Small business2 min read
What to prepare before your website gets built
Gather these seven things first and your project will not slip.
A one-page site takes about a week, a starter site one to two weeks, and a custom design and build four to nine weeks. The most common cause of delay is content — photos and words that were not ready — followed by slow review rounds. Development itself is rarely the bottleneck.
| Type | Timeline | Your time needed |
|---|---|---|
| One-page site | About 1 week | About 2 hours |
| Starter site, 4–6 pages | 1–2 weeks | 2–3 hours |
| Custom design, small | 4–6 weeks | 5–8 hours |
| Custom design, larger | 6–9 weeks | 8–15 hours |
| Online shop | 4–14 weeks | 10–30 hours |
| Web application | 6–16 weeks | 20+ hours |
These assume content is ready and you respond to reviews within a couple of days. Both assumptions are frequently wrong, which is why projects slip.
| Cause | How common |
|---|---|
| Content not ready | Very common |
| Slow review and approval | Very common |
| Too many people with opinions | Common |
| Scope added mid-project | Common |
| Waiting on a third party | Occasional |
| Actual development problems | Rare |
A basic one-page site from a template, yes, if all the content is ready. Anything genuinely custom cannot be, and anyone promising it is either using a template or cutting corners.
Most of that is decisions and review, not building. Design rounds, feedback, revisions and content approval take real calendar time even when everyone moves quickly.
Say so before you commit. A good developer will tell you honestly whether it is achievable and what would have to be cut. A launch date given after the project starts is much harder to hit.
Yes, and it is often sensible. Launch the essential pages, then add the rest. It gets you online sooner and spreads the content work over more time.
Harshal Patel
Founder & Lead Engineer, ROVQIX
Harshal leads engineering at ROVQIX, where he has shipped production Next.js, Node.js and PostgreSQL systems for startups, SaaS teams and ecommerce brands. He writes about the trade-offs behind architecture decisions rather than the framework of the week.
ROVQIXdesigns and builds production web platforms — Next.js front ends, Node.js APIs and the infrastructure behind them. Tell us what you're building and we'll scope it with you.
Gather these seven things first and your project will not slip.
Scope creep rarely arrives as one big change. It arrives as twenty small ones nobody priced.
They do different jobs. The risk is building only on land you do not own.
No spam. Just the occasional case study and craft breakdown.