"How much?" is the first question. "How long?" is the second, and it gets a vaguer answer than it should. Here are honest ranges, and the one thing that decides whether you hit them.
The ranges
A brochure site of five to ten pages runs three to five weeks from signed brief to launch. A custom build or an online store with real design work and integrations runs six to twelve weeks. A platform — bookings, accounts, anything with logic behind it — starts at twelve weeks and grows with scope. Those are working weeks, and they assume the project does not stop.
What actually causes the delay
- Content. Not design, not code. Waiting for copy, product photos and staff bios is the single biggest cause of overrun on small projects.
- Sign-off gaps. A design that waits four days for a decision has added four days. Multiply that across six stages.
- Integrations you did not mention. A CRM, a booking engine or a stock system named in week five is a new project, not a small change.
- Approval by committee. Every extra decision-maker adds time, and it compounds rather than adds.
How to make it faster
Have the content ready, or pay someone to write it as part of the build. Name one decision-maker. List every system the site must talk to before the quote, not after. Projects where the client supplies material on time finish roughly two to three weeks sooner than ones where we wait — the same build, a different calendar.
What a timeline should look like
Not a single launch date. Stages you can check: discovery signed off, design signed off, build on a staging link you can open, then launch. If a quote gives you one date and nothing in between, you have no way of knowing you are late until you are. That is why our own process is staged. If you have a deadline that matters, say so in the brief — it changes how we scope.