# How long it takes to build an online shop > Development time is almost never what delays an opening. It is approval rounds, the catalogue that does not arrive and third-party accounts under review. Knowing where the weeks really go lets you shorten the timeline where that is possible, rather than pressing the one part that is already moving. - Source canonique : [https://allaux.fr/en/creation/delais-de-mise-en-ligne](https://allaux.fr/en/creation/delais-de-mise-en-ligne) - Langue : EN - Dernière mise à jour : 2026-09-30 ## The critical path is not the code On a shop project three things run in parallel: what I do, what you produce, and what third parties process. Total duration is that of the slowest of the three, not the sum. And the slowest is rarely the first. Configuring a platform, installing a theme, wiring payment and shipping modules, setting up VAT rules: that is days, not weeks. What takes weeks is building a clean catalogue, obtaining usable photographs, having mock-ups approved by several people, and waiting for an account to open at a payment provider. The practical consequence is counter-intuitive: speeding up a project rarely means asking the developer to work faster. It means starting the external processes on day one and naming one single person empowered to approve. ## What actually pushes an opening back - The catalogue arrives late, or in a format that blocks importing. This is cause number one, by a distance. - Photographs are missing, or exist only at small size recovered from an old site. A new shoot is a project in itself. - Approval runs through several people who disagree with each other. Every extra approval round adds days, sometimes more than the work itself. - The payment account is still under review. No amount of development compensates for that delay; it belongs to nobody on the project. - The carrier account, joining a pickup point network, or obtaining labelling credentials. - Legal text is not ready, although it gates the launch of any distance selling shop. - A new request appears mid-course and changes scope. That is legitimate, but it counts in days, not in goodwill. ## Five decisions that save weeks 1. **Start the external processes on day one** — Distance selling contract, carrier account, pickup network membership: these are processed while the site is built. Starting them once the site is ready adds their duration to the end of the project instead of hiding it. 2. **Name one contact empowered to decide** — Not a committee. One person who can say yes. It is the most effective lever on overall timeline, and it costs nothing. 3. **Fix the catalogue format before filling it** — A column added after two thousand rows are typed means two thousand cells to complete. The format is fixed on day one, even if the content arrives later. 4. **Open with a reduced, deliberate scope** — One carrier, one payment method, fifty complete records. The rest is added later, on a site that already sells. Opening later has never made a project better. 5. **Treat legal text as a dated deliverable** — With an owner and a deadline, exactly like the catalogue. Otherwise it arrives the night before and gets copied from elsewhere, which makes it inaccurate. ## On urgency, I would rather be clear > A large share of the requests reaching me are marked urgent. For a repair on a shop that is down, that is real and I answer it. For a build, urgency does not change a payment provider’s review time nor the speed at which a catalogue is assembled. I do not promise a date that others keep on my behalf — announcing a deadline you do not control is the fastest way to lose a client’s trust. ## Related pages - **Emergency e-commerce repair** — Where urgency is real: a live shop that has stopped selling. ([/services/depannage-urgent](/services/depannage-urgent)) - **Scoping a requirement** — How to describe what you expect so an estimate can hold. ([/modules/cadrer-un-besoin-de-module](/modules/cadrer-un-besoin-de-module)) - **Pre-migration checklist** — What must be ready before a cutover, and in what order. ([/prestashop/migration/checklist-avant-migration](/prestashop/migration/checklist-avant-migration)) - **Preparing a major update** — The same scheduling reasoning applied to a version step. ([/guides/preparer-mise-a-jour-majeure](/guides/preparer-mise-a-jour-majeure)) ## FAQ ### Why will you not quote a firm number of weeks? Because a firm deadline only means something if every input is firm too. I commit to my own workstreams and split them into dated stages. What I do not commit to is the date a payment provider approves your file, or the date your catalogue is ready: announcing a date that depends on others would be selling a certainty I do not have. ### Can we open faster by reducing scope? Yes, and it is almost always the right strategy. A shop opening with one carrier, one payment method and a partial catalogue is already taking money, already learning, already fixing against reality. What cannot be reduced is checkout: it has to be complete and tested, otherwise you do not have a smaller shop, you have a broken one. ### How long does a catalogue migration take? It depends on one factor: the state of the source file. A clean export with unique references and stable columns imports and checks quickly. A catalogue reassembled from several inconsistent files first needs reconciliation work, which often takes longer than the import itself. ### Do approval rounds really cost that much? Yes, and it is the most underestimated item. Each round adds the time to prepare a version, the time for you to look at it, the time for opinions to gather, then the time to revise. Three rounds on a page can exceed the time to build it. That is why I ask for one decision-making contact. ### What if a commercial date is imposed? We work backwards from that date and decide together what will not be in it. A date met with reduced scope is a success; a date met with an untested checkout is an incident that lands on your busiest day. That choice belongs at scoping, not the week before opening.