Owners budget for a redesign in dollars. They rarely budget for it in hours, and hours are what stall it. In our experience the most common reason a website launches late is a question sitting in the owner's inbox for three weeks, because the owner is out running the business.
Nobody should blame them for it. A roofer in storm season or an accountant in February has better things to do than review a services page. Knowing up front what the project will ask of you is what keeps it moving.
Where your hours go
Over a rebuild of four to six weeks, the owner's time comes in a few concentrated blocks.
The kickoff conversation. An hour or two, early. What the business does best, who the ideal customer is, which jobs you want more of and which you would happily do less of. This is the most valuable time you will spend on the project.
Gathering what exists. An afternoon. Logins for the domain, hosting, Google Business Profile, and analytics. Photos of real jobs. Reviews. Licence numbers, insurance, warranty terms. Most of the delay in this step is finding passwords nobody has used since the last site launched.
The raw material for the words. The biggest block, and the one that varies most. Somebody has to explain what each service involves, what customers ask on the phone, and where you work. Whether that takes you two hours or twenty depends on who writes the copy, which is worth settling before you sign. See who writes the content for a website.
Reviews and approvals. Two or three sittings of an hour or so. Reading pages, checking facts, approving the design.
Launch week. A short check that the phone number rings, the forms arrive, and the prices and service areas are right.
The first month after. Small corrections as you use the site and hear what customers say about it.
The hours only you can spend
Some decisions cannot be delegated, however good the studio is:
- Which customers and which jobs the site should chase.
- What you are willing to promise, such as response times, warranties, and the areas you will drive to.
- Whether a claim on the page is true. Your licence, your years in business, the brands you are certified for.
- Approving the final words, because your name is on them.
These take less time than people expect, but nobody else can do them.
The hours you can hand off
Almost everything else:
- Writing. A good studio writes the copy from a conversation with you, in your voice. You review; you do not draft.
- Photos. A photographer for half a day, or your crew taking phone photos on real jobs with a short brief.
- Reviews. Asking customers for them can be automated.
- The move itself. Redirects, domain settings, and analytics are the builder's job. Our answer on what breaks during a website migration covers what they should be checking.
Why redesigns stall
The same four reasons, almost every time:
- The content waits on the owner. The site is built, and the services page sits half empty.
- Too many reviewers. Every partner, spouse, and office manager gets a round of edits, and the edits contradict each other.
- The scope grows mid-project. "While you're in there" is how a six-week project becomes a four-month one.
- Lost access. The domain is registered to a former employee, or the old developer holds the hosting login.
How to keep it small
- Name one decision-maker. Everyone else gives input to that person, not to the studio.
- Talk rather than write. One recorded interview produces most of what a small business site needs to say.
- Find the logins first. Before kickoff, confirm who holds the domain, the hosting, and the Google Business Profile.
- Batch your reviews. Block an hour on the calendar for each review round when the project starts.
- Decide scope up front, and park new ideas for after launch.
What it looks like on a calendar
Our own rebuilds run four to six weeks, and the process page lays out each phase. The owner's time lands mostly in the first week, on the kickoff and the raw material, and then in short review sittings through the build. For the full range, from a template site to a larger custom project, see how long a website takes to build.
If you know roughly where your hours will go, you can plan the project around your busy season instead of into it. The free written audit is a good first step because it asks nothing of you but a URL. What happens after that is set out on web design for small businesses.