Using AI for website design has quickly gained traction in recent years. This is because using AI-powered features offers businesses numerous benefits. From suggesting layout templates to optimizing content for search engines, AI makes the website creation process simpler and faster.
In this article, we’ll explore how you can design a website with AI in five easy steps. We’ll also discuss helpful tips so you can use AI’s full potential to your advantage.
5 Steps in Designing a Website With AI
Step 1: Pick an AI Website Builder
The point of using AI in designing your website is to avoid the complex technical aspects and focus on your creative vision instead. Read through the checklist of features below to help you choose the right AI site builder.
User-friendly
Look for an AI website builder with features that make it intuitive and easy to use. For example, find a platform with a drag-and-drop functionality, which allows you to arrange elements without needing to write code.
Pre-designed Templates
A good AI builder provides a wide variety of high-quality, customizable templates that are ideal for every industry. Typically, the AI tool will analyze your business and content to suggest layout designs that best highlight your offerings.
Let’s say you’re designing an eCommerce site; it might suggest a grid-based layout that highlights products. If you’re working on a portfolio, it might recommend a sleek, minimalist design.
Visual Customization Tools
Pick an AI website builder that enables you to tweak the finer details of your website, ensuring it matches your vision.
Look for a platform with a broad range of font choices to help you find one that perfectly suits your brand’s tone. It should also allow you to quickly adjust colors throughout the template.
Additionally, ensure your AI builder can handle image placement and video integration. The tool should allow easy resizing, alignment, and cropping of images, as well as suggest high-quality stock images when needed.
Mobile Optimization Feature
Find an AI builder that designs your site to automatically adjust to different screen sizes. Some builders provide an instant mobile preview as you make modifications, which enables you to see how your design looks on smaller screens in real time.
Step 2: Provide Your Brand Details
Once you’ve chosen an AI website builder, you’ll usually need to provide details about your brand so it can suggest relevant templates for your business site.
The more specific and accurate the information you give, the better the AI tool can craft a site that perfectly represents your brand. Provide accurate business details like your logo, brand colors, product descriptions, and company values.
We recommend using platforms like our partner at Web.com. With their Website Builder, you can choose from a selection of website topics, such as ‘Business,’ ‘Store,’ or ‘Blog,’ among various options.
You can also select additional information to refine the filtering process further. You’ll see choices like ‘Animals & Pets,’ ‘Fashion & Clothing,’ or ‘Real Estate & Properties.’
Step 3: Select a Design Template
When selecting a template, it’s important to pick one that suits your business needs and aesthetic preferences. AI website builders generally offer templates for different industries, whether you’re in eCommerce, photography, consulting, or blogging.
Consider these factors when choosing your template:
Industry Relevance
Look for templates designed specifically for your type of business. For instance, if you’re running an online store, the AI tool might recommend templates optimized for showcasing products with prominent call-to-action (CTA) buttons for easy shopping.
If you’re running a portfolio site, you’ll likely see minimalist designs that highlight your work in a clean and organized way.
Layout Structure
Consider how the layout will display your content. Commonly, AI builders suggest templates that follow best design practices, such as grid-based layouts for product listings or hero images for service-based businesses.
Choose a layout that you think will help you communicate your message effectively.
Visual Style
Pay attention to the templates’ visual styles, as the AI will most likely provide templates that align with the brand colors and tone you’ve provided.
Suppose your brand has a playful, youthful feel; the AI builder might suggest colorful, dynamic templates. If you have a more corporate or professional brand, you might find the templates refined and clean with muted tones.
Functionality
Think about the features you need. If you’re looking to sell products, you’ll want a template with built-in eCommerce functionality, like shopping carts and product pages.
If you write blogs or articles, choose a template with a strong, content-focused design that highlights your posts.
Step 4: Customize the Template
AI builders do a great job of providing a clean and professional foundation. Now, it’s time to use that foundation and make it your own.
This is the part where you add your personal touch to ensure that your website reflects your brand’s unique identity.
How to Tweak Your AI-generated Template
1. Change the Fonts
Typography plays a key role in how your website feels for your audience. To give examples, a formal, elegant font is perfect for a luxury brand while a more casual, modern font suits a lifestyle blog. Set the tone for your site with the right font.
2. Adjust the Layout
Move elements around to your liking. You can move your CTA buttons to a more prominent position or change the size of the header.
You can also adjust the spacing between sections to make the content easier to read. These small tweaks can make a big difference in user experience (UX) and visual appeal.
3. Add/Remove Sections
Depending on your business, you may want to add extra sections or remove parts of the template that aren’t relevant to you. Suppose you’re an artist; you might want to replace the default blog section with a portfolio display to showcase your work.
Customizing the layout to match your needs ensures that your website serves its specific purpose.
4. Maintain Consistent Branding
It’s essential to be consistent when you personalize your design template. All elements should embody your brand identity to build recognition and trust with your audience.
If your logo uses a shade of blue, make sure that blue appears on your buttons, headers, and links. This creates a cohesive visual identity that instantly identifies your brand.
When it comes to visual elements, use images and icons that align with your brand values. For instance, a lifestyle brand might use casual, vibrant visuals while an educational site might go for engaging infographics.
Step 5: Optimize Your Website
After you’re satisfied with your website design, use AI tools to optimize your site. Optimization ensures that your webpage performs well in search engines, engages visitors effectively, and provides a smooth UX.
AI can help you automate these enhancements, saving you time while boosting your website’s overall effectiveness.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) With AI
SEO helps your site rank high in search results. This makes it easier for potential visitors to find your webpage.
AI aids your SEO strategy by analyzing search trends. This way, it finds keywords for you to target so you can build your content around what your audience is actively searching for.
Apart from that, AI can suggest improvements for your titles, headers, and meta descriptions to make them more search-engine-friendly.
Content Creation With AI
AI doesn’t only help with SEO; it can also assist with creating high-quality and engaging content.
Our partners at Web.com have integrated an AI Writer tool in their Website Builder that can assist you in writing blog posts, product descriptions, or promotional content. This feature offers various customization options, such as:
- Choosing a language
- Picking a content type
- Setting the tone
- Adding relevant keyword phrases
- Adjusting the content length
With AI analyzing your business and audience, it can create content that matches your brand’s voice, engages readers, and ranks well for targeted keywords.
UX/User Interface (UI) With AI
A good website design makes navigation and interaction easy for its visitors. AI can help you with this by collecting data on user engagement and using that information to improve your site’s usability.
For example, if users are abandoning the checkout page after reaching a specific point, AI can suggest adjusting the color or size of the ‘Pay Now’ button or changing the layout to better guide users through the purchase process.
Challenges of AI in Website Design
While AI can significantly streamline the website design process and provide many benefits, it also comes with its own set of challenges.
Being aware of these challenges will help you make informed decisions and ensure that AI serves you in the best possible way.
Data Security
To function effectively, AI tools often require access to sensitive data. Because of this, there’s a potential risk that this information could be exposed or misused.
Payment information, for instance, can be vulnerable if the AI tool isn’t integrated with secure payment gateways or lacks proper encryption methods.
To reduce threats, ensure the AI tools you’re using follow strict security protocols and comply with relevant privacy regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Additionally, choose AI platforms that offer encryption, secure data storage, and clear privacy policies.
Lack of Originality
One of the challenges with AI designs is that they can sometimes lack originality.
While AI can produce professional-looking templates and designs quickly, these are based on patterns and data from existing web pages. As a result, your AI-generated website can end up looking similar to others, lacking the unique touch that sets your brand apart.
Make your site stand out by adding your personal touch. Customize templates and adjust colors, fonts, and layout. You can also include your own images and content to make your website more original.
Remember, while AI helps with structure, human input is still important for giving your design a distinctive personality.
Inaccuracy or Bias in AI
AI tools can sometimes make assumptions or suggestions based on incomplete or biased data. For example, an AI tool might suggest design features that favor one demographic or ignore accessibility needs. Similarly, AI can make mistakes in content creation or SEO recommendations, like choosing the wrong keywords or generating inaccurate text.
What you can do is double-check the AI tool’s recommendations and ensure they align with your business goals and your audience’s needs. Make sure the AI platform you’re using allows for manual adjustments and feedback.
Best Practices in Designing Your Website With AI
Using AI to design your website can save time, increase efficiency, and provide professional results. However, to create a truly unique and effective website, it’s important to combine the power of AI with your own creativity.
Use these best practices to ensure you get the most out of AI tools and your personal input.
Combine AI and Human Creativity
The key is to only use AI for what it does best: automation. Then, you can handle the creative side of the design process.
Let AI handle repetitive tasks, such as selecting design templates, optimizing for mobile, and generating basic content like product descriptions. Once the AI has provided the structure, personalize your site’s design to reflect your unique identity through custom fonts, images, and brand messaging.
Test Designs Before Launching
Conduct A/B testing on different layouts, colors, and content to see what resonates most with your audience. AI can help you run these tests efficiently by automating the process and providing data-driven insights on which design elements perform best.
Keep Content Human-centered, Even When Using AI for Generation
AI can create drafts, but your input will make the content resonate with your audience. Add your personal tone, adjust the language to fit your brand voice, and ensure that it’s clear, engaging, and authentic.
Harness the Power of AI for Your Website Design
As you’ve learned today, AI is merely a tool to help you create an aesthetically pleasing and functional website design. However, to make it truly stand out among the rest, you’ll have to explore the capabilities of your human creativity.
Design a winning website today with Web.com! In addition to their AI Writer, they offer an AI Domain Name Generator that enables you to use a custom domain.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
AI-built websites can be safe if you follow best security practices. For example, you should use HTTPS encryption and secure payment gateways if you’re considering running an online store.
It also helps if you update your website plugins and scan for malware regularly to ensure your site stays protected.
No, Google doesn’t penalize AI-generated content. They don’t discourage using AI as long as you leverage it to create people-first content that’s original, useful, and reliable.
However, it goes against Google’s spam policies when you use AI to produce content to manipulate search engine ranking results.
We suggest you create your content structure with AI and then modify the material using your own words. This will give you AI content that’s still original and valuable to your audience.
While AI can automate some aspects of web development, it’s unlikely to eliminate the need for human developers. AI excels at repetitive tasks, but areas like creative design, problem-solving, and understanding how users think still need human skills. AI will likely allow web designers to focus on more challenging tasks instead of replacing them.
Many platforms include a free domain when you subscribe to their website builder plans. Typically, their plans also come with built-in web hosting and domain registration.
