How long does it take to set up a website?

At the risk of stating the obvious, it depends on how complex it is.  The following are some approximate guidelines.

If you want a simple brochure site - the sort of thing that will give you a basic online presence, advertise your services and give people a way to contact you, then it could take as little a day, but only if you accept an existing template and don't want any complex features.  It also assumes you have the text and pictures already, and that they can just be plugged straigt into the template.

Our experience suggests that most people, even if they want a minimal site, have a few things that will need work.  A different colour theme or overall design for example, or the use of a logo with a link to another site.  They may want a small amount of copywriting or suggestions on the wording.  We would certainly recommend a meeting to discuss requirements and explore options.  Out of that could come a slightly more complex site which might take a week.

If you start to add more sophisticated features, the time to complete obviously increases.  We have a process for calculating this on the basis of past experience and we can give you a quote, both in terms of time and cost, once we have had the initial discussions.  Most sites will take a number of weeks, often with 80% of the functionality available after one week and the remaining fine tuning taking longer as we go through a number of iterations to ensure you are completely happy with the result.

However, if you want a bespoke web-based application - in other words something that requires the processing of data and the production of reports - you need to allow more time.