How a website gets built

For most people this is a black box: you agree a price, wait, and something appears. Knowing the shape of it makes the whole thing easier, mostly because it tells you when you are the one holding it up.

The order it happens in

• A conversation. Twenty minutes about what you do, who rings you, and what you want more of. This is where the site is really decided.
• Collecting the raw material. Photos, your logo if you have one, prices, the list of services, your trading details.
• A first version. Something you can open and click, not a drawing.
• Your changes. The wording, the order of things, the photograph you would rather not use.
• Going live. Domain pointed, certificate on, forms tested.
• Afterwards. Search Console, the Google profile, and checking the form actually arrives.

How long each bit takes

The building is the fast part — a one-page site is a day or two of actual work, a business site three or four.

What stretches a two-day job into six weeks is waiting. Waiting for photographs, waiting for a decision about prices, waiting for someone to read the draft. That is not a criticism — you have a business to run — but it is worth knowing that the calendar is mostly in your hands.

The two points where it stalls

Photographs. Almost every job that runs late runs late here. Take them before you start the process, not when you are asked. Half an hour on a finished job you are proud of is enough.

The final read. A draft sitting unread for three weeks is the other one. Read it in one sitting, mark everything at once, and send it all in a single message rather than eleven texts over a fortnight.

What you should get at the end

• The site, live, on your domain.
• The domain registered in your name.
• Logins to anything that matters.
• A way to change your own phone number and prices, or a clear price for having it done.
• The Google Business Profile connected.

How I do it differently

I build the first version before we have agreed anything and before you have paid anything. It means the first thing you see is your actual site rather than a promise, and if you do not like it, that is the end of it and it has cost you nothing.

It costs me a day per enquiry, which is why most people do not work this way. It also means nobody has ever had to imagine what they were buying.

Common questions