If you belong to the mere 46% of businesses that still don’t have a website, this is the right time to do it. With more than 4 billion Internet users around the world, you can’t miss the opportunity to get better branding, marketing, and sales for your business when you go online.

But if you’re new to the digital marketing arena, your next question might be: how long does it take to build a website?

According to most professional web developers, it takes around 30-45 days to get a website up and running. Yes, that might be a long time, but here’s why:

There are different types of websites.

If you look online, you’ll see that websites can be very different in terms of design and functionality, and that depends mostly on their purpose.

For instance, a simple website with only a few basic pages and no extra features will take less time to complete while a more advanced website with more complex features will take longer because more work needs to be done with them.

Remember that if you want your website to be competitive, it will take time before it can go live.

Conceptualizing a website doesn’t happen overnight.

The most beautiful websites on the Internet didn’t come to be overnight. They were a product of weeks—and even months—of brainstorming with you, the designer, and the web developing team that you’re working with. You need to talk about a lot of factors that will make your website look good and function well.

You also need to consider all the best practices in web design and development because not everything that you like will work well when done online.

Your team will then come up with a mockup that you need to approve and it will be several changes before the final design could be ready for implementation.

The main development stage will usually take 1-2 months.

After the final design is approved, your web design and development team then goes to work in putting your website together. Coding is such a complex process that will take a while to complete and there will be some setbacks along the way.

That is why it’s important to work with the right team to make sure that setbacks are dealt with efficiently so further delays could be avoided.

Your website needs to undergo a final review before it can go live.

Once your website is finished, you will need to go through a final round of reviews with your team to make sure that everything is according to your needs and standards.

Any final revisions will then be worked on and a test run will be done to make sure that your website is already fully functional before you can introduce it to the world.

There are no shortcuts to a great website, that’s for sure. While you can easily put together a website in a matter of minutes, you can’t expect it to be as efficient and tailored according to your needs.

So if you want to be competitive in the digital marketing arena, it pays to work with the right people and allow them to do their job right.