Can AI design better websites?

AI can definitely design websites quicker than ever before. However, depending on what ‘better’ means to you, AI can have limitations. It can be great for producing quick designs, initial drafts, variations and can help inform decisions based on data. However, to make a truly ‘better’ website, you will still need human input for brand strategy, accessibility, creativity and user experience.

AI has become a standard part of web design. Many designers use AI to help them with their research, asset creation, initial interface design and layout exploration. Most will still look at the AI output and refine it further.

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Current AI tools can take your written prompt and produce an initial draft of your homepage. You can also get colour palette suggestions, image creation, writing, responsive layout design and even front-end code. This makes AI ideal for the initial stages of your project.

For example, you could give your business owner a prompt like ‘A clean modern landing page for a sustainable skincare brand’. In a matter of minutes, you would get a range of different design directions. AI can then be used to adapt these for mobile use, suggest different headlines or create concepts for the product images.

This is really useful as surveys show that designers commonly use AI to create basic assets, initial interface designs and layout explorations. Developers are increasingly using AI for coding and productivity. So you’re not only speeding up your design process but also getting more experimentation within your design process.

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AI is fantastic at spotting trends. Due to the vast amount of web design it has learnt from, it can create a website that has common features that people are familiar with. This can include having a navigation bar at the top, clear headline, social proof and stand out call to action.

This can help improve the usability of the website as it becomes familiar to your users. AI can also help with analysing engagement data, heatmaps, and conversion data to suggest improvements such as shortening your form, changing the position of your button or testing different hero sections.

Artificial Intelligence is capable of uncovering personal experience as well. For instance, an e-commerce platform can recommend various products according to the information processed from the searched items. Service providers may also adapt the language while interacting with either new or returning customers. This is how a personalised experience results in increased customer engagement.

AI can also help with simple optimisations. It can compress images, suggest SEO friendly headings, highlight slow elements and what could be improved. This helps free up your designer/developer to focus on bigger decisions.

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The main issue with AI is that it doesn’t understand your business. It can produce something that looks good but doesn’t understand your goals, how you stand against your competitors, what your customers are concerned about, your tone of voice or the emotional reason your customers choose your brand.

A website created using AI may look good but can feel generic. It can include generic-looking assets, predictable layouts and general statements that could be used by almost any company within the same industry. This is an issue, as great websites should include a unique perspective.

AI can struggle with knowing what the priority of your page should be. Should it focus on generating leads, educating your customers, building trust or immediate conversions? This will depend on your audience, offer, sales cycle and business model. AI can suggest different options, but you would need a human strategist to decide what will help achieve your goal.

AI can also produce code with errors, security issues and not be implemented the most efficiently. Reports show that AI-assisted development can create code with errors and vulnerabilities.

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AI can struggle with this quite clearly. Whilst a website may look complete and pass an automated scan, it can be difficult to use for people using screen readers, keyboard navigation or other accessibility tools.

Research shows that a large proportion of AI interfaces have accessibility issues. Overall, AI-generated website builders don’t always comply with WCAG 2.1 standards. Common issues include unclear alt text, poor heading structure, inaccessible keyboard navigation and unclear interactive elements.

Whilst AI can highlight when alt text isn’t present, suggest better contrast and spot some issues with the structure, it cannot be relied on to determine if the alt text is meaningful, if the form makes sense or if the user can accomplish an important task using their accessibility tools. Testing by humans is required.

This can cause issues for your business as you could be excluding potential customers, damaging trust and causing legal issues. Whilst AI can be used to help create an accessible website, it should not be used as a replacement for accessibility knowledge.

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The best way to use AI is to use it as an assistance tool. AI is great with speed; it can create drafts, variations, assets and help with simple optimisation. Human designers can add context. They know why your customer will choose your brand over another, how to translate your goal into a clear journey and when something doesn’t feel right despite being technically correct.

Your designer may use AI to create 10 homepage concepts in an afternoon, but most won’t fit your brand’s personality or what your customers expect. This isn’t an issue with AI; this is how it should be used! It gives you more options to choose from, and you can decide what direction to go in.

Developers will also do this. AI can speed up your coding, but professionals will still need to test it for performance, security, maintainability, browser compatibility and integration. Your website needs to work in the real world.

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A better website will load quickly, be clear, reflect your brand, be responsive, rank well in search engines, convert and be easy to maintain.

AI can help improve many aspects of your website, especially speed, consistency, testing and optimisation. However, if your strategy is poor, then AI will just produce a more polished version of a poor idea.

AI should be seen as a highly skilled assistant. It can help you create the initial draft, suggest variations, help with simple tasks and speed up your iterations. Your team will still need to know what you want to achieve, understand your customer, protect your brand, ensure quality and ensure that the final experience will work.

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We see AI as a powerful tool within our professional web design processes. We use AI to speed up our research, ideation, content drafting, visual exploration and optimisation. Our experienced professionals will guide your strategy.

We start by understanding your business, audience, goals, competitors, services and what you want your visitors to do. We can then use AI to help us generate ideas and speed up our processes. However, we will create a clear, usable, fast and brand-focused website.

This is incredibly valuable for businesses wanting to create modern websites whilst keeping their creativity. We can give you momentum with AI but will ensure your website has purpose, is accessible, responsive and will help you grow in the long term.

Whether you need a corporate website, e-commerce experience, landing page or a bespoke web application, we combine intelligent automation with our professional design & development. We want to create websites that look impressive, work well and provide value.

To get the most out of AI, use it at the right times. AI can be great for generating headline ideas, initial wireframes, image concepts, product descriptions, layout variations and technical improvements.

However, it is not reliable for making decisions around brand positioning, complex journeys, accessibility, security and final code review. Using experienced professionals will help you ask better questions.

Start by knowing what your goal is for your business. Use AI to quickly explore some ideas and then refine the best concept with your designers & developers. Create a clean, maintainable website. Test with real users and continuously optimise. AI will help you with everything, but you will be responsible for the outcome.

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AI will become more advanced, integrated and contextual. Future tools will better understand your brand guidelines, create more accessible components, create smarter personalisation and help with testing across devices.

You will, nevertheless, still need human professionals. But as AI makes web page creation simpler, you need your website to differentiate itself from the crowd much more with its strategy, creativity and dependable, quality experience. Anyone can put together a webpage, but not many can create a digital experience that conveys what your business is about and converts visitors into clients.

The successful companies will be those that will use AI to accelerate things but with good use of their judgment, creativity and quality.

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Can AI design better websites? Yes, AI can design quicker, be more efficient with iterations and improve a lot of technical & UX decisions. However, it cannot guarantee a better website on its own.

The best results will come from using AI for speed and having humans involved with strategy, design, accessibility knowledge & technical oversight. AI will give you the momentum, but experienced professionals will give you the direction.

If you want to get the benefits of AI but don’t want a generic result, Techjeta can help. We provide professional web design & development with strategy, performance, usability & brand growth. AI can help you create the future of web design, but it is the thoughtful professionals who will make it better.