Five working days, start to finish
Most website projects do not take six weeks because the work takes six weeks. They take six weeks because nobody decided anything on days two through twenty-nine. Here is the timetable that removes the waiting.
- A five-page business website takes five working days to build. Longer timelines are usually caused by waiting for decisions, not by the work.
- The order matters: words before design. Designing around copy that does not exist yet produces a shape with nothing in it.
- Sites built by hand as static HTML carry only what is on the page — no platform fee, no plugins to maintain, and far better load times than a page-builder site.
- A revision limit protects the date, not the agency. Unlimited changes are the main reason fixed-price projects drift.
- Your domain stays in your own registrar. No agency should hold it.
Ask ten business owners about their last website and eight will describe the same shape of experience. A keen first meeting. A quote. Then a long, quiet middle in which nothing visible happens and emails go unanswered for four days at a stretch. Then, eventually, something arrives that is not quite what anyone pictured, and a round of changes begins that nobody agreed the boundaries of.
The build was never the slow part. The waiting was.
Nothing in a five-page website takes six weeks. Six weeks is what happens when no one is holding the clock.
Day one: the call, and the decisions
Half an hour, on the phone, and at the end of it you have a price and a date. Not a proposal to wait for. The questions are the ones that actually determine the site: what you sell that makes the most money, which of it you want more of, what a customer types into Google before they find you, and what happens the moment somebody rings.
The last one matters more than people expect. A site that generates six enquiries a week is a liability if nobody answers the phone by Thursday.
We also settle the things that stall projects if they are left open: who owns the domain, where the photographs are coming from, and who is allowed to say yes. That third one is the quiet killer. A project with three approvers and no decider is a project that takes six weeks.
Day two — writing
The words come before the design, always, because designing around words that do not exist yet produces a beautiful shape with nothing in it. Every page is written specifically for you: your towns, your prices where you are willing to publish them, the objection you get on every second call answered before it is raised.
We write it in your voice, not ours. If you say "we'll come and have a look and tell you straight", that is what goes on the page. What does not go on the page is the vocabulary of a national agency describing a local business — no bespoke solutions, no passion for excellence, no journey. Nobody in Weybridge has ever chosen a roofer because of a journey.
- Day 1Call, price, date
- Day 2Writing
- Day 3Design and build
- Day 4Yours to check
- Day 5Live
Day three — design and build
The site is built by hand as static HTML. That is an unfashionable sentence and it is worth explaining, because it is the reason the numbers in the previous article come out the way they do.
A page built on a drag-and-drop builder carries the builder with it — a rendering engine, a stack of plugins, and the accumulated weight of every feature you did not use. A page built by hand carries what is on it. The difference on a phone in a car park is the difference between one second and six.
It also means there is nothing between you and the page. No monthly platform fee, no plugin that stops being maintained, no update that breaks the contact form on a Sunday.
Every build ships to WCAG 2.2 AA. Labelled forms, real contrast, keyboard navigation, alternative text. It is not an upgrade and it is not billed separately.
Sized properly, in a modern format, with dimensions declared so nothing jumps. If you have no good photographs we will tell you, because that is usually the biggest single improvement available.
It stays in your name and your account. We never take custody of it. Businesses get held hostage by this more often than you would think.
We run the finished site through Google's own tool and show you the result. If it is not good, it is not finished.
Day four — yours to check
The whole site goes on a private link. You read it on your phone, on the sofa, at the time of day you actually use a phone. Not in a meeting with someone watching your face.
One round of changes is included and made the same day. That is a real limit rather than a polite one, and it is in the contract, because unbounded revisions are how fixed-price projects turn into six-week projects. Anything beyond it is quoted before it starts, so there is never a surprise on an invoice.
Day five — live
We point the domain, check every form actually arrives in an inbox you read, submit the site to Google, and set up the analytics. Then you own it.
The care plan is £69 a month if you want it: changes made within 24 hours, updates, backups and monitoring. It is not hosting — hosting costs us almost nothing and we will not pretend otherwise. It is the promise that when you ring in November because a price has changed, it is done that day rather than added to a queue.
Why guarantee a date rather than a ranking?
We cannot guarantee where you rank on Google, and you should be wary of anyone who says they can. Nobody controls Google. What we can guarantee is a date, and you get the date before you pay anything.
That is not a small thing. It is the difference between a website being a project you are managing and a website being something that arrives on Friday and starts working.
Questions we get asked
How long does it take to build a small business website?
A five-page site takes five working days from the initial call to going live, provided decisions are made promptly and photographs are available. Larger builds with booking systems or e-commerce take longer. Most six-week timelines are not caused by the build — they are caused by waiting for approvals.
What do I need to provide to get a website built?
A decision-maker who can say yes, access to your domain registrar, any photographs you already have, and half an hour on the phone. You do not need to write the copy — that is part of the work. If you have no usable photographs, say so early, because it is usually the biggest single improvement available.
Should my website be built on WordPress or something else?
For a small brochure site, hand-built static HTML is faster, cheaper to maintain and has no plugins to break. WordPress makes sense when you genuinely need frequent self-service publishing or specific plugin functionality. The wrong reason to choose it is that it is what an agency happens to use.
Who owns the website when it is finished?
You do. The domain stays registered in your own name and account throughout, and the site is yours to keep and to move elsewhere. Any arrangement where the agency holds your domain is one to avoid.
What happens after the site goes live?
Nothing is required. A care plan at £69 a month covers changes made within 24 hours, updates, backups and monitoring, on a rolling monthly basis with one month's notice. It is optional, and it is not hosting — hosting costs almost nothing and it would be dishonest to charge for it under that name.