Why Building a Thoughtful Website Takes Time

“How long will the process of creating a site take and when can we expect to launch?”

That’s a question we often hear from new clients and it’s why reviewing timelines and expectations is an important part of our early conversations. And it is such an important question! If an organization is committing time and money in building a new website, there is inevitably a great deal of enthusiasm to launch and to start using it.

Here’s the thing: building a strategic, functional, accessible, and beautiful website is a highly detailed process. Even in this age of AI and demanding expectations, it takes time. At Mangrove, we work with organizations who care deeply about their missions and communities. We take the time required to build a site that reflects the work of those organizations, serves their audiences, meets accessibility standards, and stands the test of time. Most of our sites are still in use years and years after launch.

It’s also not unusual for a site design and development project to take longer than expected. Below, we break down a few key factors that influence how long a site can take to build.

Building a website is collaborative

While we bring the technical expertise, strategic insight, and design and development skills to the table, you and your team bring the vision, voice, and subject matter expertise. Partnering with our skills and knowledge is part of what will make your site strong. This is where the dance happens. As we learn about your organization’s mission, brand, strategic direction and content requirements, our goal is to ensure that our in-depth understanding translates to a useful, accessible and scalable website.

This means that timelines depend not only on our current workload and future capacity, but also on your team having adequate time to review materials, share feedback, finalize content, and align internally on organizational goals and overall direction. In fact, in our experience, the most common project delays stem from clients with shifting internal priorities, new stakeholders, or simply needing more time to gather approvals. It’s not that we’re perfect, and sometimes delays do occur on our side. At the same time, we know that we build websites all day and our clients have a few other tasks!

The more aligned our two teams are from the start—and the more time your team can dedicate along the way—the smoother and more efficient the process will be. We do our best to create timelines that reflect the reality of our clients’ work schedules (as well as our own) and our objective is always to make it humane and achievable.

Discovery, strategy, and content come first

Design and development may be the most visible parts of creating a new website, but strong sites start with a strong foundation of discovery and strategy. Before any content is written or designs take shape, we take the time for a thorough discovery process. During this first phase, we learn about your organization, your goals, your audiences, and what success looks like for your website. We also research how your organization and similar, like-minded organizations present themselves online and investigate what works and doesn’t.

These insights help us make decisions about site architecture, messaging, and functionality. Our work can take several meetings or weeks to complete, depending on the size of the site.

We then move into building our digital and content strategy and messaging. Clear copy with web-focused language that is accessible and well-organized, with intentional calls to action take time —and shape how a site will look, work and feel.

We have noticed that getting content right often takes longer than expected—especially when multiple stakeholders need to weigh in or when clients are taking on the full load of writing and editing. It can be frustrating, but we do know that this investment of time, and sometimes financial resources, pay off in clarity, alignment with audience needs, and long-term site usability.

Design and development are custom and intentional

When we move into design and development, healthy timelines are essential. This is an important piece of the puzzle. At Mangrove, we design and build our sites using a custom WordPress system that we’ve created over the years to accommodate clients and we tailor that framework to your specific needs, goals and functionality requirements. We don’t rely on out-of-the-box or one-size-fits-all solutions, which means our work can take longer than expected.

Designing a custom site means we’re making thoughtful decisions about how your content is presented, how users navigate and take action, and how your brand and story appears. From structure and layout to visual storytelling and user experience, our design work is informed by fifteen years of best practices and everything we’ve learned about your organization up to this point.

Development is finally where everything comes to life. Our team builds the site structure, integrates the right tools, and ensures performance, accessibility, and ease of use for you and your visitors. Website elements are customized so that your site not only looks great but functions smoothly.

Training, quality assurance, and integrating content

Before your site goes live, we run it through a detailed quality assurance process. That includes checking accessibility features, making sure pages display correctly across devices, and testing functionality.

This step ensures your site meets both your expectations and the needs of visitors. And while it can be tempting to speed through the final stretch, we believe it’s worth taking the time to launch with confidence.

Our schedules also account for training time to ensure your team feels great about using and updating your new site. We spend an inordinate amount of time customizing a site’s dashboard to make ongoing content governance as easy as possible. Last but not least, we know that it takes a lot of time to integrate all content and make it look good.

While this level of customization takes time, it means you end up with a site that’s custom built for your organization.

There’s no shortcut to meaningful work

Let’s get something out of the way. Yes, it’s possible to build a website quickly. But it’s important to consider what may be sacrificed by doing so: clarity, functionality, accessibility, and long-term flexibility. A site built in a hurry may meet an urgent need, but cutting corners only serves to reduce the quality, consistency or integrity of a product. And it’s important to mention that a hastily built site can also cause undue stress on your internal team, who are striving to meet deadlines and provide feedback.

While the timeline might feel longer than expected, we promise—it’s time well spent.

And while you’re waiting to launch, you don’t need to keep the new website a secret. There are many meaningful ways to build momentum during the process, like sharing behind-the-scenes updates or teasing new features with your audience. Taking these actions can make your site launch even more impactful.

Plan ahead, partner well

If you’re planning a new website, one of the best things to do is start early. Give your team time to align and collaborate—and choose a partner who’s committed to doing the work well and who will take the appropriate amount of time to deliver a superb product.

We are committed to building websites that support our clients’ missions and serve their audiences and community. Want to learn more about our services or see what we’ve been building lately? Please explore our recent work or reach out to us.

Photo by Hans-Peter Gauster on Unsplash