A website in a week: what it actually takes from you

The most common reason a business does not have a proper website is neither price nor technology. It is the memory of a previous project that dragged on from spring to autumn and was left unfinished. A draft in a week is possible when two things are done differently: you do not write the texts, and you do not have to decide anything until you see the finished page.

The timeline described here applies to Ylimäki Media's one-page website with a monthly fee. It is not a general claim that any website project would be finished in a week. An online shop or system integrations are work of a different scale.

Why website projects drag on

A project does not drag on because writing the code takes months. It drags on in waiting periods: the builder sends a draft, the business owner gets round to looking at it two weeks later, the builder is on another job by then, and the next round starts a month later. Three such rounds make half a year, even though only a week of actual work has been done.

The second brake is the material. The project stops to wait for texts that nobody has time to write, because an empty page is the hardest possible starting point. The third is money: when a big invoice has to be approved in advance, the decision is put off. The monthly fee model removes the last two brakes entirely.

How getting started works

1. You tell me about your business. You fill in a short form or call. You tell me what your business does and who your customers are. This is enough to start.
2. You get a free draft within a week. I write the texts and make a draft of your website. You do not need to be available in the meantime.
3. You comment on the draft. I correct it to look like you. You are not yet committed to anything.
4. The page is published when you are happy. The first 14 days from publication are free. If you cancel during that time, you pay nothing.
5. The contract starts only after the trial. If you do not cancel, the contract continues one month at a time (€15.90/month + VAT), or 12 months at a time if you choose annual billing (€12.90/month + VAT). I will remind you 2 days before the trial ends.

So a week means the time from when you have told me about your business to when you see the draft. When it is published depends on how quickly you get round to commenting. The detailed terms are on the service page.

Why one page is enough to start with

The structure is not a matter of taste but a consequence of what I sell. For most local businesses, one good page says everything essential: what you do, where, for whom and how to reach you. One page is also what gets finished in a week without the schedule falling apart in an argument about structure.

If you have several clearly separate services, they can get their own pages right at the start or later. The website can be expanded to as many as 30 pages, see scopes and prices. Expanding does not require renewing the whole website.

What material is actually needed

The list is shorter than most people expect. These are enough:

• Contact details in the form you want them published: phone, email, service area or address, Business ID.
• Photos of finished jobs, if you have them. Ones taken with a phone work well, as long as they are your own. A stock photo is recognised, and it costs more credibility than it adds.
• A list of services in the order in which you want to sell them. No descriptions, a plain list is enough.
• Domain name details, if the domain name already exists.

Texts are deliberately not on the list. Nobody can write about their own work on an empty page, but everyone can answer the question “what does a customer ask you first on the phone”. The text of the page comes from that, and I write it. If you want to prepare in advance, the questions are in the article what to write on your website.

How to give feedback

Put all the corrections in the same message: which text is wrong, which photo is replaced, what is missing. One list is quicker to deal with than three emails on three days, and it keeps the launch close.

Do not hold back changes at the draft stage. Changes to texts and photos after publication are not included in the monthly fee, and are agreed separately.

What is done at publication

• The page is moved to the server, and a TLS certificate (https) is put in place.
• Title and meta descriptions, structured data, sitemap and robots.txt are in order.
• The website is verified in Google Search Console and Bing.
• Indexing is checked after publication.

The full list is on the visibility page. Even so, publication is not the same thing as search visibility. The page exists and is usable on launch day, but when and how search engines crawl it is not something anyone can decide. Search Console is used precisely so that the situation can be followed instead of guessed.

Where the schedule breaks down in practice

Three things most often delay publication, and all three can be foreseen.

The old domain name is stuck. The login details are held by the previous builder, who cannot be reached. It is worth preparing for this right at the start, because a transfer can take days no matter how finished the page is. You can check the domain name holder yourself in advance, with instructions in the article domain and email.

Nobody gets round to looking at the draft. The draft is ready in a week, but publication waits for your comments. Reserve half an hour for the draft even before you start.

Decisions are not made. If three people decide about the page, there will be three rounds of comments. Name one person who has the final say.

What if a week does not fit my calendar

A week is a delivery time, not a requirement. If your own busy period falls exactly at that point, we start later. The trial period only starts from publication, so waiting does not use it up. What matters is not speed in itself but that the project does not hang in the background for months. A hanging project costs twice: once in money and once in that customers look for you in vain in the meantime.

We already have a website, but it is old

Then the first question is not renewal but whether the old website has any visibility left. You find that out by checking which searches the site currently turns up for, and it is done before anything is taken down. More in the article website redesign without losing visibility.