“How long will it take?” is one of the first questions any business owner asks when starting a website project — and one of the most consistently poorly answered. Vague responses like “it depends” or suspiciously precise promises like “we’ll have it live in a week” are both warning signs. The honest answer is that timeline is determined by a specific set of factors, most of which are knowable in advance, and that the biggest cause of delay is almost never the agency — it’s content readiness on the client side. Here’s the real timeline breakdown, what drives it, and what you can do to keep your project on track.