WS - A Realistic Timeline for a New Website

I hear this one a lot, so I'm going to spend this entire article discussing how long it should really take to start a new website. The problem, based on what I see, is that too many marketers make assumptions that it will take X amount of hours to build a site and that if they don't get it done in that amount of time, they're somehow failing. But, the simple idea that you're "failing" at anything is wrong.

Any Attempt is a Success

Sure, there are a lot of ways to go about being more productive and getting more sites completed in the time you have each day, but realistically, consider it a success if you're constantly working towards your goal day after day. For me, a single website could take one day to build or three months to build. It really depends on how much energy I have and how much other work there is laying around.

But, as long as I'm not watching TV, surfing news sites, or playing Bejeweled I know for a fact that I'm successful in working toward a goal.

So How Long Does it Take?

The title of this article is "a realistic timeline", so that's what I'm going to give you. Realistically, you should give yourself a month for every new project, not matter how small it is. And if it gets super large, start extending that time frame to provide you with a longer, more flexible framework for developing your site.

Why a month? Because it's a nice round number and it makes things very easy to track. You can look back at the end of the month and say "by day 10 I was here and by day 20 I was here". Another fun reason this is so good is because if you can get the site completed in one month, you can then work towards reducing the time in the next month.

To do this, I keep a journal with specific tasks I've completed. Microsoft's One Note or the Evernote App both work great for this because they sync between machines. The idea is that if you record every step you take, later it will be a lot easier to recreate the process and make it more efficient.

At the end of the day, I don't like to measure success and failure based solely on speed. It's a slippery slope that will result in poorly built sites that are rushed through. However, a little challenge for yourself is not unwelcome and can definitely help you boost your productivity.

Source: Ezine

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