How long does it take to build a website?
Tech Warrior gets asked a host of questions from potential customers, friends and people interested in wanting to learn more about websites. One of the more frequent questions the Tech Warrior team gets asked is, "How long does it take to build a website?"
While people want a definitive, time-based answer it isn’t always possible. In almost all cases, there are things which a web developer needs in order to complete the build on a website.
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Website agreement or contract
First and foremost, an agreement needs to be reached between the service provider, in this case Tech Warrior, and the client. This agreement outlines the type of product or service the customer is purchasing. In the case of Tech Warrior, the agreement is primarily about the type of Small Business Websites package that is chosen and whether it is a new website or a takeover and redo of an old website.
Website deposit
Before any work can commence a deposit is required to be paid by the client. This is done as a way of solidifying the agreement between the parties. How long this step takes is completely dependent on the customer – if the customer pays the deposit shortly after the agreement "phase", work can commence almost immediately. Provided the content has been supplied, of course.
Content for the website
Content is something many web developers struggle to get and can delay the website project. In most cases the previous two phases take place rapidly without delay. However, getting client content, be it media or text, often takes the longest amount of time; the adage hurry up and wait comes to mind!
A logo is a must. It guides the colour and font choices. No logo, no website. Tech Warrior offers logo design services but the client can use anyone. The design of a logo could delay building the website.
Once again, the length of time it takes a customer to deliver the balance of the content will impact how long the website building process takes. If content is not delivered all at one time, delays will occur while waiting for the required photos, text, quotes, etc.
In an effort to combat lengthy wait times, Tech Warrior has developed an online scope document which clients populate with their content. All the content must be provided before development work can start. In this way Tech Warrior is able to guide the client to generate the best content for their website.
While the client is compiling the content, Tech Warrior generates colour palettes based on the client's logo. Various inspirational images and colours that resonate well with the client are taken into consideration. The choice of the colour palette will determine the colour scheme of the website. No work can start until this choice has been made either.
Website structure or skeleton
There are numerous ways to develop or build a website, one of the original ways is hardcoding or programming. This is when someone experienced in programming sits and writes out lines and lines and lines of code… Tech Warrior decided this wasn’t something we wanted to do.
At Tech Warrior we build all our websites using WordPress, the most widely used website and blog builder on the Internet. WordPress on its own isn’t as powerful or customizable as some of the others out there. Tech Warrior also uses Beaver Builder which allows us to use the skeleton site structure that comes with WordPress and we can add in all those nifty floating images, slideshows, moving galleries and responsive hover effects. All of which takes a quarter of the time it takes to hard code a site. Plus Beaver Builder is also rock-solid and backed by a great team of developers.
Website customisation
While it doesn’t take us as long to build a site compared to hardcoding or other ways of building a website, it does mean that you get a website that has a similar structure to other sites, the website is not custom designed from the ground up.
As mentioned previously, Tech Warrior strives to deliver websites as fast as possible. 25 years of designing and building websites has taught us what works. We have developed a core website structure and together with our customers we customise this core website to fit their business and brand. The media and written content is then added making the site effectively complete.
The upside to this approach is you aren’t a guinea pig for the latest web fad or design trend. Plus it is better value for money. A comparable website will usually cost two or three times as much. This type of strategy enables us to get a website up and running in much less time - provided we have all the content, that is!
So how long does it take to build a website?
To develop a new website through Tech Warrior can take anywhere from one week to a month to complete. Because content delivery can be the handbrake to delivering a website quickly, Tech Warrior has made it as easy as possible to provide the required content quickly and effortlessly which helps speed up the development process and gives the client a quality, mobile friendly website in no time.
