Introduction

Let’s say you’ve just started your business here in South Wales. You’ve printed business cards, and the company vehicles, such as your van, have been signed and written. There’s just one thing missing, yes, that’s right: your company website.

Now, you’re thinking, how long does it take to get a new website designed and built?

Well, you’ve come to the right place to find an answer to that pressing question. We are not new to this game but have built websites for local businesses for over ten years. Our experience puts us in a prime position to offer sound advice on how long it takes to design and build a brochure website.

In this article, you will find ways to help your web designers accelerate the web design process and explain why going cheap rarely pays in the long run.

So, without further ado, let’s examine some factors that dictate the time it takes to design a new website.

Have you got a clear vision?

A clear idea of what you like can make things a piece of cake for your web designers. Some businesses don’t have the foggiest idea, so everything from the colour schemes to how they want the company logo to look must be discussed in long meetings.
Yet, having a clear idea of what you want can massively accelerate the web design process.

So, to further help you along with your web design journey, here are some of the things you may wish also to consider:

– How many pages do you require to be designed
– Do you require a company blog?
– Do you have a business address you would like added?
– Have you already got a company logo designed?
– Have you got a colour scheme in mind?
– Who’s going to be writing the content marketing

Who’s going to be hosting the website?

Most web designers, including our web design agency, can offer you a low cost for hosting the website. However, not all web design companies are so fair. Sometimes, the monthly fee to host the website can be very high.

So you must consider this: if it’s going to cost £500+ per year to host the website with that web design company, do you want to use them?
You need to carefully consider this from the outset simply because many businesses choose web design agencies based on the website’s cost. Rarely do companies consider ongoing expenses, such as domain name renewal and hosting costs. For some businesses, these costs can be chicken feed, which is nothing worth worrying about.

Some other businesses’ hosting costs could be high. When you add up the hosting cost over the years, you have the website with them; you could be talking thousands of pounds.

So, to cut a long story short, consider the hosting and ongoing maintenance costs with that web design agency—if they are too high, go elsewhere.

Who’s going to be writing all of the text?

Thousands of words sometimes need to be written for a new website, such as an e-commerce website, which can take considerable time.
So, you have to ask yourself, will you have the time to write all of this text?
As this article discusses how long it takes to get a website designed, hiring copywriters can help save a lot of time. Often, a large digital marketing agency will have copywriters who can write all the text. This means you save considerable time and can concentrate on other aspects of running your business.

Therefore, a copywriter can work with the web developers. They will know about each page’s layout (or at least they should), and then, like busy bees, they can get to write the work.

First, before any copywriter starts drinking copious amounts of espresso and is set to work on writing everything from product descriptions to your new about us page, you will need a meeting with your copywriters. This is to discuss things like “tone of voice”—does your business want to sound professional yet funny? Or do you want to come across as a severe company? This is why we urge you to meet with your copywriters to discuss this.

Copywriters can help you save a considerable amount of time.

So, in a nutshell, if you’re in a mad rush to get your website designed, fully built, and live so your customers can start visiting it, then we would recommend hiring copywriters. The reason we say this is that some business owners say, yeah, no worries, I will write all the text, save a few quid, yet they then quickly learn that it takes up a considerable amount of time and can sometimes set back the website going live for many, many weeks. So, if you take nothing else away from this article, think about hiring a copywriter.

Talk to your friends in business.
You might be scratching your head right now, thinking, what have my friends, who are also in business, about getting a new website designed?

Well, we shall elaborate…. So, hold your horses!

Businesses up and down the glorious land we call Great Britain, our home, get talked into content management systems, CMS for short, which can sometimes be rubbish.

The CMS maybe like a 1.0 car—great if you want little performance. Yet, if you wish for actual performance, you don’t go for a small-engine petrol car, do you?

Nope, you go for a roaring 3.0 turbo or naturally aspirated if you don’t like turbo lag.
So, what’s the point we are trying to make? Even we will admit we’re going off track here…..

Well, the point we are trying to make is that you want the CMS you choose to be secure, so as your business grows and changes are needed to the website, you can make those changes; you’re not held back by a rubbish CMS that’s basic, rubbish, and just well naff.
So, this is why we ask businesses, when you’re thinking about making a super cheap CMS website, what CMS is it using? If you have never heard of it, other website designers have never heard of it, or it’s a CMS, the web designers have knocked themselves up. Well, just run and dash.

What you want is a well-known CMS used by millions of businesses. That way, even if you have a falling out with one set of web designers and heated e-mails are exchanged, you can walk away and find new web designers the same day who have experience designing websites using that CMS if it’s a popular CMS.

So we deviate, and you are thinking: What does choosing the suitable CMS have to do with how long it takes to build a website?
As the old saying goes, buy cheap, buy it twice.

Well, this 100% applies to getting a website built for your business. With the amount of rubbish, naf, and low-quality designs, the industry has tried approaching SEO agencies for quotes, and some SEO companies won’t even work on the website. It’s that rubbish.
So, pick a website content management system that’s widely used.

Take inspiration from your competitors.

Even the simplest of websites will need a main menu, a mobile version of the website, and a page layout for each page. When you think of a large e-commerce website, there’s a considerable amount to consider.

So, if you sit down with your web designers and say, well, I like how this competitor has designed their main menu. I like how the footer on this competitor’s website looks in terms of their Instagram feed; I like the page layout of this competitor; well, this is all food for thought.
Just like one giant puzzle, where once it looked like all the pieces were scattered, well, they can all start coming together, and your web designers, web developers, copywriters, and, of course, you can start to piece all of this together to make a new design yet incorporate aspects of our websites you like.

Of course, just to be clear here, we are not talking about copying any competitor’s website because they don’t do that, and it’s likely to get their lawyers contacting the website owner. Your new website needs to look different. We are talking about getting some design ideas.

Hi, yes, sorry, I forgot to mention this page. I need to be added…

As web designers who have been around the block (for those who don’t know, that means been around a bit), we often find that customers forget about an extra page they need added.

So, for example, let’s say you’re a solicitor. You’ve been working for a giant law firm for years, and now you’re setting up on your own. Well, it’s not uncommon for you to think, “O, no.” At 1 a.m., you might think,” I forgot to mention to the web designers that I need an added page for employment law or something along those lines.

So it sounds basic, but trust us, you need to do two things. One, check your direct competitors’ websites. How have they set out the pages?

How have they separated their primary services?
If you want to improve the SEO for these services, later on, have each set out on their page.

Then, sketch the main menu on paper, with the most critical services at the top and the least essential services moving down.

Now, a word to the wise, and listen up. This is a crucial piece of advice; you may thank us later. Set each leading service you offer on its page, then ask your web designers to add essential on-page SEO elements, such as page titles, internal links, H1-H6 titles, meta titles, and meta descriptions for each page. This will improve your SEO and make it easier to improve it later on.

Some move fast, some move slow, and the road is long, so choose quality

A website is unlike a soft drink; you pick it up, quickly devour it, and then drop it in the bin once it is done. A website needs to last, well, at least for a good few years. So please don’t go cheap; don’t pick a website designer who promises to design a website in the blink of an eye and then be disappointed with the masterpiece they have created.

The road is long…

Pick a web design company that doesn’t rush yet doesn’t move at a snail’s pace; you want quality. This often doesn’t come cheap, but if you’re serious about improving your company’s search engine optimisation later on, well, you need a quality website designed at the start. So, this means no copying and pasting anyone else’s text.