Process
The Real Website Timeline, Week by Week
By the LA Web Design team5 min read
A custom business site typically runs four to eight weeks from kickoff to launch; online stores and platform builds go longer, and a single landing page can move faster. But the average hides the useful part — where those weeks actually go, and which step quietly blows up more schedules than any other.
Week 1: discovery and direction
One good call, straight questions: what does the business do, who buys, what should the site make happen, what do you love and hate. Then sitemap and structure. Rushing this week is how sites end up beautiful and useless.
Weeks 2–3: design
Custom concepts for the key pages, refined with your feedback. Two focused revision rounds beat ten scattered ones — the best clients react quickly and honestly ('this feels wrong' is useful feedback) rather than perfectly.
Weeks 3–5: build
The approved design becomes a real website: development, animations, responsive behavior, forms, SEO structure, and the machine-readable layer that search engines and AI assistants read. You review on a private staging link, on your own phone, in your own browser.
Weeks 5–6: content, polish, launch
Final copy and images go in, everything gets tested — every form, every device — redirects from old URLs get mapped, and the site goes live. Launch day itself is undramatic when the checklist is done; that's the point.
The thing that actually delays launches
Content. Not design, not development — the photos that never arrive and the 'About' paragraph nobody wants to write. It delays more launches than every technical issue combined. The fix: start gathering content the day you sign, and if writing isn't your thing, have the studio draft it and edit from there. Editing is easy; blank pages are hard.
When you have a hard deadline
A season opening, a launch event, a campaign. Tell the studio on the first call. Working backwards from a real date changes how the project is planned — and an honest studio will tell you immediately whether the date is achievable rather than discovering it with you in week five.