Minnesota Web Design Directory

Website turnaround: How long should it take?

It depends. It depends on how large in scale your project is. It depends on how busy your designer is. It depends on how fast your designer can work. It depends on how fast you are able to provide your designer with the site content he/she needs to build the site. In summary, it all depends.

This next bit of information is very important. ALWAYS ask a designer how long it will take him/her to finish your project. Get it in writing. There are so many stories floating around out there that start with:

"I hired this guy to work on my website, and he hasn't done anything in a while..."

Obviously, a reasonable designer won't be able to give you an exact finish date and will probably produce an inferior product if rushed. Howeer, the designer can, at the very least, narrow down your finish date to a range of one or two weeks, or maybe a few days, depending on your project's complexity.

If all you need is a five page, static, brochure-style site, it shouldn't take more than a few weeks for a moderately busy designer to produce a quality site for you.

If a designer tells you he can give you a complete e-commerce web site with credit card processing capabilies and an administrator interface in less than a week, then your website will most likely be an out-of-the-box template with your logo pasted in the upper-left corner (dumpster material).