Introduction
It’s the question our web design business is asked the most frequently: How long will it take you to design a new website?
When purchasing services or products from a company, the customer will want a straight answer about how long it will take to deliver the goods or complete the work.
Things are slightly different when designing a website because every website is slightly different in terms of its design.
What we mean by that is you must consider what functionality is needed. If it’s a straightforward brochure site, then this is the “bread and butter” of most web design agencies, and it is usually designed in less than three months.
However, if the brochure website is highly intricate and has a lot of functionality, it can often take much longer to build.
Visualising the concept
First, the client must understand how they want the website to be designed clearly. If they don’t, they may require multiple brainstorming sessions, and the web designers will need to spend much time with them to work out their preferences regarding what they like and don’t.
– For example, how the company logo will look
– Who’s going to write the text
– Page layout
– Which colour schemes will be used
If a client has an obvious idea of what they want, this can often be designed much quicker.
Alternatively, sometimes a business will have direct competitors and want some of the same functionality as their competitor’s websites, such as the same page layout and type of main navigation in the mobile and main menu. This can help the web designer understand what the client wants.
Which CMS do you want to use? Drupal, Joomla or, say, WordPress?
CMS is like the engine that runs the website. It powers your website and makes it work, just as a car engine provides power to the vehicle. There are many different content management systems, including Drupal and WordPress, which are some of the most popular CMSs in the world.
Writing the content marketing
This is often what takes the most time. Usually, the customer will insist that they write the text; thus, the client needs to write the copy for every page. However, even on a straightforward brochure website for a coffee shop, you could still end up writing over 3000 words.
Sometimes, the business owner gets sidetracked by the million-and-one other tasks running their business and puts writing the content on the back burner. So, to save you time, we recommend paying for a copywriter to do this work.
How long would it take a professional web developer to build the website?
The best way to work this out is to determine how many pages are needed. If it’s a, say, 8-page website, we can normally complete it in less than three months.
Then there’s the actual time of finding the web designer
There are a ton of web designers here in Cardiff. If you walk into most coffee shops within the city centre, you will likely find many web designers there beavering away designing websites in most coffee shops.
Then, large web design agencies are based in the city centre and Cardiff Bay. However, finding the company in the first place can actually add time to the web design process for most businesses. Therefore, to help you save time, you might want to ask friends in the company who designed their website, or if you like a competitor’s website, look in the footer to see who created it.
Contact us today for a free web design quote.