The single most common reason a website takes three months instead of five weeks is that the content never arrives. Not the design, not the build, not anything technical. Somebody has to sit down and write what the pages say, and that somebody is usually the person who already has a business to run.

Nothing here is about writing well. It is about getting it done.

Why it stalls

Because "write the website" is not a task. It is an unbounded ask with no obvious first move, no clear finish line and a vague sense that it should be impressive. So it goes to the bottom of the list, every week, for two months.

The fix is to stop treating it as writing and start treating it as answering. You already answer these questions on the phone. Nobody freezes when a customer rings and asks what they do.

Write in this order

Not the order the pages appear. This order, because each one makes the next easier.

01 The one-liner

What you do, who for, and where. One sentence, no adjectives.

Scaffolding for commercial contractors across London and the South East.

That is the hardest sentence on the site and everything else is downstream of it. If it takes an afternoon, it was an afternoon well spent.

02 The services

One paragraph per service. For each: what it is, who tends to need it, and one thing that goes wrong when it is done badly.

That third part is what separates your page from every competitor's, because it is the bit only somebody who does the work can write.

03 The proof

Names, numbers, dates, accreditations, how long you have been going, who you have worked for. Not testimonials yet, just the facts.

If you are allowed to name clients, name them. "A major contractor" is worth a fraction of the real name.

04 The about page

Who runs the business and why anyone should trust them with this. People buy from people, particularly at the smaller end, and this page is almost always the thinnest one on a small business site.

Write it in the first person. "We are a dynamic team" is what a committee writes when it does not want to say anything.

05 The contact page

How to reach you, how quickly you respond, and what happens after somebody gets in touch. That last part converts better than anything else on the page and nearly nobody includes it.

How much to write

Less than you think for most pages, more than you think for the ones that sell.

  • Homepage: 150 to 300 words. It is a signpost.
  • Each service page: 400 to 800. This is where the searching happens and where thin pages cost you.
  • About: 200 to 400.
  • Contact: 50, plus the details.

A five page site is therefore somewhere around 1,500 to 2,500 words. That is an afternoon of talking and an evening of tidying, not a month.

Three shortcuts that actually work

Talk it, don't type it. Record a voice note answering "what do you do and who for" for each page. Transcribe it. The result is closer to publishable than anything you would have typed, because it sounds like you and it does not have the stiffness people put on when they think they are Writing.

Steal your own emails. The way you explain the service to a customer who asked is already the right copy. Search your sent folder for the last time you explained it and start there.

Write the FAQ first if the rest is stuck. Questions are easier to answer than pages are to write, and the answers often turn out to be the page.

What not to do

  • Don't write for Google. Write for the person, put the words they would actually search in the headings, and that is the whole of it at this scale.
  • Don't open with your own history. "Founded in 2004, we have grown from humble beginnings" is the most common first line on small business sites and the least useful. Lead with what you do for them.
  • Don't leave placeholder text in. Lorem ipsum reaching a live site is more common than you would believe, and it is always on the page nobody reviewed.
  • Don't wait until it is perfect. A live page you improve next month beats a perfect page that never ships. Nothing on a website is permanent.

If you genuinely cannot face it

Then pay somebody, and be honest with yourself about it early rather than holding the project up for six weeks first.

On my own commissioned builds copy can sit with me instead of with you, and it moves the price, which is covered in the cost guide. The pay monthly sites work the same way: send me what you have and I will shape it.

What does not work is the middle option, where content is nominally yours and quietly nobody's. That is the version where the project sits at 90% for two months.

Questions people ask

How long should it take to write a small website?

A day or two of actual work for a five page site. It usually takes six weeks because it is done in twenty minute pieces between other jobs, which is also why recording it in one sitting works so much better.

Should I write it before or after the design?

Before, or at least the rough version. Design built around real content fits it. Content poured into a finished design gets cut to fit the boxes, and the bits that get cut are usually the specifics that made it yours.

Can I just use AI to write it?

For a first draft of something you then rewrite, yes, and it beats a blank page. Published as-is it produces exactly the pages everyone else is publishing, which is the opposite of the point. The bits that win work are the specifics only you know, and those are the bits it cannot invent.

What if my services are hard to explain?

Explain them to somebody outside your industry and write down what you said. Difficulty explaining is almost always a sign the page is written from the inside out, in your language rather than the customer's.