Six to ten weeks, one project, a number agreed up front.
An Empyria project takes six to ten weeks from the first call to launch and starts at $10,000. It runs in five phases; conversations, structure, design, build, launch; with one project at a time and a fixed price in writing before anything begins. Most of that time is decisions, not building.
Everything below is a question a buyer actually asks, answered before you have to ask it. If you get to the end and the answer to yours is not here, that is worth telling me.
How long does a website take?
Six to ten weeks, measured from the first call to the day it goes live. A five-page site with content already written can be six. A twenty-page site where the copy has to be drawn out of interviews is ten. The variable is decisions and content, not page count.
Almost nobody asks the follow-up question, which is where the time actually goes. Roughly two weeks of it is conversation and structure, three to four is design, three is build, and the last one is launch and the fixing that always follows it. Building is the fastest part and the part everyone assumes is the whole job.
The honest version: the usual reason a project runs to ten weeks rather than six is not me. It is a week waiting on photography, or a decision that needs someone who is on holiday. I will tell you at the start exactly which three or four moments the schedule depends on you, so you can see them coming.
If your deadline is genuinely immovable and closer than six weeks, say so on the first call. Sometimes the answer is a smaller first phase. Sometimes the answer is that you should buy a good template, and I will say that rather than take the work and miss.
What happens in each phase?
Five phases: conversations, structure, design, build, launch. Each one ends with something you look at and approve before the next begins, so there is never a stage where you are waiting to find out what I have been doing. Nothing is drawn until the structure is signed off.
Conversations · week 1
Two or three hours with the people who actually do the work, not just whoever owns the website. I am after the specifics a brief never contains: what a buyer asks first, what loses you jobs, what your crews complain about. Ends with: notes back to you, in your words, for correction.
Structure · weeks 1–2
A sitemap and a page-by-page outline in plain text — what each page has to do, who is reading it, what it says before it asks for anything. This is where the expensive disagreements are cheap. Ends with: a document you approve, and after that the shape does not change.
Design · weeks 2–5
Every template, not a home page and a promise. You see the first pages early and the rest as they land, so nothing arrives as a surprise reveal at the end. Ends with: a complete design and a design system you own.
Build · weeks 5–8
Hand-built from the design on a staging site you can visit whenever you like. Performance and accessibility are constraints during, not a pass afterwards. Ends with: a finished site on staging and a list of everything still outstanding, written by me before you have to find it.
Launch · weeks 8–10
Redirects, analytics, search console, and the handover call where you get every credential. Then two weeks of watching it, because the real bugs appear when real people arrive. Ends with: the site yours, on your hosting, with nothing owed to me.
Why does it cost more than the quote you already have?
Because a cheaper quote is usually for a different job. Three thousand dollars buys your content fitted into a layout that already existed. Ten thousand buys someone deciding what the site should say before anything is drawn, then building it from nothing. Both are legitimate. They are not the same purchase.
What $3,000 actually buys
A purchased theme, your logo and colors applied to it, your existing copy poured into the layout it came with, and a launch. Usually two to three weeks. Often competent, and for a business that needs a presence rather than an argument, often correct.
What it does not include is anyone deciding what your site should say. That is not a criticism of the price. It is what the price is for.
What $10,000 and up buys
Interviews, a structure argued from scratch, every template designed, a build with no theme underneath it, and someone who is still answering for it in a year. Six to ten weeks, one project at a time.
It is worth it when the site has a job; a bid to win, a crew to hire, a comparison to survive. It is not worth it when the site is a business card.
What actually moves the price?
Four things: how many pages have to argue something rather than just exist, whether the content is written, whether anything has to be built that does not already exist, and how much of the old site has to come with you. Page count barely registers.
Pages that have to argue
Twelve pages of the same thing cost less than four that each have to make a case. A service page, a capability page and a careers page are three separate arguments; twelve project pages built from one template are one.
Whether the content exists
If your copy is written and your photography is real, that is a week off the schedule and money off the number. If it has to be drawn out of interviews and written from scratch, that is the single biggest variable on the invoice.
Anything that is not a page
A careers system, a service-territory map, e-commerce, a client login, multi-location content. Each of these is a build rather than a design, and each one is quoted on its own so you can see what it costs and drop it if it is not worth that.
What has to come with you
Two hundred old URLs that need redirecting, or eight years of posts to migrate, is real work that produces nothing visible. It still has to happen, because the alternative is losing rankings you already paid for.
What do you need from me?
Two or three hours of conversation across the whole project, one person who can decide without a committee, and whatever photography and documents already exist. Not a brief, not a mood board, and not finished copy. Approvals at four points, each of which I will schedule in advance.
The one that matters is the second: one person who can decide. Not one person who relays decisions; one who makes them. A project with a single decision-maker runs six weeks. The same project with four people who each need to be heard runs ten, costs more, and ends up as the average of four opinions, which is exactly what a template gives you for a fraction of the money.
On content: you do not have to write anything. I write from the interviews and you correct it, which is a much easier job than facing a blank page and a deadline. What I do need is access to the people who know things; the estimator, the foreman, whoever has been answering the phone for nine years.
And photography. Real photographs of real work beat anything I can buy, and their absence is the most common reason a good site looks like a stock one. If you do not have any, budget for a day of it. It is the cheapest upgrade on the whole project.
What happens if it goes wrong?
Scope changes get a new number agreed before the work happens, never after. Disagreements get settled at the structure stage, on purpose, because that is when changing your mind is free. And if we get to the end of the first phase and it is clearly not working, you can stop and keep everything produced so far.
If the scope changes. You want a careers system halfway through, or the ten pages turn out to be sixteen. That is normal and it is not a problem. It gets quoted, you approve or decline it, and then it happens. What does not happen is a bill at the end containing things you never agreed to.
If we disagree about the design. Almost every disagreement that feels like taste is really a disagreement about structure that nobody caught early. That is why structure is signed off in plain text before anything is drawn; by the time you are looking at a design, we have already agreed what it has to do, and the argument is a small one.
If I am late. I will tell you as soon as I know rather than the day it was due, and I will tell you why. One project at a time exists precisely so that your schedule does not depend on someone else's project running over.
If you want out. Stop after any phase. You keep everything produced up to that point, including the structure document and any design, in files you can hand to someone else. There is no clause that makes leaving expensive, because a studio that has to trap clients has a different problem.
What happens after launch?
The site is yours, on your hosting, in your name, with every credential handed over and no licence to renew. Two weeks of watching it are included. After that a care plan is available from $150 a month and is entirely optional; the site keeps working whether or not you buy one.
What a care plan actually coversShorter answers
When could you start?
Usually within two to four weeks, because one project runs at a time and the calendar is real rather than a negotiating position. If the honest answer is eight weeks out, that is what you will be told on the first call.
Do you work outside Kansas?
Yes, and most of the work is not local. The whole process runs on calls and a shared document; I have never needed to be in the room. Wichita is where I am, not where the clients have to be.
Will you sign an NDA?
Yes, before the first real conversation if you want. Standard mutual NDAs get signed the same day. The only thing I will push back on is a clause that stops me saying I worked with you at all.
Can you work with the site we already have?
Sometimes. If the foundation is sound, rebuilding the pages that matter is cheaper than starting over. If it was assembled on a marketplace theme in 2016, starting over is honestly cheaper than untangling it. I will tell you which one you are looking at, for free, before you commit to anything.
Now you know what you would be buying.
Thirty minutes, no deck. I ask what the site actually has to do; you ask whatever is still unanswered. If it is not a fit you will hear that on the call rather than three weeks in.