The honest answer for most small business sites is four to eight weeks. Anyone promising a week is either reusing a template or leaving something out.
What actually decides the timeline
1. Whether the content exists
This is the single biggest cause of delay, and it is almost never the developer's side. A site cannot be finished around text that has not been written. If you have your copy ready, you remove weeks.
2. How many decisions are still open
"We will decide the pricing structure later" is a three-week delay wearing a disguise. Every open decision blocks a page.
3. What has to connect to it
A brochure site is quick. A site that takes payments, syncs a booking system, or feeds a CRM is a different project, and should be quoted as one.
A realistic shape
- Week 1 — scope, sitemap, and what each page has to achieve
- Week 2 to 3 — design of the key templates, not every page
- Week 3 to 6 — build, with your content going in as it arrives
- Week 6 to 8 — testing on real devices, speed work, launch
What to watch for
If someone quotes you a fixed timeline before asking who is writing the content, they have not thought about your project yet — they have quoted a template.