Creating a website can be a very rewarding experience. Whether you’re building a personal site to share photos and events with friends and family or an online home for your business, you want to ensure it’s done correctly to keep visitors returning.
Building a website is faster and easier than you might imagine. With easy-to-use website-building tools, you can often get a stylish, user-friendly website up and running in less than a day. In this article, you’ll learn how long it takes to build a website using some of the most common tools available today and how to keep it up and running long into the future.
Key takeaways:
- Building a website can take a few minutes to several weeks, depending on several factors.
- It isn’t necessary to know basic coding to launch a site, as many website-building tools are available to help you design exactly what you’re looking for.
- Don’t forget to update your website once it’s officially launched, as fresh content ensures a regular stream of visitors and repeat customers if you’re in the e-commerce sector.
Best website builder for small businesses
Best website builder for small businesses
Best website builder for beginners
Best website builder for beginners
How To Use Website Building Services
For most people who want to build a website, website-building software is the best option. These tools allow you to create a satisfying site without knowing much, if any, coding.
In most cases, these services offer simple drag-and-drop interfaces for designing a full website, so you can place all the different components of the page exactly where you want them.
For example, you can add an image or video to your site by uploading the item you want to the tool, similar to attaching a file to one of your emails. You can then drag it to the location on your page where you want it displayed. You can also type in any written content you want to share with your audience.
This is all done using a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface, which means that however you make your site look on the backend is what your visitors ultimately see when they stop over.
How Long Does It Take To Build a Website?
The length of time it takes to build a website depends on all the different factors you’re taking into account when crafting the site itself, as well as your intentions for what you hope your site accomplishes.
The following are some of the most significant variables that impact how long it takes for you to build your site:
- How you’re building your site: How you make your site has a big impact on the length of time it takes before it’s ready for launch. There are several different website-building tools that require different steps, each one with different demands on your schedule.
- The amount of customization needed: If you’re looking for a very basic website with little customization, it takes less time than a final product that’s completely customized from top to bottom.
- Browsing templates: Most website builders allow you to use design templates to get yourself started. There are often hundreds, even thousands, of options to choose from, so how long you take to pick out your favorites could impact the total time you spend making your site.
- Initial content for publishing: Generally, you want to include all the initial content that you intend to publish in the time budget for crafting your website. If, for example, you have to write out the content for your home page, that may add several hours of work to the process.
- Your experience: You can create a website with virtually no experience at all, but it can take longer to complete because of this. The more time you’ve spent on making websites in the past, the faster things go.
Of course, many other factors also need to be considered. Whenever you’re allotting time to create a website, you should always expect some steps to take longer than you initially planned; others may go more quickly to balance things out.
Types of Website Builders
A website builder or CMS (content management system) is the best way to create a website for most users who don’t have much experience in the web development industry. These are services that allow you to make an entire site without having to know any type of programming or coding.
There are many tools and services available to simplify the website-building process. Some of them are designed to create specific types of sites, such as e-commerce. Others can be heavily customized to yield just about any result you want.
Best website builder for small businesses
Best website builder for small businesses
Best website builder for beginners
Best website builder for beginners
Don’t Forget To Maintain Your Site
Building a website generally doesn’t take nearly as long to complete as most people believe. Maintaining the site and keeping it active with fresh content often takes much longer than getting everything prepped for the official launch.
Of course, that depends largely on your goals for your site and the type of content you’re publishing. In the end, you need to be committed to keeping your site updated long into the future if it’s going to be worth your time to even build in the first place.
FAQs About Building Your Website
How much does it cost to build a website?
You need to budget your time to create a website, and the same goes for money as well. Some building tools, such as WordPress, are available for free, although they may not provide as many customization options as their paid counterparts.
If you would like to hire a web developer to build a site from the ground up using code, the cost can range from anywhere in the hundreds of dollars to the tens of thousands of dollars. Prices are determined by the amount of work required, deadline, experience level of the developers, and other variables.
How much does it cost to maintain a website?
Website hosting and maintenance varies in cost depending on the type of plan you’ve purchased, how often you plan to update your content, and whether or not your content needs to be outsourced. Some web hosts offer a free server to house your site, though you may end up sacrificing some level of security and speed.
In addition, if you don’t plan to create the images, videos, writing, and other media you’d like to post yourself, you’ll need to budget to hire new teammates or freelancers to assume these duties.
A fair wage for a professional freelancer is usually anywhere from double digits per hour to several hundred, depending on the service type and the time required to complete the project to specifications. A new full-time teammate will cost a living wage commensurate with their experience, education, industry, and benefits.
How long does it take to code your website?
While choosing a website builder tool is likely the best option for the vast majority of people, it’s still good to know how long it would take to code your website for the sake of comparison.
Modern websites typically use multiple programming languages in tandem, including HTML (hypertext markup language), CSS (cascading style sheets), JavaScript, and more. For a simple website to be coded from scratch, an experienced programmer should expect to spend between four and six weeks ― roughly eight hours per day ― on the project.
Of course, tools and other options can speed things up, but building a new site from scratch is still very time-consuming. It’s best to allow your website developers and designers to give you an estimate on when they can expect to complete the project rather than giving them a potentially unrealistic deadline.
Can you get a domain name for free?
Your domain name is your website’s URL (uniform resource locator) or address where visitors can access everything you wish to share with them. Getting a free domain name to forward to your site host is possible. However, these often fall under less-desired domains like .tk or .ga rather than the more familiar .com, .net, .edu, .org, and .gov.
One option is to consider a web hosting service where you can purchase your desired domain name as part of the package. You’ll have more success finding a .net or .com address that visitors (and potential customers) will better remember, and many times you won’t even need to set up forwarding since the host can take care of that.
How long does it take to build a website in WordPress?
WordPress is a CMS that allows you to create any website you want. It can be used anywhere, so you can find your favorite hosting service and set up a WordPress site in minutes.
Nearly all good hosting companies offer tools that set up a basic WordPress website almost instantly. From there, you just have to customize it to your liking, which can take as much or as little time as you want.
How long does it take to build a website on Wix?
Wix is one of the most popular website builder services today. It has been around since 2006 and offers several packages with a multitude of great features. Whether you’re looking to make a simple personal blog or an advanced business site, Wix is a strong option for your consideration.
Getting your site up and running can be done in as soon as five to 10 minutes. Customizing your site usually takes another hour or so, contingent upon how much work you plan to put into it.
How long does it take to build a website with Squarespace?
Squarespace is another popular and easy-to-use website-building tool. When you sign up with their service, you receive hosting, access to templates, and plenty of professional design options, as well as other perks depending on the package you choose.
n average, it takes a little longer to build a site with Squarespace than many other site-building tools because Squarespace gives you many choices. The results, however, are excellent. You can expect to spend an hour getting your site operational if you opt to use basic templates.
