How long does it take to build a website? Typical timelines

Anyone planning a new website usually has a date in mind already: the opening in spring, the trade fair in autumn, the start of the winter season. So how long does it take to build a website? "It depends" is not a useful answer.

Technology is rarely the bottleneck; the timeline is mostly set by the content. Below you'll find our typical timeframes in weeks, the steps of a project and the waiting times after go-live.

How long does a website project take?

We allow four to six weeks for a straightforward company website, counted from the kick-off meeting. Smaller projects are often finished in two to three weeks.

The row with a shop or booking system is simple arithmetic: two to four weeks are added to the website because payments and bookings need testing before launch. Four to six weeks become six to ten.

The ranges are wide because the number of pages alone doesn't determine the timeline. An eight-page website with the copy ready is finished sooner than a four-page one where nobody knows yet what should go on it.

For comparison: building it yourself with a website builder takes 23 to 44 working hours for a usable result. Those hours have to fit around day-to-day business. More on that in Build a website yourself or hire an agency?

What are the steps of a website project?

We work in five steps, always in this order.

Strategy. Goals, target audience and site structure: which pages are needed, what goes on each one, and who should the website reach? This is the most important step. Anything left open here comes back later as a change, and changes to a finished build take more effort than changes to a plan.

Content. Copy and images are gathered or written, along with rules for colours and fonts so everything looks consistent.

Design. Structure and content turn into the page layout, on a computer and on a phone.

Development. The website is built, and the contact form, legal notice and privacy policy are set up.

SEO and go-live. Before launch, everything is checked against a checklist, including the basics for being found on Google. You go through everything at your own pace, and your feedback is implemented. Only once you approve it is the website published under your domain, with a short introduction so you can edit content yourself.

What do you need to provide for a new website?

Mainly content and access: your services, your contact details, access to your domain and the details for the legal notice. What matters is that everything is ready at the start, not halfway through development.

Services and audience: a list of your services and an idea of who you want to reach.

Examples: two or three websites you like and two or three you don't. That often says more about your taste than a long description.

Domain: access to your domain. A .ch domain is always registered through a registrar, an accredited provider, never directly with Switch (Switch). The registrar holds the login and, if you want to move, the transfer code.

Legal: the details for the legal notice and privacy policy, such as company name, address and which data the website collects.

If you have them: logo, photos and existing copy.

You don't have to write the copy yourself. If you have no time for it, you can have it written. That costs more but saves the weeks in which a project waits for content.

What delays a website project?

Rarely the technology. Usually missing content and slow coordination.

Copy. It's the largest item. If you build the site yourself, the copy alone takes 8 to 15 hours. If it isn't ready at the start, the whole project waits for it.

Approvals. When three people have a say and each sends feedback separately, rounds of revisions drag on. It works better when one person decides and collects all the feedback.

Domain access. Sometimes it's unclear which provider holds the domain or who has the login. That can be sorted out, but better in week one than the day before go-live.

Images and their rights. You can't simply take photos from the internet. Since 1 April 2020, even everyday photos without individual character have been protected by copyright in Switzerland. Anyone wanting to use someone else's photos generally needs the photographer's permission (Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property, as of September 2026). So plan your own photo shoot early.

This article is not legal advice.

How long does it take to build an online shop?

Three to four weeks for a lean Shopify shop with few products. Eight to twelve weeks if custom design, a larger product range or an inventory system integration is added.

Product data is the biggest time factor. Every product needs images, a description and often variants such as size or colour. With twenty products that's manageable; with several hundred it becomes a task of its own.

If the shop is added to a company website, allow two to four weeks more than for the website alone. The first real order should only come in once payment, shipping rules and order confirmation have been tested.

What a shop costs is covered in How much does an online shop cost in Switzerland?

Our e-commerce website page covers the details of our services.

When is the website online and findable on Google?

It's online within an hour, Google takes days to weeks, and good rankings take months.

Online. According to Switch, a new .ch domain is reachable at most one hour after the name servers are entered. Name servers are the servers that tell the internet where a domain points. If an existing domain moves to another provider and gets new name servers, it can take a few hours or even days, depending on the previous configuration.

On Google. Google first has to discover and crawl the new page, meaning its program fetches and reads it. According to Google, crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, and a crawl request doesn't guarantee inclusion in search results (Google Search Central).

Visible. Being indexed doesn't mean ranking well. Technical improvements often show first effects after four to eight weeks. For content and links it usually takes three to six months before rankings shift noticeably.

How Google finds and assesses websites is explained in How does Google find a website?

How to get your website finished sooner

Four things you can do before the project even starts:

1. List your services. Bullet points are enough; the wording comes later.
2. Name one person for decisions. They collect all feedback and pass it on in one batch.
3. Sort out domain access. Which provider holds the domain, and who has the login?
4. Plan backwards. Work with the upper limit plus two weeks of buffer: eight weeks for a company website, fourteen weeks for a shop with custom design. If a joinery's new website needs to go live on 1 March, for example, the kick-off meeting should take place eight weeks earlier, so by early January at the latest.

How long your project will take and what it will cost can be clarified in a short conversation. Our services are on the web design page.

The prices to expect are covered in What does a website cost in Switzerland?