I built this website with AI. Why your company should too

There's a growing conversation about AI-generated websites. You can supposedly spot them from a mile away. The gradients. The layouts. The familiar design patterns.

And apparently, that's a problem.

But I have a question: if a website communicates the right message, reaches the right audience and helps a business grow, does it really matter how it was built?

I'm not saying design doesn't matter. It absolutely does. But I think we're confusing the tools used to create something with the thinking that goes into creating it.

And having spent years on both sides of that equation, I find that distinction particularly interesting.

I used to build websites for a living

Years ago, I ran my own web agency.

I didn't start it because I had some lifelong ambition to become a web developer. I started it because I wanted to bring the marketing strategy work I did for clients to life.

I could help a business figure out its positioning, its audience and what it needed to communicate. But I also wanted to build the thing that would actually communicate it.

So I learned how to build websites.

And I loved it.

There's something incredibly satisfying about taking an idea from your head and turning it into something real. Something people can visit, interact with and use.

But over time, I discovered that marketing strategy and website development required two very different skill sets.

Both were constantly evolving. Both demanded attention. And staying genuinely good at both became increasingly difficult.

Eventually, I had to choose where to focus my expertise.

I chose marketing.

AI has given me something back

Fast-forward to today.

I've just rebuilt my website using AI.

Not with a website builder where I pick a template and fill in the blanks. It's a custom website built with Next.js and Sanity, with Claude helping me write and implement the code.

And I did it by having conversations.

I explained what I wanted. I shared examples. I challenged the output. I changed my mind. I asked for things to be rebuilt when they didn't work.

Sometimes I knew exactly what I wanted. Sometimes I needed to see something before I could articulate why it wasn't right.

Sound familiar? That's pretty much how working with a designer or developer works, too.

The difference is that I could move from idea to execution almost immediately.

I didn't have to translate every idea into a technical specification. I didn't have to spend weeks refreshing my development skills. And I didn't have to compromise on what I wanted simply because I couldn't build it myself.

For the first time in years, I could combine the two things I originally loved doing.

I could define the strategy and bring it to life myself.

But AI didn't decide what this website should say

Here's the part I think gets lost in the conversation about AI-generated websites.

AI can build a page. It can suggest a headline. It can generate a layout, write code and create variations of your messaging.

But it doesn't inherently know what position your business should occupy in the market.

It doesn't know which customers you should prioritize, which problems are worth solving or what makes your offer meaningfully different.

And it certainly doesn't know which compromises you're willing to make.

Those are business decisions.

When I built this website, I spent far more time thinking about what I wanted to communicate than figuring out how to build it.

• Who am I trying to reach?
• What problems do I want people to associate me with?
• How do I explain what I do without sounding like every other consultant?
• How do I communicate the difference between hiring me, hiring an employee and bringing in an agency?
• What should I leave out?

AI helped me explore options, challenge my thinking and turn decisions into something tangible.

But I was the one making the decisions.

And that's exactly how I think AI should be used in marketing.

The ability to build is becoming less of a constraint. The ability to decide isn't.

For years, bringing a marketing strategy to life required coordinating multiple disciplines.

Strategy. Copywriting. Design. Development. Analytics. Optimization.

You needed different people, different skills and often a considerable amount of time between deciding what to do and actually doing it.

AI is changing that.

It doesn't mean every marketer should suddenly become a developer. Or that experienced designers and developers no longer have a role.

It means the distance between having an idea and bringing it to market is getting dramatically shorter.

And that changes what becomes valuable.

When execution becomes easier, the quality of the decisions behind it matters even more.

You can build ten different websites in the time it previously took to build one.

But if you haven't figured out who you're targeting, why they should care and what makes you different, you're just producing ten variations of the same problem.

Faster execution doesn't compensate for unclear strategy.

It exposes it.

So yes, this website was built with AI.

And I'm quite proud to tell you that.

AI allowed me to do something I hadn't been able to do for years: combine my marketing expertise with the ability to build exactly what I had in mind.

I didn't have to choose between being the person who figures out what to communicate and the person who makes it happen.

I could be both.

And if you can tell this website was built with AI?

That's fine.

I'd much rather have a website that communicates exactly what I want it to communicate than one that wins approval for how it was produced.

The tool built the website. I decided what was worth building.

Your website shouldn’t be the bottleneck in your GTM

This is ultimately why I think you should consider doing the same.

Not because building a website with AI is cool. And not because everyone should fire their developers and start prompting.

Because your website is one of the most important surfaces for bringing your go-to-market decisions to life. And for many companies, it’s also one of the slowest things to change.

You reposition a product. Enter a new market. Launch a major capability. Target a new audience. Learn that your messaging isn’t landing.

The thinking might take a week. Getting it onto the website can take another six.

Briefs need to be written. Designs need to be made. Copy needs approval. Development needs capacity. And by the time everything is live, you may already have learned something new.

AI has the potential to compress that entire cycle.

And yes, your website might be complicated. You might have a sophisticated design system. Your brand might need to be carefully controlled. You might have integrations, localization, analytics, security requirements or dozens of other reasons why rebuilding it isn’t as simple as prompting “make me a website.”

Those are constraints to design for. They’re not reasons to dismiss the opportunity.

Because the question isn’t whether AI can perfectly recreate the way you build websites today.

The question is what becomes possible when changing your website no longer takes weeks.

Could you test positioning for a new market in days? Build a dedicated experience for a new audience? Launch a product with the website already telling the right story? Turn customer feedback into a messaging change while it’s still relevant?

That’s where this gets interesting.

If AI can make those GTM moves 10x faster, I’d want to understand what it would take to make that happen.

Where I can help“Why are you different?” is getting harder to answer