Asked an agency how long it takes to build a website, they said 6 weeks — is this normal?

Definitely include a delay penalty clause in the contract, but don't make it one-sided. If the agency unjustifiably exceeds their committed schedule, a specific weekly penalty fee should be deducted from the invoice. That said, you also need to accept upfront that any delays on your approvals will be added to the agency's delivery timeline.

Sites built in two days are low-quality jobs where someone just installs a ready-made theme and pastes text into it. But for sites like yours with an industrial catalog, you need filtering, downloadable PDF spec sheets, and custom quote forms. For clean code and a high mobile speed score, 6 weeks is definitely not an exaggeration.

Last year we started a 25-page B2B site of similar scope with a 6-week target. Because we lagged on internal approvals and product photos, the project ended up taking a full 11 weeks. The agency wrapped up development in 4 weeks, but it took nearly a month just for our board to approve the copy.

They give you a six-week timeline but then the designer changes in week two, coding stalls in week three, and quietly that timeline stretches to 12 weeks. Mandate a weekly 30-minute status sync with the agency, and never release milestone payments without seeing live progress on a staging server.

they told us 4 weeks for our site too, ended up taking 3 months. content entry is usually the biggest bottleneck. i mean the agency finishes the design and then waits on product descriptions for the catalog. imo start organizing your excel sheets and images into folders right now.

To keep the process under control, get these three things in writing: 1) No coding starts before design sign-off. 2) Set a clear limit on revisions, for instance a max of two revision rounds on design. 3) Keep all communication on email, verbal promises shouldn't be counted as part of the project schedule.

75 thousand TL is a very reasonable figure in today's market for a B2B site with a custom catalog but honestly 6 weeks might sound long but it's way better than rushing it and ending up with broken forms and misaligned buttons on mobile.

Edit: asked below, I wrote the answer in the second message.

Your project contract should clearly define source code ownership, server hosting portability, and at least a one-year warranty. Just as critical as the delivery timeline is their formal commitment on how fast post-launch software bugs will be resolved.

How did you solve this? Everyone rushing into how long does a website take gets stuck at the same point.

Just because everyone does it doesn't mean it's right.

I have a question. Payment schedules should be tied to project phases not calendar dates.

Proven by experience.

My questions are cleared up, thanks. If acceptance criteria aren't written, when the work is done is open to debate.

Good luck with that.

Let me share what happened to me; it might be useful. In legacy systems the most expensive thing is unknown dependencies.

If I were you I'd go this route.

Thanks, this was very helpful.

Let me clarify the technical side. When making decisions, write down the worst-case scenario too, not just the best.

Hope this helps.

Good call starting this thread.

Let me clarify the technical side. When making a decision, first look at what data you have on hand.

Hope this helps.

The opposite happened to me, that's why I'm writing. In legacy systems, the most expensive thing is unknown dependencies.

Proven by experience.

I went through the same thing. Taking notes for two weeks yields better results than a six-month estimate.

Correct me if I'm wrong.