How long will it take to build my ecommerce website?

If you’re in the market for an ecommerce website design in Brisbane, one of the most pressing questions you will want answered is: how long will it take to be finished? 

To answer this question, we need to look at three different timelines, namely: the design start date, the date you can start taking a good look at your new website, and the date that it will be fully completed and ready for launch.

Step 1: Planning

Most good developers are booked up for weeks ahead and it’s impossible to start a new project immediately. You might have to wait a little for them to clear their schedule and spend time on your new ecommerce website design. Brisbane developers are no exception, because it’s always the good ones that are snapped up quickly by small businesses who are hot on the trail of a reputable developer, booking them quickly to ensure that their new website design is locked in.

Business owners who don’t want to wait for a few months may be tempted to take any developer who can do the work in their fastest time frame, but more often than not, this doesn’t end well. It’s far better to work with a developer who you know does excellent work and simply slot into their schedule, rather than imposing your own time frame and ending up with a website that isn’t really what you wanted and is over budget and overdue.

Step 2: Design

It usually takes at least a couple of weeks to actually create an ecommerce website design that can be reviewed by our clients, because we need to work through a number of stages.

In the first stage, we need to completely understand your business and your goals for the website, then we need to put together a workable solution that ticks all of those boxes. At this stage, we are only working in the abstract and we are looking at the structure of your new website, planning the content/navigation structure, as well as documenting the features and user experience.

Once this preliminary stage is completed, we move on to plan the design of your website. Depending on the project, this may be a wireframe (bare bones “sketch”) or mockup (full design sample). In either case, we need to ensure both parties have a clear understanding of how the website will look. We work through your feedback before we move onto the development stage where we’ll apply that design to the actual website.

Step 3: Development

In the development stage, we keep communication going by providing updates and asking questions to make sure we’re on the right track. We go through a feedback and revision process until you’re happy with every aspect of the website’s design, content, and functionality.

The timeframe can vary considerably at this step based on how many changes you’ve requested throughout the feedback process. Sometimes, once our clients see their ideas come to life, they may want to add more functionality, or they may find that they need some help to complete some adjustments which they’d originally aimed to find time to do themselves.

Step 4: Launch

Once the website is approved for launch, we liaise with our client to work out an appropriate date and time for launch. Again this may vary for many reasons, such as the client having a specific “go live” date in mind, or we may have only certain dates we can fit in the job.

All told, from the initial planning stage to the launch of an ecommerce website design in Brisbane, it can be anywhere from 4 weeks or more, but typically more like 10-12 weeks. The larger the project, the greater the timeline.