The stages of a website project, from brief to launch
The seven stages of a web project, how long each takes, what you supply, what we do, and why most projects stall on content.
The stages of a website project are less spectacular than most clients imagine. The design — the part everyone thinks of when they say “let’s build a site” — takes up less than a fifth of the project. The rest is organising, writing, checking and preparing: less visible work, but the work that decides whether the result functions or merely looks good.
This article describes the complete process, stage by stage: what happens, who is responsible, how long it takes, and where projects actually stall. If you are about to commission a site, it tells you what to expect and what will be asked of you. If you have one under way and it seems stuck, you will probably recognise stage 4.
Contents
- Why the process matters more than the design
- Stage 1: brief and discovery
- Stage 2: information architecture and wireframes
- Stage 3: visual design
- Stage 4: content
- Stage 5: build
- Stage 6: testing
- Stage 7: launch and the first 30 days
- Who does what: the responsibilities table
- How to give feedback on a design
- How long a business website takes in total
Why the process matters more than the design
A web project rarely fails for technical reasons. It fails because nobody established at the outset what the site had to do, because the copy never arrived, or because by the fourth round of changes nobody remembers what was approved and what was not.
A clear process solves all three. Every stage has a concrete result, approved before moving on. It is not bureaucracy; it is what stops you rebuilding week 3 in week 6.
The rule of approval in steps
Every stage produces something that can be seen and approved. A “yes” on the architecture closes the architecture. A structural change requested during the build stage is no longer a change, it is a rewrite — and it is charged as one, in any serious agency.
It is not a restriction imposed on the client. It is what makes a predictable deadline possible.
Stage 1: brief and discovery
Duration: 3–7 days · Primarily responsible: the client, with guidance
The first stage produces nothing visual. It produces understanding.
What we ask you
- What the company sells and to whom, in concrete terms.
- Who the customers are and what they ask before buying.
- Who the competition is and what they do better.
- What has to happen on the site: a call, a form, a booking, an order.
- What you already have: identity, copy, photographs, an old site, accounts.
- What you dislike about the current site, if there is one.
Why it takes time
Because good answers do not come first time. “Our customers are Romanian companies” does not help. “Our customers are building managers and construction firms in Constanța, who usually get in touch after they have already had one quote and want a second opinion” completely changes how the home page gets written.
What comes out of it
A short document: objectives, audience, a list of pages, a list of features, what each side supplies and when. That is the project’s content contract.
Stage 2: information architecture and wireframes
Duration: 4–7 days · Primarily responsible: us
This is where the structure is decided: how many pages, what they are called, what addresses they sit at, what each contains, and how you get from one to another. It is the stage with the most lasting consequences, covered at length in The SEO structure of a business website.
Wireframes: why they are grey and ugly
A wireframe is the sketch of each page, without colours, without final typefaces, without images. Grey blocks with labels.
It is grey on purpose. When you see a coloured mockup, the conversation slides immediately to shades and typefaces. When you see grey blocks, the conversation stays on what matters: what a person sees first, where the button is, what comes next.
What you approve
The list of pages and the sketch of each important page. A “yes” here means the structure is closed.
Stage 3: visual design
Duration: 7–14 days · Primarily responsible: us
Only now do the colours, the typography, the spacing and the photography appear.
How it works
Two or three key pages are drawn first — usually the home page, a service page and a listing page. From those a system is extracted: the palette, the type scale, the spacing, the buttons, the cards, the forms. The rest of the pages are composed from that system.
The advantage is consistency by construction: you cannot end up with seven shades of grey and four button styles if every page comes out of the same set of components.
How many rounds of changes
Two rounds is normal. The first is substantial. The second is adjustment. A third round is a sign that stage 1 or 2 was done superficially.
Changes are sent grouped and in writing. Ten separate messages over three days produce contradictions and rework.
Stage 4: content
Duration: from 5 days to several months · Primarily responsible: the client, unless otherwise contracted
This is where most projects stall. That is not an exaggeration — the design is approved, the build is half done, and the project sits there because there is no copy for the “About us” page.
Why it happens
Because writing is hard, it is never urgent, and it falls to someone who already has a full-time job. It slips a week, then another, and then summer arrives.
The three options
| Option | Cost | Duration | Quality |
|---|---|---|---|
| The client writes it all | included | unpredictable | variable |
| We write it, from an interview | separate | 1–2 weeks | consistent |
| The client supplies the raw material, we write | in between | 1–2 weeks | good |
The third option is the one that works most often. You know the trade; we know how to write for the web. A recorded two-hour conversation produces more usable material than three months of putting it off.
What “content” means
Not just the copy. Good photographs (not screenshots and not phone pictures shot against the light), a vector logo, verified contact details, company registration details, legal text, a list of services with descriptions, portfolio projects with a description and an outcome.
The complete list is in What to prepare before ordering a website.
Stage 5: build
Duration: 10–20 days · Primarily responsible: us
The approved design becomes a working site: components, pages, forms, image optimisation, the technical structure, the structured data.
What happens in parallel
- Images are processed into modern formats and several sizes, so a phone does not have to download a 2000-pixel file.
- The title and description of every page are configured.
- The structured data is written.
- Redirects from the old addresses are prepared, if there was a previous site.
- The forms and the email addresses the messages go to are configured.
What you see
A preview link, updated as the work goes on. You can follow progress without asking. This is also the right moment to test the contact form yourself, from your own phone.
Stage 6: testing
Duration: 3–5 days · Primarily responsible: us, with your sign-off
The checklist, in brief:
| Category | What gets checked |
|---|---|
| Functional | every link, every form, every error message |
| Mobile | small phone, large phone, tablet, landscape |
| Browsers | Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge |
| Speed | the Core Web Vitals thresholds, on a mobile connection |
| Accessibility | full keyboard navigation, contrast, screen readers |
| Content | typos, diacritics, correct contact details |
| Technical SEO | unique titles, descriptions, canonicals, sitemap, structured data |
| Legal | policies, consent banner, forms with consent |
Accessibility is no longer optional: from 28 June 2025, Romanian Law 232/2022 imposes accessibility requirements on eCommerce and on a range of digital services. Details in the dedicated article on web accessibility becoming mandatory.
Stage 7: launch and the first 30 days
Duration: 1 day for the launch, 30 days of watching
Launch day, in order
- A complete backup of the old site.
- Publishing on the real domain.
- Activating the redirects from the old addresses, and checking every one.
- Checking the security certificate.
- Submitting the sitemap in Search Console.
- Checking the measurement: analytics working, form events recording.
- A full test of the forms, from a real device.
The first 30 days
You watch the indexing, the errors in Search Console, the speed on real user data, and the first behavioural signals. This is where you catch the things testing does not see: a page that will not index, a redirect chain, a form landing in spam.
Do not expect rankings in the first month. Fully reindexing a medium-sized site takes several weeks, and the effect on ranking shows over months.
Who does what: the responsibilities table
The most frequent source of delay is a task each side believes the other is doing. The table below is agreed at the brief, in writing.
| Task | Client | Agency |
|---|---|---|
| Defining the business objectives | ● | ○ |
| Describing the target audience | ● | ○ |
| List of services and descriptions | ● | ○ |
| Information architecture | ○ | ● |
| Wireframes | ● | |
| Visual design | ○ | ● |
| Writing the copy | ● or ○ | ○ or ● |
| Photography | ○ | ● or ○ |
| Vector logo | ● | |
| Company and legal details | ● | |
| Legal text | ● | ○ |
| Build | ● | |
| Technical optimisation | ● | |
| Functional testing | ○ | ● |
| Signing off the content | ● | ○ |
| Logins: domain, hosting, analytics | ● | ○ |
| Launch and redirects | ● | |
| Updates after launch | to be agreed | to be agreed |
● = responsible · ○ = contributes
The row that decides the deadline
Writing the copy. It is the only row that can go either way and the only one which, badly agreed, adds months to a project. It is decided at the brief, not as you go.
The row everyone forgets
Signing off the content. Nobody but the client can know whether a price is right, whether a certification is still valid, or whether a service is still offered. It is a real task, taking real time, and it has to be allowed for before launch.
How to give feedback on a design
Stage 3 almost always runs long because of the way feedback travels, not because of the design.
The rules that shorten a project
1. Grouped, not as the thoughts occur to you. Ten messages over three days produce contradictions and rework. One document, once.
2. In writing, in a document, not on the phone. What is agreed verbally gets forgotten, or remembered differently by each side.
3. One voice. Gather the opinions internally, decide internally, send one list. Feedback in which “the director wants blue but my colleague in marketing wants green” is not feedback; it is an internal problem passed along.
4. Describe the problem, not the solution. “It is not obvious where I click to ask for a quote” is useful. “Make the button red and bigger” is a solution that may not be the right one — and it shuts down the conversation about the real cause.
5. Refer to something specific. “The section with the three cards, second row” is clear. “The area at the top” is not.
6. Separate must-haves from preferences. “The phone number has to appear in the header” is a requirement. “I would prefer a warmer grey” is a preference. Mixed together, the agency treats them all as equal.
What does not help
- “I don’t like it, but I don’t know why.” A legitimate reaction, a useless instruction. Ask yourself what you had expected to see.
- Feedback from people outside the project, collected at random. Your friends are not your customers.
- Comparisons with sites from other industries, without explanation. “I want it to look like Apple” is not a direction; “I want as much white space as Apple” is.
The response deadline
Feedback has a deadline too. A project in which the agency delivers in three days and the client replies in three weeks is not a seven-week project. Agree at the start how long the response to each deliverable takes — usually 3–5 working days.
How long a business website takes in total
A business website of 10–15 pages normally takes 6–10 weeks from brief to launch, if the material arrives on time. The design and build stages are predictable; the variable that moves the deadline by whole months is content. A project where the copy and photographs already exist can be finished in 4 weeks.
| Stage | Duration | Who sets the pace |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Brief and discovery | 3–7 days | the client |
| 2 · Architecture and wireframes | 4–7 days | us |
| 3 · Visual design | 7–14 days | us, with 2 rounds of feedback |
| 4 · Content | 5 days – several months | the client |
| 5 · Build | 10–20 days | us |
| 6 · Testing | 3–5 days | us |
| 7 · Launch | 1 day | us |
| Realistic total | 6–10 weeks |
What speeds a project up
- Copy and photographs prepared before stage 3.
- One decision-maker on the client side.
- Grouped feedback, in writing.
- A firm “yes” at the end of each stage.
What slows a project down
- Approval by committee, with opinions that contradict each other.
- Structural changes requested after stage 3.
- Content promised “next week”, for eight weeks.
- Identity material that cannot be found and has to be recreated.
Have a project in mind and want a realistic timetable for your own situation? Write to us — we will tell you what range it falls into and what could shorten it.
See also How much a business website costs in Romania, What to prepare before ordering a website, and what the business website service involves.