Can AI or ChatGPT build a website for my business?
Yes, for a first draft, and for a one-page site that can be enough. If the site has to bring in work, a person still has to decide what it says and check the form reaches somebody.
What can AI website builders do well?
Make a decent first draft in a few minutes, for very little money.
ChatGPT, Claude or an AI site builder will give you a home page, some text and a colour scheme. The words are generic, but they give you something to argue with.
That's enough for a holding page, a one-off event or a quick test of an idea. If a generic page costs you nothing, use the builder.
What can't AI know about your business?
Anything you haven't told it, so it writes the average business in your trade.
Who your customers are
It doesn't know that most bookings come from parents, or that bulk buyers order by phone. Those people need different pages.
What customers keep asking
Half your calls might be about parking. Write the questions down and AI can tidy the words.
What to leave out
A builder fills every block in the template. A person cuts the blog nobody will write and the testimonials you don't have yet.
How you talk
It writes like most websites, so yours reads like the last one your customer opened. The words that win work are the ones you'd say across the counter.
What to check before an AI-built site goes live
Most of it comes down to whether it's quick on a phone and the form actually reaches you.
- Open it on an ordinary phone, on mobile data. Does it load quickly?
- Fill in every form yourself, and check where the enquiry lands and that spam doesn't.
- Could a stranger say what you do, and for whom, after five seconds on the home page?
- Does each page have its own title and description, and is there a sitemap?
- Is the text dark and large enough, and does every image have a short description for screen readers?
- Is there a privacy note wherever you collect a name or a number?
- Are the domain and every account registered in your name?
- Does it still work with the animations and the chat widget switched off?
Google's research found that as a mobile page's load time goes from one second to three, the chance of a visitor leaving straight away rises by 32%.
What won't an AI builder do after launch?
Notice when something breaks, or connect the site to your own way of working.
If the form stops sending because an email setting changed, the page looks exactly the same. The builder has no way of knowing.
Builders connect to popular tools in set ways. A rule of your own, like sending bulk orders to the sales number, needs someone to build it and keep it working.
And when a customer says they paid and got no confirmation, there's nobody at the builder to ring. Decide who that is before you go live.
What does a studio add?
Someone who asks how enquiries reach you before anything gets built.
The pages follow from how customers find you and what they keep asking. The building is the part AI has made quicker.
Then the checklist gets done for you, from testing the form on somebody's phone to putting every account in your name. Afterwards there's a person to ring who knows how it was put together.
Do we use AI tools?
Yes. We built this site with them, and a lot of our first-draft code starts there.
A person on the team still decides what gets built, and reads everything the tools write before you see it.
Chalu, the chatbot here, will build a toy website with your business name on it while you watch. The order he puts the sections in is the one we'd use on a real site.
Should I build it myself or hire someone?
Ask what happens if the page is wrong for a month.
If the answer is not much, use an AI builder and keep the money. If a missed enquiry means a lost customer, or the site has to work with your bookings or CRM, get a person involved, us or anyone else.
Plenty of businesses do both: an AI page now, and a proper site once they know what customers ask.
Whichever you pick, put a date on going live. A half-finished site sends enquiries to whoever's page is up.
What to ask anyone who builds it for you
The answers tell you who owns the site and who fixes it.
- Whose name will the domain, hosting and code be in?
- How do changes work, and when would a change cost extra?
- What will it cost to run each month, and whose account is that on?
- How fast does it load on a phone, and how will you test that?
- What happens after launch if something breaks?
- Will I see the work as it's built, or only at the end?
Our own answers to these are in the FAQ.
If you already have a draft
Send us the link and say what the site has to do. We'll open it on a phone, fill in the form and tell you what we'd change, which may be nothing.