Ask the agency and you’ll get a build timeline. Ask anyone who has been through one and you’ll get a different answer, because the build is rarely the long pole.
Redesigns that run late almost always run late for the same two reasons, and neither of them appears on the project plan:
- Nobody owns the content. The design is done, the templates are ready, and the site sits waiting for product copy that only one person in the company can write — and that person has a day job. This is the single most common stall.
- Approvals have no deadline. Every review round is open-ended, opinions arrive late and unranked, and the project quietly absorbs weeks between milestones that each looked short.
Which means the honest estimate depends less on scope than on two things you control: who is writing the words, and who can say yes. Name both before you start and the timeline becomes real. Leave either open and no estimate will hold.
A faster alternative worth considering
If the goal is a better-performing site rather than a new-looking one, you often don’t need the project at all. Removing costs nothing to test and is reversible — pages nobody reads, navigation that splits attention, three overlapping explanations of the same product. Most sites would improve more from a careful deletion pass than from a rebuild, and that work can start this week. Diagnose before you rebuild.