How long does it take to build a website, and how much of it lands on you?

How long does it take to build a website is the second question most people ask. The first is what it costs, and we answer that with one fixed number in writing once we know what the site has to do, which is how every website design job here starts. This one is worth answering in public, because the honest answer is not really about us.

Most website builds do not run late because somebody is slow at designing. They run late waiting for the business.

How long does it take to build a website in practice

A build has a handful of stages, and they are not equal.

Working out what the site has to achieve takes a conversation and some thinking. Design takes as long as it takes to get it right, and you see it before it is built. Building the thing is reasonably predictable. Testing, hosting and going live is a known quantity.

Then there is content. Words, photographs, prices where they apply, staff details, the list of what you actually offer, your logo in a usable format, and the logins to whatever already exists. That is the stage that swallows calendars, and it is the only stage that mostly depends on you.

We have seen the same site take five weeks and fifteen weeks with the identical scope. The difference was never the design. It was how quickly the questions came back.

What we actually need from you

Being specific about this is more useful than a timeline, because it lets you see the size of it.

• A couple of proper conversations. Not a form. An actual talk about what the business does, who calls you, and what the site has to make happen. This is the part that decides whether the site is any good.
• Photographs. Yours if you have them, and yours is always better. A charter operator’s real boat beats the best stock photo ever taken. If you do not have them, we will say so early, because arranging photography takes longer than anything else on this list.
• Answers to awkward questions. What makes you different from the operator next door. What you will not do. Which jobs you would rather not be called about. Vague answers here produce a vague website.
• Access to what exists. Domain, hosting, current site, booking system. This one is worth checking before you start, because it is the most common thing that stalls a build, and it is why who owns your domain name is worth knowing in advance rather than discovering mid-project.
• Review time, in one block. Feedback that arrives in three instalments over a fortnight costs more than the same feedback given at once.

What you should not need to do is write the site. Being hopeless at writing about yourself is normal, and it is not your job. We interview you and write the pages, you tell us where we have got it wrong. Knowing your trade is the part nobody else can do.

Why the wet season is the right time

Here is the part specific to this region, and it is worth planning around.

The Whitsundays runs on a season. From roughly April the region fills, and if you are in tourism or hospitality, everything that is not serving customers stops. Ask a charter operator for a photo library in July and you will get it in September.

The quiet months are when this work is genuinely possible. Your time is available, your head is free, and there is no cost to attention spent on the business rather than in it. It also means the site is finished, indexed and settled well before the traffic arrives, which matters because search visibility does not appear the day a site goes live.

A site launched in June is a site fighting for attention during the exact weeks it needed to already be working. A site launched in February has had months to be found. Same build, same effort, completely different outcome, decided only by when it happened.

That is why we plan builds around the trading year rather than around our own queue, and it is the single easiest thing an operator can get right.

What happens after it goes live

Worth saying, because the timeline does not stop at launch. A new site needs its hosting watched, its updates applied and its content kept honest as the business changes. That is ongoing and small, rather than a project, and it is the part that determines whether the site still works in three years or quietly rots. Our website hosting and care exists for exactly that reason.

If you want a realistic timeline for your own build rather than a general one, tell us what the business does and when you need it live. If the answer is that you should wait until the wet and do it properly, we will tell you that too.