I spent last week at WordCamp Europe in Basel where I had a chance to talk to several of the biggest names and businesses in the website space, including Hostinger, Elementor, and co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, Matt Mullenweg.
Surprisingly (sarcasm) almost everyone wanted to talk about AI. Not that I’m complaining, I actually find it fascinating how different businesses and users are applying AI to website builders (not sarcasm).
Although everyone I talked to had slightly different ideas and concepts on its exact application, there was a key theme:
“AI should make building websites easier and faster.”
I don’t agree.
It’s time to leave speed and ease behind
Don’t get me wrong. Improved speed and ease have been the main drivers behind no code website builders for years, and that was a good decision.
This approach revolutionized website building, removing many barriers to entry, and helping non-technical small businesses build and launch suitable websites – something that required expensive developers and considerable time before.
But let’s be honest, the ‘slow and complex’ problem was largely solved after several iterations of the first drag and drop website builders. Since then it has been marginal gains all the way.
Is AI really saving small businesses time when building websites?
I don’t think so. Not when it comes to design.
Even though many AI website builders market themselves with impressive stats such as creating you a website in ‘under a minute’, that isn’t compared to spending hours building a website from scratch, it’s compared to a couple of minutes picking a template from a template library. Like I said, marginal gains.
Besides, just because we can build websites that fast doesn’t mean we should.
In my opinion, AI website builders do offer some benefits. For example, AI generated text and images provide a more contextualized starting place, helping speed up the process of populating your website – but not removing it. They aren’t significantly faster than the ‘traditional’ route of selecting a template and then editing it to your needs.
Honestly, for all the excitement around AI, it’s pretty disappointing.
Note: During our meeting at WordCamp Europe, Hostinger shared some interesting stats with me that offer a counter trend to my point. The data showed that 85% of Hostinger’s users are opting to use the AI website builder over selecting and editing a template. They also revealed that AI built websites received a 60% satisfaction score. These are impressive stats, but they don’t prove to me that AI built websites are significantly better than other no code approaches.
The bigger problem
In my opinion, marginal gains in speed and ease aren’t going to help SMEs become more competitive.
Every small business owner or marketer I have ever met has been intensely passionate about their business. Are they really looking to build a website in 60 seconds? Probably not.
Of course, there is a balance to be struck, businesses certainly don’t want building websites to take more time. However, I do believe that most website builder users want to invest at least some time and effort into building great websites that truly represent their brand and drive profits.
AI has the potential to turn website building into a horrifying quantity over quality game – there are over one billion websites live on the internet – we don’t need more, we need better.
I’m not alone in my concerns, in a recent interview with Webflow CEO Linda Tong, she told me:
“With the right prompt, almost anyone can spin up a website or tool in minutes. But that speed can lead to shortcuts. We’re starting to see a wave of quick builds that aren’t designed to last.”
My proposal to website builders is to shift focus from the already largely overcome barrier of ease and speed and instead focus on another barrier that smaller businesses face when trying to build websites that compete with larger players – accessing helpful, data backed advice on building a better website.
Your AI website agency
Imagine you need a new website and you employ a professional website building agency. They turn up at your office and ask you to write one or two lines on a piece of paper about the type of website you want. Then they leave your office and come back a day later with your ‘finished website’.
What would you expect the results to be? Pretty bad I’d guess.
In reality, you’d expect the agency to invest more into the process. You’d expect better communication, extensive question asking, and time spent on asset gathering. You would want to be guided through best practices and consulted on who your target audience are. You would want value from your investment.
My question is, why can’t AI do that for you?
I had to test it
I’m no expert in AI, so that previous question wasn’t rhetorical. Can AI actually do that?
Turns out, yes it can.
I run a small ‘side hustle’ business where I teach martial arts in the evening. I wanted to increase class attendance, so I decided to ask ChatGPT to help me improve my website.
After playing with the prompt a little, it gave me some reasonably good advice. For example, it noticed that I offer a free trial, but don’t promote it well, so it suggested that I use a banner to make this obvious (this has driven more conversions). It also gave me some other insightful tips on improving my website, some of which I followed and others I disregarded.
Was it agency level advice and insight? No.
But it certainly helped me create a better looking and performing website and it cost me nothing but a couple of hours of my time – which could have been less if the advice was integrated into my website builder of choice and could be applied automatically.
Reconsidering AI’s application in website building
So, in summary, I believe that:
- AI website builders are good, but not much better than the traditional route of selecting a template and editing it to your needs – which is a bit disappointing.
- AI appears to have the power to guide you through the process of creating better websites and optimizing them to your needs – although the advice is pretty basic compared to what I’d expect from a website agency.
- Even though speed and ease are important, website builders should shift focus toward providing an ‘AI website agency’ that holds users’ hand throughout the entire process.
Many website builders already offer the AI-powered tools that would facilitate this approach. Now we ‘simply’ need them to connect these tools via an AI agent to create a comprehensive website building service.
