How long does it take to build a website?

At Artmil, our average web project takes around 4-6 weeks. We’ve built websites in as little as 4 days, and as long as one year.
We sometimes get calls from business owners who suddenly realize they need a presence on the web, and they’ll ask us if we can build them something in just a few days’ time; maybe they have a potential client meeting, or a funding deal in the works, and need to show the world what they do.
While we do our best to meet all of the deadlines of our clients, building a website is complicated work!
There are both visual and technical considerations to every project. It’s our job to work with the client to figure out not only what the website looks like (a major undertaking all by itself), but also what the website needs to do (capture leads, sell products, inform the public, and so on) — and those technical matters of functionality become another task unto themselves.
The web has seen a major shift in the last few years; with the advent of Responsive design, as well as numerous HTML, CSS, and Javascript frameworks such as Bootstrap, Sass, Angular, Node, and so on, it’s getting ever-so-slightly easier to implement cross-browser compatible technology on a website. (Please check out our blog post on Responsive design and how it’s changing the way we use the internet and search for information.)
With that in mind, the biggest time consideration on our part anymore is making sure that the websites we build not only look good and function well, but that they look good and function well on every possible device. As Responsive Design becomes the norm in the web design industry, our workload has increased due to the demands of building websites that look good on all devices. We used to design for desktop devices only, but now we are a mobile world: 87% of people always have their smartphone at their side, more searches are now taking place on mobile than on desktop computers, and nearly 40% of all website visits now come from mobile devices, among other statistics.
While it’s nearly impossible to test every website we build on every single device a person could possibly have, we use tools that emulate certain screens and devices (since keeping 1,731 devices to test with upstairs here at Artmil isn’t very pragmatic). Spending the time to “tighten the screws” on our websites is critical to us, and we often set aside 10% – 15% of our total website build hours for responsive testing alone.
Not sure if your website is responsive or friendly to mobile devices? Feel free to contact us and we’ll be happy to take a look and give you a free analysis of your site!