The client sees the finished website. They don’t see the seven stages that led to it. Yet it’s in those stages that it gets decided whether the site will sell or become a digital business card you’d rather not show anyone.
We’ve built hundreds of them. The order is similar every time, even when nobody writes it down. Here it is, so you know what you’re paying for and when it’s realistic to expect results.
1. The conversation and the goal
It all starts with one question: what is this website for? “So the business is online” isn’t enough of an answer. A website might need to sell a service, build trust, collect enquiries, or sometimes all three at once.
This is also when the budget and deadline get agreed. An honest agency will tell you straight that a five-page budget won’t buy an online shop. And that a one-month deadline won’t produce a site with thirty pages and translations.
A quote after a single conversation is a bad sign. A good quote needs at least one follow-up question.
2. Structure and copy
Before anyone opens a design tool, there’s a list of pages and what goes on each one. It’s the most boring stage and the most important. A website with beautiful visuals and empty content looks like a freshly renovated shop with nothing on the shelves.
The structure is usually kept simple: a list of pages, each with three to five blocks of content. Contact, services, about us, case studies, maybe a blog. For a service business that’s usually five to eight pages, and you don’t need more.
The biggest silent deadline killer starts right here. The website sits waiting for copy from the client. We’ve seen projects wait three months for a description of the services, with the design long finished.
3. Visual design
Only now does the designer come in. They get the structure, the copy, the logo, the photos and a visual direction. They prepare the homepage first, then the remaining pages once it’s approved.
There are usually two or three rounds of revisions. Each round takes a few days, because the designer is working on several projects at once. If it’s still not right after the third round, the problem is usually in the brief, not the design. That’s the moment to go back to step one.
Good design starts with the client’s brand: the logo colours, the industry, the character of the business. Bad design starts with “make something nice”.
4. Development
The finished design is turned into a website a browser can open. This is the developer’s job: layout, animations, the mobile version, the contact form.
This is where quality shows. The site has to work on phones, because more than half of visitors come from there. It has to load fast, because every second of delay costs you visitors. It has to work in Safari, Chrome and on an older Android phone, not just on the developer’s monitor.
5. Photos and final content
Photos are a chapter of their own. A week before launch, businesses often discover that their photos from 2014 have the resolution of a postcard. That leaves stock photography, which looks like stock photography. Everyone has seen those shots before.
Your own photos work best: the workshop, the team, your work. Even a well-framed phone photo beats the stock smile of a woman in a headset.
6. Testing
Before launch, someone clicks through every page, on a phone and on a computer. They check links, the form, loading speed, the print version. Tedious work, but it’s what separates a website from a website full of bugs.
At Webomat, an agent does this stage for us: it checks the site at five screen widths, clicks the links and measures speed before showing you the result. A human checks the rest.
7. Launch
The site goes live on the domain, the SSL certificate is connected and redirects are set up from the old addresses. Google traffic moves over to the new URLs, and you get access to the statistics.
And that’s basically it. From idea to launch: three weeks for a small site, up to several months for a large one.
How long each stage really takes
Here are the numbers for a typical business website of five to eight pages, ordered from a freelancer or a small agency:
- Conversation and quote: two days to a week. Most of that time is emails back and forth and waiting for replies, not the conversation itself.
- Structure and copy: three to five working days if the provider writes the copy. Twice as long if you write it yourself, after hours.
- Visual design: a week for the first homepage version, then two to four days per revision round. With three rounds, that’s three calendar weeks.
- Development: one to two weeks for a site without anything exotic. Forms, animations and integrations add days.
- Testing and launch: two to three days.
Total: five to eight calendar weeks, of which maybe half is actual work. The rest is waiting for decisions, content and approvals. That’s normal and doesn’t mean anyone is letting you down. But when you place the order, it’s worth asking: how much of this timeline depends on me?
Who’s responsible for what
At an agency, four or five people usually work on a single website, even though you rarely see more than one:
- The project manager gathers requirements, watches the deadlines and translates between both sides. You’ll notice their absence when every email is answered by a different person and nobody knows the full picture.
- The designer creates the layouts. A good designer will ask more about your customers than about your personal taste.
- The developer turns the design into a working website. They decide how fast it is and whether it falls apart on a phone.
- The copywriter writes the copy if you don’t supply it. The most underrated role of the lot.
- The tester clicks through the site before launch. In small teams, the tester is often the developer wearing a second hat.
With a freelancer, all these roles merge into one person. That’s why a $2,000 freelancer and a $6,000 agency build what looks like the same website, with a different number of pairs of eyes. Both routes are legitimate, as long as you know which one you’re buying.
The most common process traps
We’ve seen enough of them to make a list. Check whether any apply to you:
No single decision-maker. A website for a company where decisions are made by a committee of the owner, the marketing manager and a nephew who’s “good with computers” takes three times as long. Every revision round starts with figuring out what the committee will accept this time.
Endless revisions. Two revision rounds is a process. Seven rounds is indecision, which someone eventually pays for, or the provider gives up. If it’s still not right after round three, go back to the website’s goal, not the colour of the button.
Copy last. The classic sequence: design done, launch in a week, “I’ll send the copy next week”. The design is built on the copy. Gaps in it aren’t a detail; they’re holes in the foundations.
Changing the goal mid-project. Halfway through, it turns out the site should sell training courses, not services. That’s not a revision, it’s a new project. An honest agency will say so and issue a change order, rather than quietly lowering the quality of everything else.
What the process looks like without the back-and-forth
The weakest link in the process above isn’t the craft; it’s the back-and-forth between people. Webomat cuts out those loops:
- Instead of a brief: the agent reads your current website and pulls the facts from it.
- Instead of a week for the first designs: usually 15–25 minutes for proposals in several directions.
- Instead of a tester: automated checks at five screen widths and a link test before you see anything.
- What remains is what a machine can’t do: your decisions and your knowledge of your customers.
Not every stage disappears. The loops and the waiting do.
How to recognise a good process
You don’t need to know anything about websites to judge whether someone does their job properly. Ask four questions:
- Who writes the copy, and based on what?
- How many revision rounds are included, and what does an extra one cost?
- When will I see the website on my own phone?
- What happens if something stops working after launch?
Answers that should worry you: “we’ll generate the copy”, “unlimited revisions” (meaning: until you agree to call it done), “you’ll see it after launch”. Honest answers are usually boring and specific. In this industry, boring is good.
Where can this process be shortened today? Exactly in the places that eat the most time: the first design proposals and the tedious testing. We describe how we shorten it in how Webomat works, from your URL to a new site.