More and more AI tools are hitting the market every day now, but can you actually rely on them to build you a website from scratch?
And if they can get the job done, can they do it well?
In this blog I will test various AI tools to try to answer this question.
But first, let’s understand what makes a website great in the first place.
I wrote a more in-depth blog about the how if you’re interested, but for now let’s focus on the what:
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Thorough competitor & product research
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Intuitive user interface & user experience design
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Content writing that hits on the right triggers
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Professional development
Ok, so now that we created a guideline for ourselves, let’s test out some AI tools!
Competitor Research with ChatSpot AI
ChatSpot is an amazing tool by Hubspot that you can use to help you research your competition.
Simply plug in the url of a business similar to yours and it’ll list your competitors for you, as well as a few useful details about each one.
It doesn’t end there though – you can ask it follow up questions about your competitors, like:
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What are the pain points that my competitors touch on the most?
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What are the benefits they offer?
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What tone of voice do they use? Friendly? Business-like? Humorous?
The information you’ll receive will allow you to understand the market better and help you create relevant content for your website later on.
UI UX Design with Relume
Relume is a great tool that allows you to generate wireframes of your website based off of a prompt you give it.
Type in something like ‘A website for a fitness instructor’ and let it generate a layout for you.
After it’s done generating, think back to your research and make sure that you include sections that address pain points and benefits you know are relevant to your audience.
A website, at the end of the day, is there to fulfil a goal – which is why it’s important that you know your target audience before you interact with them.
In the future it looks like Relume would also be able to generate the design itself and not just the wireframes, but here I’d be a bit more cautious.
You want a design that conveys your brand accurately and follows a consistent graphic language. From my experience, that’s still difficult for AI to achieve.
Content Writing
This is my honest opinion – I’ve tried various tools for content writing but no matter how specific or creative I get with my prompts, the results are always subpar.
My advice to you would be to hire a copywriter – but if you’re really short on cash and want to give it a go yourself, I would make sure that you heavily modify the results you get.
AI tends to ramble on and uses way too much flowery language.
You need to make sure that you stay on point and provide actual value to your readers.
Less isn’t always more, but if you don’t really know what you’re doing then this is a good rule to stick to.
The only AI tool I would recommend to use in this context is this AI Title Generator by ahrefs. It can give you many ideas if you’re not sure what to write about.
AI Website development with Teleport HQ
Teleport can generate AI websites based on your prompts, which you can then host on their servers.
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Pros: The tool is easy to use and is completely free. Hosting is free too.
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Cons: The websites it generates are simple and don’t stand out.
Their hosting is free like I mentioned – but it also means that the domain you get is one of their sub domains.
If you just want to play around with developing websites then this tool might be for you.
Development with Durable
Durable works very similarly to Teleport HQ. It can generate AI websites based off of prompts you give it.
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Pros: Durable offers a lot of complimentary AI-powered services that help you develop your business.
It’s also pretty simple to connect a pre-purchased domain to make your website look more professional.
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Cons: Like Teleport HQ, the websites the tool generates are pretty generic.
There is one big disadvantage that all AI builder tools have – Which is that you don’t get enough control over your website.
You have a bit more leeway with the design itself, but anything technical is pretty much outside your grasp unless you know how to code.
That may sound unimportant, but not having enough control over your website can lead to bugs you can’t fix, slow loading times, security issues and a myriad of other problems.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t experiment with them, but be aware that these are some issues that you may have to face down the line.
Conclusion
Can AI build websites? Yes.
Can AI build good websites? Not yet, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use it in your work.
If you find the topic of AI websites interesting and would like to read more about it, shoot us an email to let us know!
