Websites, like anything you invest in for your business, should be treated seriously. As a fundamental part of showcasing your brand identity, it needs to reflect your products and services effectively. From attracting quality traffic, guiding users towards relevant pages and providing genuine value to your audience, all whilst working as part of your larger strategy, your website should not be overlooked.
With AI capabilities ever increasing, designing your own website, in a fraction of the time that traditional methods take, is becoming increasingly popular. It’s cheaper and often be perceived as more accessible than approaching an agency, and users can build a site, generate copy and insert content without touching a single line of code. To many, the answer appears obvious; website design and development is another industry due to be left in the past.
What can AI currently achieve when building your website?
Today, many AI website builders can generate areas including page structures, calls to action (CTAs), forms and search engine optimisation features to streamline the development process. This produces a website which has the capabilities to satisfy a range of areas that an individual or business may need to create an online presence.
First impressions are resoundingly positive. But will it truly represent your business, and give you the flexibility to make your website an effective part of your wider strategy? That depends on what your business needs.
Does AI understand your business better than people do?
AI tools often produce a generic website, designed to work for any business. This might satisfy your initial brief but delivering the results you’re after is an entirely separate challenge.
Agencies and website developers get to know your business. They understand your target audience, how users move through your pages and what needs to be done to optimise your website’s performance across a range of metrics, delivering exactly what you need and more. A client’s initial idea is rarely the finished solution, and this is where human input matters most, nurturing those ideas into something greater.
A website is more than a collection of pages linked by menus; it acts as the online hub for your business. User journeys, headings, brand positioning, feeds, search visibility, calls to action (CTAs), maintenance, mobile responsiveness and conversion strategies are among the areas to consider when developing a website.
Largely template-based, AI website builders give business owners the opportunity to create a polished looking website. However, this option comes with a host of issues that users may fail to identify at first:
-
- A visually generic website – AI website builders often can’t create a fully customisable visual layout, so if your business uses specific brand colours and fonts, these may be difficult to achieve. Your website can end up lacking distinction from your competitors, making the user experience less memorable and potentially reducing the likelihood of visitors returning.
-
- Lack of tailored assets – AI caters to a range of needs such as calls to action (CTAs) and forms, but these often aren’t tailored to your business. This can be detrimental to the user experience and result in a website that doesn’t fully serve its purpose.
-
- Hidden costs – Credits are the main currency across most AI website builders. While the initial cost of setting up a website appears significantly lower than traditional methods, credit usage can quickly add up and become confusing when updating your website.
-
- Updating your website – A large part of a website’s credibility comes from keeping it fresh, and regular updates are crucial to achieving this. Setting up a website may seem simple at first, but with regular updates, maintaining structure and navigation quickly becomes a tedious task.
-
- Ownership – Hosting a website on these platforms could make the transfer process to alternative platforms a lengthy task that may require a complete website rebuild. This is something to consider if you know you might outgrow your existing website.
-
- Your time and accountability – As a business owner, building and maintaining your website is a task you’ll have to get to grips with. From initial learning through to implementation and updates, it shouldn’t be underestimated. When something goes wrong, you’re accountable, adding to a workload that could be utilised elsewhere.
For a website that truly performs for your business an agency’s expertise can make all the difference.
What is the human advantage?
Berkshire Furniture Services’ website, designed and developed by ads creative solutions https://berkshirefurnitureservices.com/
As well as addressing the pain points discussed previously, working with an agency to develop your website offers your business much more. Here at ads creative solutions, this is the process you can expect from us:
- Discover – We start by understanding your objectives, audience and key performance indicators to build a solid foundation for a cohesive long-lasting relationship.
- Setup – The complete set up of the hosting server and tailoring of the content management system (CMS) follows, to allow key personnel to view the functioning website throughout development, hidden from the public. Live page design concepts and two rounds of revisions ensure you are involved with the entire development process.
- Design and build – Mock-ups are then produced before the build begins, shaping a solution best suited to the desired user experience. Throughout the process, regular contact means the result balances your vision with practicality and search engine optimisation (SEO) in mind.
- Refine – Content and copy are then refined to ensure it is search engine optimised, with analytical software implemented to track performance of each page upon final sign off.
- Launch and aftercare – Once your website goes live, we offer 3 months of aftercare and reporting to help you understand its performance.
While this is a longer process than the AI alternative, it identifies exactly what your business needs from a website, challenging ideas along the way, to arrive at a finished product that integrates cohesively into your wider business strategy. That’s something that cannot be provided by an AI website builder.
Ethan Guest Racing’s website, designed and developed by ads creative solutions https://berkshirefurnitureservices.com/
So where does AI belong in modern web development?
AI is fast becoming unavoidable in almost every part of our daily lives, and it’s important to recognise it as a tool that can support workflows and automate many processes. It should be seen to enhance expertise, not a solution set to replace professions entirely.
Of course, continued development of AI models will increase their website building capabilities, and this may change the landscape entirely. However, human input should not be disregarded. Your business’s needs must be critically assessed to arrive at a website built on sound reasoning, one that performs optimally for your goals, and sets you apart from competitors.
