From Kickoff to Launch: A Realistic Website Timeline

Ask how long a website takes and the honest answer is "it depends," which nobody likes hearing. So here's what it depends on. This is the plan from my notes that every site project hangs on: the phases, the milestones, and the points where I stop and ask for a yes.

It has no week numbers on purpose. Those come after discovery, once I know how much content exists, who's writing it, and how many people need to sign off.

The seven phases

Phase	What happens
Discovery and planning	The checklist, the goals, a rough plan and a timeline with real dates
Design and architecture	The sitemap, wireframes and a visual style guide
Content integration	Words, photos and any old content moved into place
Development	The actual build, on a staging site
Testing and QA	Phones, browsers, forms, speed, accessibility
Launch preparation	Domain, email records, redirects, backups, analytics
Launch and handover	It goes live, you get trained, the notes get handed over

The order matters more than the names. Design comes before content integration, but content has to exist before the design can be judged, which is why I ask for it early.

The milestones, and who owns them

Milestone	Waiting on
Kickoff meeting	Both of us
Discovery and planning complete	Me
Sitemap and wireframes approved	You
Visual style guide approved	You
Design mockups approved	You
Final content received	You
Content in place on staging	Me
Development complete (beta)	Me
QA testing complete	Me
Staging site final approval	You
Launch	Both of us
Training and documentation handed over	Me
Post-launch review	Both of us

Look at the right-hand column. Half of those are yours, and that's normal. A site gets built by someone who knows the web and someone who knows the business.

Final content received is the one I watch. Everything before it can run in parallel, and everything after it depends on it. If the words are late, the launch is late, and there's nothing the builder can do about it alone. If the words aren't ready yet, I'd rather know at kickoff so it gets its own spot on the schedule.

Tip

Real content beats lorem ipsum even in wireframes. A headline that's actually yours tells you in five seconds whether the layout works.

The sign-offs

There's a review before each point where going backward costs real time:

• Discovery findings and plan. Did I understand the business?
• Sitemap and wireframes. Are the right pages there, in the right order?
• Style guide. Colors, type and photos, before they're on every page.
• Mockups. What the key pages will look like.
• Content drafts. The words, page by page.
• Staging site. The real thing, running, before anyone else sees it.
• Go/no-go. One short meeting right before launch.

Each approval should say how you'll give feedback and how fast. "Reply to the email within three working days" is plenty. It's the undefined ones that stall.

Heads up

Changing the sitemap after the mockups are approved isn't a disaster, but it does mean redoing the mockups. The sign-offs exist so that's a choice you make with your eyes open.

After launch

Launch isn't the end of the plan. Handover means training on how to update the site, a short document of where everything lives, and the logins in your hands, not mine. Then a post-launch review once the site's had some real visitors, to fix whatever real people trip over.

The layout decisions from the design phase are in laying out a one-page website, and if you're weighing whether to hire someone at all, Work With Me is the short version of how I'd run it.