How long does it take to build a website?

Ask five agencies how long a website takes and you will get five different answers, most of them chosen to sound impressive. This is how builds run in practice.

The short answer

A well-run marketing site for a small business typically takes around three weeks from kickoff to launch. A larger site with custom features, integrations or a lot of content can take one to three months. Platforms, portals and web apps are their own category and are scoped individually.

If someone quotes you two days, you are getting a template. If someone quotes you six months for a marketing site, you are paying for their process.

Where the time goes

The surprise for most clients is that design and code are the predictable part. The schedule is usually decided by everything around them.

1. Deciding what the site needs to say

Structure and copy are the real foundation. Which pages exist, what each one is for, and what the words say. Done properly this takes a few days at the start, not a few hours. Skipping it is how sites end up looking finished but converting nobody.

2. Design and sign-off

With structure agreed, design moves quickly. The bottleneck is almost always feedback: how fast decisions come back, and how clearly. This is exactly why every Meko project runs through a client portal where you pin comments directly on the design and approve each stage formally. Feedback that took a week of email tennis happens in an afternoon.

3. The build

For a hand-coded marketing site, the build itself is usually the fastest stage. The design is approved, the content exists, and the work is executing to a known target. This is also where fixed pricing matters: nothing gets built until the design is signed off, so there is no rework loop inflating the timeline.

4. Content, photos and the things nobody owns

The classic project-killer is the "we'll send the photos next week" week that becomes a month. A good process plans for this: draft copy gets written for you so the project never stalls on a blank page, and placeholder assets are swapped late without holding up the build.

What speeds a project up

• One decision-maker. Committees double timelines.
• Fast, specific feedback. "The heading feels weak" is actionable. "Can we see some other options" is a week.
• Content decided early. Even rough bullet points beat waiting for perfect copy. Ten minutes with the project brief builder before you talk to anyone gets most of it out of your head.
• A fixed scope. When the price and scope are agreed before the project starts, there is nothing to renegotiate mid-build.

What a three-week build looks like

Week one: kickoff call, structure, draft copy and design direction. Week two: full design, feedback and formal sign-off in the portal. Week three: the build, your review on a live preview, final fixes, launch.

That is what happens when the decisions are made in the right order and nobody is waiting on anybody.

If you want a timeline for your own project, the pricing page explains how scoping works, or book a call and you will have a date and a fixed price by the end of it.