How Long Does a Website Take to Build? Honest Timelines by Type
From same-day templates to six-week custom builds: the honest stage-by-stage timeline, what makes builds faster, and the one thing that delays almost every project.
How long between “yes, build it” and a live website? 2 to 6 weeks for a proper custom build: roughly 2-3 for a focused starter site, 4-6 for a full multi-page job. Same-day sites exist; they are templates with your logo dropped in. And the real schedule risk is never the design, it is a bottleneck you control, which is exactly why we tell you about it before you hire anyone.
The stage-by-stage timeline
| Stage | Typical time | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery + plan | 2-4 days | Your goals, services, areas, keyword map, page list |
| Design | 1-2 weeks | The look, mobile-first, built around your best work |
| Build | 1-2 weeks | Hand-coding, content in, speed tuning |
| Review + revisions | 3-7 days | Your feedback rounds (2-3 included with us) |
| Launch | 1-2 days | Domain, hosting, redirects, Google submission |
The delay that eats most projects: content
The single biggest cause of a six-week build becoming a six-month build is waiting on photos and words. The fix is deciding up front who produces what. With us, if you have content ready you save time and money; if not, we write it and guide the photos, which adds days, not months. Either way the decision happens in week one, not week five.
What makes a build faster (without making it worse)
- A clear page list from day one. Ours comes out of the keyword map: the pages a tradie site needs.
- One decision-maker on your side. Committees double timelines.
- Real examples you like. “Like this, but us” beats three rounds of guessing. Browse the portfolio before the first call.
- Photos taken this decade. Even phone photos of real jobs beat stock. (How to shoot them.)
Timelines by option
For context across the whole market: a DIY builder is live in a weekend and looks like it; a cheap template freelancer takes about a week; our custom builds run the 2-6 weeks above; big-agency projects routinely run 3-6 months for comparable output. Cost comparison for the same options: what websites cost in Cairns.
Need something live sooner?
If the diary is empty and you cannot wait six weeks, two honest options: Google Ads can point at a simple landing page within days, and TradeProof includes a fast 5-page starter site as part of the monthly plan while a custom build comes later. What we do not recommend is rushing the real build, the corners you cut in week two show up in your rankings for years.
The one thing to do before talking to any designer: gather your photos, service list and the story of five recent jobs into one folder. Content is the bottleneck on every build, and arriving with it ready shaves weeks off whoever you hire, including if that ends up being yourself.