quite easy and straightforward to make cool designs while to others is a really difficult task. The best way to know it is to start with it and learn as much as possible about web design and coding.
 

ulterios

Well-Known Member
Designing a website will never have any kind of exact time frame because there are so many different variables that you have to consider.

How good are a persons coding skills.

What the exact needs of the site are since each site will have different needs, even if they are small differences.

How quickly the person can produce content for the site and the images needed if any.

Does the person know exactly what they want?

You have to account also for any fixes, changes and so-on, which could add different varying amounts of time.



There are just too many variables to give any kind of realistic time frame.

If I am building and designing a small WordPress site with a hand full of articles about a topic/niche that I have knowledge then I can do it in an hour or two, including all the installation needs.

I sometimes build small 3-4 page WordPress sites for domains that I have for sale and I can get one of them finished in 20 minutes or so, from start to finish.

It will always be different for each person.
 

ProfMike

Active Member
That is all going to depend on the website and what you expect to be your content.

It also has a lot to do with the skill level of the people putting the site together.

I have had that conversation with many customers. They tend to go with the lowest bidder, and most of us bid on an hourly rate. Halfway through a project they realize that between site rework and exceeding scope they usually find that they should have based their decision more on experience and less on hourly cost. The rates I charge for my team can be pretty high, but normally we exceed expectations and complete the job correctly - Ahead of Plan. So in the long run it would have saved them money to go with the experience. We would have completed the job on or ahead of schedule and very seldom do we require rework.

For a standard couple of page website, I can put one of those together in a few hours depending upon the content and whether it will be hosting videos or not. If videos are part of the design you will need a couple of additional hours to setup and design the video player. That is of course if the video material has already been prepared.

I have had customer sites that were linked to large databases and the sites were completely dynamic that have taken me and my team months to complete. Much of that time was spent getting the data systems normalized and put together in such a way that they supported the website well. Plus insuring that the security of the site matched or exceeded the requirements of the data that was being stored. Depending upon the type of site, security alone can be a gigantic factor. It all depends on what the expectation is for the website.

Other customers after the initial meeting and story boarding the initial site design, we have completed the site in a weekend. That included preparing all the graphics and images, structuring the site in HTML, designing all the CSS and writing the JavaScript for the site interaction. If the site is merely a presentation of ideas and demonstrations those are not difficult to complete quickly. When you start dealing with customer data and money the whole game changes.

My training site, that I have been running for over 3 years, is still not complete, I am always tweaking the design, improving keywords and descriptions, and especially adding content. My videos that I host take on average 10 to 12 hours to complete a one hour of presentation. I have hundreds of hours of videos on my site, so you can imagine the time involved to put all that together.

So as you can see there is no definitive answer to that question. If I were to meet with you and you spelled out your expectations, sat through a site design meeting, and we defined what you wanted to accomplish with your site, I could give you a pretty good idea as to how long that would take. By the way that is not an offer, I am way too busy. But that is the process a professional web designer will go through with the customer. That meeting usually is conducted over two meetings and depending upon the size of the site can take anywhere from 4 to 8 hours to complete.

I hope this helps,
 

Michael40

New Member
Hi all! It all depends on the degree of site complexity and the used tools. If you create a site of medium complexity and use website builders, for example MotoCMS, you can create a website in one day. If you are creating a corporate website and manually create the code, it may take several months.
 

Dean

Well-Known Member
From start to finish, how long does it take to design a website, including sourcing or creating the images and graphic elements, some articles and anything else associated such as writing the code?
This is not something that you can give a static answer to. It depends on way too many different variables to give an accurate time. Experience, complexity or the wanted website, the given data plus many more variables will determine how long a website takes to design.

Some people can slap together a cheap few page website in less than an hour, some people will need several hours to do the same thing.

It just depends on too many different things to give an accurate time without a lot more detailed information.

Cheers, Dean
 
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