A website in six weeks: what happens in each one

Six weeks is a normal timeline for a mid-sized website: a residential development, a company with several service lines, a small catalog. It can be done faster, but then something has to be simplified. It can take longer too, and most often not because of complexity but because the project sits waiting for materials and sign-offs.

Below is what such a project looks like, week by week. It isn’t a rigid rulebook, just a clear sequence: each week answers its own question, and the next one doesn’t start until the previous question has an answer.

Week 1. Figure out what we’re building and for whom

The client barely sees the output of the first week, but everything else depends on it. The team studies the business: who the buyers are, where they come from, what they ask the sales team, why they leave. We look at the current site, the advertising and competitors’ sites.

For a real estate developer, this is first of all a conversation with the sales team: which questions clients ask most often, which floor plans sell worst, what keeps deals from closing. Those answers are worth more than any outside analysis.

The result of the week is the site structure: a list of pages, what goes on each one, and what action the visitor should take. Plus a list of materials we need from the client.

Week 2. Prototype and copy

A prototype is a page layout without styling: sections, headings, buttons, order. It’s the right place to argue about what matters while colors and fonts aren’t a distraction. Moving a section in a prototype takes a few minutes; in a finished design it takes a lot longer.

The copy is written in parallel. Ideally, by the end of the week there are at least drafts for the home page and the key sections. A design built around placeholder text almost always has to be redone later: the real text turns out longer, shorter, or about something else entirely.

Week 3. Visual style and key screens

In week three the look appears. First, one or two key screens: the top of the home page and, say, an apartment or service page. They’re where we agree on the site’s character: fonts, colors, photography, how restrained or expressive it will be.

It’s important to collect feedback in one go. When edits trickle in one by one from different people over a week, the designer redoes the same thing several times and the schedule melts away. It’s better to name one person who consolidates opinions inside the company.

Week 4. All pages and mobile versions

Once the style is approved, the remaining pages come together quickly: they’re built from elements that have already been agreed on. Mobile versions are designed right away, not as a scaled-down copy but as a scenario of their own. A lot of real estate traffic comes from phones, and those visitors need to find a floor plan and send an inquiry with one hand.

In parallel, front-end work on the first pages begins, and we decide where inquiries will go: to email, to a messenger, or straight into the sales team’s CRM.

Week 5. Development, animation, content

The busiest week. All pages are built, and the content management system is connected so the client can update prices, unit availability and news on their own. Animation is added: sections appearing, transitions, button feedback. The real copy and photos go in.

By the end of the week the site is already running on a staging address. You can open it on your own phone and go through it the way a buyer would: from the first screen to a submitted inquiry.

Week 6. Testing and launch

The last week isn’t for new ideas, it’s for polishing. We check that:

• inquiries reach the right person;
• the site works across browsers and phones;
• pages load fast;
• analytics and conversion goals are set up;
• the copy has no typos;
• old page URLs redirect to the new ones.

Then the site moves to the main domain, and for the first few days we watch it closely: are inquiries coming in, are there errors, how are visitors behaving.

Deadlines slip not because the task is hard but because of the pauses between steps: a week spent waiting for copy is a week off the schedule.

If you want to know whether your project fits into six weeks and what’s worth preparing in advance, that’s easy to cover in a first meeting, before anything is signed.