How long should building a website actually take?

The honest answer is not a number of weeks. It is a number of decisions, and how quickly you're willing to make them.

A simple site with content that's already written and approved can move fast, because nobody is waiting on anyone. The same site stalls for months when photos are missing, copy keeps changing, or three people need to sign off on every page.

The build itself is rarely the bottleneck. Waiting for you is.

So the real question isn't how long a website takes. It's how ready you are to stop deciding and start publishing.