Building Websites with AI

AI has made website creation faster and more accessible than ever. But as tools evolve at dizzying speed, the real differentiator isn't necessarily the technology, but the strategy behind it.

During the last year, I've found myself building websites. Not because I became a web developer, but because AI-powered tools have lowered the barriers enough that marketers, founders and creatives can now get much closer to the build process themselves.

As someone with a strong design eye and expertise in marketing and communications, I've always been comfortable creating content, shaping brands and thinking about user experience. What I haven't been is a trained web designer or developer.

So, what happens when someone like me starts building websites with AI?

Can AI create me an instant website?

If you believe the marketing, we're now at a point where anyone can describe a website and it will magically appear. The reality is little bit more nuanced.

There are certainly platforms out there where you can describe what you want and a website will appear. However, you should really weigh up some of the tools available first (a project in itself) and have a clear view of your objectives both instantly and long term.

Do you just purely need an instant site for immediate online presence? What’s your budget? How much creative control are you expecting? Do you want a future-proofed site that will go the distance and work alongside your CRM platforms, optimise for SEO, etc?

AI has dramatically accelerated website creation, but I would caution that it hasn't removed the need for judgement, design thinking and some technical understanding.

Traditional Website Builders: Easy, structured but bound by templates

Many of us have had experience of the more traditional and established website crafting sites such as Wix and Squarespace. They have large template libraries, simple and intuitive drag-and-drop editing and a strong ecosystem of plugins and integrations.

Some great sites are built with them, but we have at times found ourselves fighting the templates. The ease and structure of these platforms can come with a bit of a trade-off in terms of control.

The Prompt-to-Website Experience: Fast, impressive, but potentially limiting

Within this category you have a growing number of offers including Lovable, Bolt, Durable, etc. I only spent a short amount of time experimenting with Lovable, so this isn't a full review.

My immediate reaction was that it felt incredibly powerful for non-technical users. Describe what you want, and it builds it. Wow.

But I could also tell very quickly that I would become frustrated.

As someone who likes refining layouts, adjusting details and experimenting with design, I highly suspected that the credits model of subscription was going to be frustrating to manage. I could see us frequently having to purchase more.

For many users, particularly founders who simply need a website online quickly, that's probably a worthwhile trade-off. For someone who enjoys the creative process and likes retaining control, the credit-based model felt like it might become limiting.

And other platforms, though more technical, felt like they might be a bit more future proof for a marketing business looking to connect with other platforms, collect data and optimise for SEO and GEO.

The AI Development Partner: A Transformative web building experience… but not for everyone

My first foray into AI-assisted web design wasn't actually a website builder at all.

Last year, I worked to build a substantial website using Cursor and AI-assisted coding. With no prior experience, within a week, I was “vibe-coding”.

At the time, it felt genuinely revolutionary. We described what we wanted through prompts. We iterated. We refined. Within around six weeks we had built a complex, multi-page web-site for a company we had just rebranded.

Unlike traditional website builders, there was very little sense of hitting a platform limitation. If we could describe it clearly enough, we could usually create it. The code was always there if we wanted it, but we relied on the agent and, where required, LLMs to refine the prompts.

That said, I wouldn’t say it is a tool for anyone. Offline we were creating the branded assets, icons, images, video content and using our experienced design judgement to feed into the tool. We have undertaken a comprehensive Customer Persona project and given a great deal of thought to UX and the customer journey beforehand. It was our first time vibe-coding, but it wasn’t our first time planning a website.

GitHub, hosting, deployment, domain configuration and cybersecurity all needed to be managed alongside this, without intuitive glossy platforms which make this side of things as seamless as possible.

It gave us full agency without the need to learn code but didn’t necessarily remove all complexity. And the biggest learning curve was the prompting, and prompting agents is a skill-set in itself.

The Modern Design Builder: More control, more learning, better outcomes

To build our own website recently, we chose Framer. I did my research and it felt the best fit to provide us the with the correct level of creative control and the pricing model worked best for us.

But what was clear from the outset was that it would come with a steeper learning curve. If you've never worked with concepts like frames, stacks, breakpoints and responsive layouts (which I hadn’t really), then it takes some time to get your head around. More than once I found myself wondering how on earth a component had been built and how to move a text box, something we take for granted as so simple in Canva, InDesign, PPT, etc.

However, with persistence, it starts to make sense.

What I increasingly appreciated about Framer was the level of control it offers. Unlike platforms that lock you tightly into a template, Framer allows you to start with a professionally designed foundation and then adapt almost anything. You don’t pay until you go live. For someone who isn't a seasoned web designer but likes a lot of creative control, that's hugely valuable. The hardest part of website design is often creating something visually coherent and responsive across devices. Starting with a strong template removes that hurdle, which is what we did.

The trade-off was that to make significant changes, you need to understand how the site has been constructed. Sometimes, that took a bit of time. (Don’t rely on LLMs to give you easy solutions. They can give you fairly good clues but often contradict each other!)

I was impressed by the cost of Framer as well as the ease of connecting domains. Linking our GoDaddy domain was very straightforward.

HubSpot integration was a different story. It works, but not quite as seamlessly as I expected, particularly when using a free HubSpot account. Forms required more experimentation than I anticipated and we're still refining how leads are captured and mapped correctly. If you can style it as you want in Hubspot, your best bet is to create the form in there (but you will need an Enterprise Hubspot account).

Overall, Framer strikes a balance which worked for us: enough flexibility to create something genuinely bespoke without needing to build from scratch (if you can find a good fit template, also not always that simple)

Since completing the website, Framer has released Framer 3.0 which now includes an AI agent: a lesson in how quickly things are moving forward! I suspect this could have saved me a considerable amount of time bypassing the complexities of some of our more significant edits. But the agent does come with the credit-based subscription model, and if I’m honest, I quite enjoyed the learning curve.

Key Takeaways

The biggest lesson from building websites with AI is that the requirement for expertise has not disappeared; it has simply shifted.

AI has made website creation faster, more accessible and more affordable. However, while the barriers to execution have fallen, the need for strategic thinking, creative judgement and strong brand foundations may actually have increased.

The most successful websites will still be built on a clear understanding of audience, positioning, messaging and user experience. AI can accelerate the process, but it can’t define what makes a brand distinctive. For marketers and communicators, we must get to grips with new skills alongside the traditional ones: prompting, evaluating AI outputs and navigated a rapidly moving technology landscape.

Yet the fundamentals remain unchanged: understanding your customer, crafting a compelling narrative and creating experiences that build trust and drive action. Bespoke web design also continues to have an important role to play for this reason. Every business will have to evaluate what is going to deliver the greatest returns.

Ultimately, AI is democratising website creation, but not experienced judgement and considered strategy. I think that in a market where technology is evolving at such speed, those human capabilities may prove more valuable than ever.