How long will it take to build my site? This is one of the questions web designers get asked frequently and the answer to it varies. The reason is that it depends on the site itself, why you need it and your budget.
Being in the business of building websites for clients means coming across this question many times. Since it’s impossible to answer it every time there are some general rules that will help you estimate how long it’ll take to build a website.
There are 5 different factors that influence the duration of web design projects:
- Type of project
- Scope
- Complexity
- Content Marketing strategy
- Stakeholders
Let’s go through each one of them separately and see how they can contribute to increasing or decreasing the number of working hours required for developing your website.
1. Type Of Project
Building an e-commerce website will require more work than creating a simple blog because of its complex nature with lots of pages, categories, products, and so on. Similarly, building a social website with millions of members will be much more demanding than creating a simple online game for 10 people.
The general rule would be the more features your website has – the longer it’ll take to build it. This doesn’t mean that if you have an idea for a really big project you shouldn’t go ahead because it will take longer to develop your site! It simply means that you should remember this fact at the beginning of the project in order not to underestimate the time required to finish everything properly.
2. Scope
Your initial idea for the project is always different from the final one. Sometimes you’ll need to add new features as a result of your business requirements review. It’s very possible that after some time working on the project, you’ll have to redo everything from scratch or change it drastically – because doing things properly “the first time” is not always an option.
3. Complexity
Building an e-commerce website requires knowledge of specialised software like Magento or open-source platforms like Joomla/WordPress while creating it. Other features such as forums, galleries or blogs are also quite easy to implement – but they’ll definitely take some time. Talk to us at web design Sunshine Coast to understand how complex your project is and how long it may take to develop.
4. Content Marketing Strategy
Every business has some sort of content they want to publish on their website – that’s where the actual marketing starts. This can be a very time-consuming process, especially if you run a small company with limited resources. And one important point for website marketing is the optimisation for search engines like Google and go. This optimisation is different for every business and we here at SEO Sunshine Coast would be more than happy to help you with your strategy.
5. Stakeholders
Basically, the more people involved in the project, the longer it will take to get things done. The communication process is very important here – you need to work closely with your client and meet him or her on a regular basis to discuss new requirements, implementations – just any changes in general.
In conclusion, there are multiple parameters influencing how long it will take to build a website – from one business owner to another. Depending on the resources and team available at your disposal, you’ll have more or less work to do in order to get everything done properly and make a successful launch. Keep in mind that following all industry standards when building your site is always the safest option!
