Friend or foe: the impact of AI on creating websites
Lucian Chevallier continues our guest blog series. Once a month, we share a guest blog post from an industry expert. Lucian is the owner of Lumin: a web design, development and strategy business based in Brighton, UK. Lumin is all about bringing flair, intention and excitement back to websites and helping businesses shine online.
In this post, Lucian shares his thoughts on the impact of artificial intelligence on creating websites and his top tips for using AI yourself.
AI — is it here to make your life easier, or harder? Is it here to steal your job or boost you up to new heights? And, an important question for business owners and designers: is it here to make websites flourish or flop?
As a web designer and developer, I have used AI and seen it in action and I can certainly say there are two sides to the coin. There are ways that using AI can save you a load of time and add new functionality to your site. But equally, there are plenty of ways overreliance and overtrusting AI can result in a website that is a big flop.
Let me explain those two sides:
How to flourish with AI
Here are some great uses of AI when it comes to creating a website. These are things that I use or have seen others use with success.
Rapid prototyping
Most designers will know the benefit of starting off a web design with a wireframe. But as a business owner, do you?
Wireframes help map out what content is on your site, and where it should live (known as information architecture) in a visual way by creating a skeleton of your site before including any real design work. They provide a base for design and often speed up the process thanks to the thought that has gone into the page strategy before getting bogged down with visuals. They’re super important.
But, they also can take a long time to make for something that is not that visually interesting. Well, with AI and a service like Relume, you can generate a full sitemap and wireframes using common web elements. This gives you a base to start putting in the copy for your website and structuring each page. A process that takes hours can now be done in 30 minutes. This one tip has personally saved me hours in pre-design work.
Idea generation
Ever hit a brick wall? We all do, it’s okay, especially when designing or building a new website.
AI has learnt what it knows from countless data so it’s full of ideas. As such, it acts as a perfect springboard for your ideas (not to be mistaken as the sole creator of your ideas!).
But when it comes to either designing a new section, getting blank page syndrome while writing your copy or devising website strategies, AI acts as a great prompt.
My go-to tool for this is ChatGPT. Sometimes if I get stuck and need some help generating some starting points, I’ll head over to my good friend ChatGPT to act as a soundboard. If AI is good for anything, it’s a great listener. A lot of the time you’ll even answer your own question while writing it out - kind of like how Sherlock Holmes talks to a skull when he’s stuck on a problem.
I might ask “List me 10 ways that you can improve the conversion rate of a contact form”. Boom 10 ideas. A lot of which I didn’t initially think of, now I have some starting points to investigate as to why my contact form isn’t converting the way it should.
Useful AI website features
Out of all the things AI can do on a website, AI chatbots can be a useful one.
When we think of chatbots, we usually think of the early generation ones which were pretty useless. Now, they can be incredible. They can converse and relay relevant information that enhances the user experience – all without having to pay human agents to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That means even when you or your team aren’t on the clock, your users still at least have a chance to have their questions answered. Although they do need to be implemented the right way (more on that later).
For example, chatbots are being used more and more in support by being the “first line”. First the chatbot will interpret your question, then send relevant resources and links to you or even actually answer your question. If that’s still not helped you, only then will it direct you to a real human or a contact page. However, a lot of testing is needed here, as you don’t want to put off users/customers by walling off your human support and using AI as a crutch.
AI-enhanced imagery
No, don’t worry, not AI-generated images… They look kind of weird sometimes, right?
But, something I do use as a web designer is a lot of AI image tools to help fix images. This might be to scale up images to a higher resolution using something like Upscale.media, or removing image backgrounds with a single click using a tool like Icons8 background remover. The latter also has a Figma plugin for seamless background removal while designing - easy!
One for the other nerds
If you don’t just design websites, but code them too like me, there are a lot of tools out there to speed up your workflow.
Whether it’s automatic code completion (like GitHub Copilot) or code checking, AI can save you a lot of time when it comes to building a website. It also really helps fill knowledge gaps by not just detecting bugs in code, but also explaining the reasons behind them. Many developer communities are also adopting AI to support their communities learning to use specific tech.
For example, I’m part of the Astro community (a web development framework), and on their Discord server, they have a channel powered by Kapa.ai. It’s like ChatGPT but specifically trained on technical aspects like code documentation and known issues to give you specific and rapid help with your coding problems. It’s like a free coding coach!
How to flop with AI
This is what I touched on at the start of the article. Overreliance and overtrust will either sap your time, or leave you with a website that’s “meh” or just not usable.
‘Useful’ AI website features
Wait a minute, didn’t I say this was a good thing? I did, but...
The struggle here is that I've seen many useful AI features turn out to be ineffective. Consider the example of chatbots given above. On paper, they seem great. But their effectiveness is entirely dependent on how they are set up. Too many people simply grab a chatbot and think it will revolutionise their support system. That isn't how it works.
If these features are to be genuinely useful, they must be properly configured and trained on your own data, like the Kapa.ai example I gave. And they must be tested. They must be tested. If you integrate any sort of feature into your website, make sure you’re testing it with users, or at least yourself or your team and put yourself in your users’ shoes. You may be saving time on things like support, but you might also be hurting your business if you adopt a new feature with blind assumptions it will work.
Are you sure it’s good?
You wouldn’t use AI to write a project proposal to a new client or customer and send it without checking, would you? I hope you don’t. We’ve all received ChatGPT-written messages and it sticks out.
You need the same vigilance with your website. As good as AI-generated sitemaps and wireframes are for saving time, it’s no replacement for real website strategy. The same goes for fully AI-generated websites. To maximise your site for conversions you need a real pair of human eyes that understands the nuances of your business to make sure the site is working for you and your business goals.
Likewise, for design, it may provide a great starting point but don’t just generate it and ship it. Make sure the design is truly in line with your branding and style, and please oh please make sure that it’s usable. It doesn’t matter how much time or money you save on making a website with AI if you’ve made something with a poor user experience that scares off your customers.
Time sinks
Artificial intelligence should help us save time. It certainly can.
Unfortunately, it can also create large time drains. The most obvious example is when AI generates something inadequate. Think illogical website layouts, unfounded website strategy ideas or producing generally poor-quality output. It's not just a matter of beginning again as you may just get the same results after a re-run.
Instead, it becomes a rescue mission to repair or 'undo' everything the AI did incorrectly. And, in all likelihood, this will take longer than doing it yourself from scratch! That’s why it’s an important lesson to know when to cut your losses and also know whether AI is the right tool for the job. Don’t use a spanner to turn a screw. If you can see it’s not working, stop and approach the problem again with your human brain, that’s good too. Speaking of…
Stunting your own thinking
This is my opinion and maybe a contentious one. But, I feel whenever we reach for AI to do something for us when it comes to creative tasks such as writing or design, our brain gets a little lazier.
This just links back to the overreliance, as we don’t want to become so reliant on AI that we can’t generate ideas for ourselves. Therefore removing your own original and creative human element.
So when you are designing a website — whether that’s writing great sales copy, designing something beautiful or devising a strategy that will really perform — try to resist that initial urge to run to AI.
You have to remember that you are an inspirational, intelligent, bold business owner/designer. AI is trained on us, not the other way around. You have the ability to create something AI can’t even conceive. So give yourself a chance first, you’ve got this.
So, is AI our friend?
Let’s answer some of our questions.
Is AI making waves in the website space? You bet.
Is it a threat to website professionals? Not from my point of view.
Can AI seriously help designers and business owners make great websites? Yes, absolutely! But, remember to check things over, test with users and not get too lost in the sauce of AI. And most of all, remember to still use that lovely human brain of yours too.
So yeah, AI is our friend - welcome AI! Embrace our new colleagues with their artificial brains as they can save you time and provide some pretty great features too. Just remember, we have to work as a team and our AI colleagues may struggle on their own. Our skill sets complement each other and we can get more done, to a higher quality, together.
🔗 You can connect with Lucian on LinkedIn and browse the Lumin website. If you’re interested in more website wisdom from Lucian, you can sign up to his newsletter.
👀 Watch this space for more Guest Blogs throughout the year! If you’re interested in writing a guest post for The Bloom Blog, get in touch.
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