There are two loud opinions about AI in web design. One says it will build your whole website for almost nothing. The other says it produces nothing worth having. We have been using an AI assistant to rebuild our own website, and we think both are wrong.
AI has made parts of the production work more efficient for us. It has not replaced the judgement that makes a website worth visiting. This is where we think the line falls.
Where AI speeds things up
Repetitive page building
Once a layout is designed and agreed, producing it again for the next page, and the one after, is assembly work. The assistant does this well, and it does not get bored.
Applying a design system
With colours, type styles and spacing defined once, the assistant applies them the same way every time. Inconsistency creeps into hand-built sites over the years. It is far less likely here.
Changes across many pages
Part-way through our rebuild we decided to change where a set of buttons pointed, on many pages at once. For a person that is slow, error-prone work. For the assistant it is routine.
Systematic checks
Following every internal link on a site, or confirming that every page has a title and description of a sensible length, is work a machine does thoroughly and a person does grudgingly.
Where people still matter
Strategy
Which pages should exist, who they are for and what each one should achieve are business decisions. The assistant builds what it is asked to build. Knowing what to ask for is the job.
Design judgement
Left to repeat itself, the assistant gave us pages that were competent and too alike. A designer noticed and changed the approach. Taste, restraint and knowing when something is not good enough remain human skills.
User experience
A page can be tidy and still be awkward to use. Deciding what a visitor needs first, what can wait and where the next step belongs comes from experience of how people behave on websites.
Content
AI writes fluently, which is exactly why it needs watching. It can state something plausible and wrong. It cannot know whether a claim about your business is true. Every statement, figure and review has to be checked by someone who does.
SEO
The assistant can apply an SEO plan across a site. Choosing which searches to target, protecting existing rankings through a redesign and judging what deserves a page are decisions for someone who understands your market. Our guide on whether Elementor is good for SEO explains what the platform does and does not do for you.
Accessibility
Automated checks catch some accessibility problems and miss others. Whether a page works for someone using a keyboard or a screen reader needs testing by a person. We would not hand that judgement to a tool.
Testing and final QA
Someone has to look at every page, on each screen size, and notice what is off. On our rebuild those reviews have caught problems that the assistant had passed over. The full list is in our behind-the-scenes account of the rebuild.
The risk on both sides
Lean too far on AI and you get a website that is quick to produce and indistinguishable from the next one, with claims nobody has checked. Ignore it and you spend skilled people's time on work that no longer needs them.
Neither is good value for the business paying for the website.
Why the combination is the point
AI is a faster pair of hands. It is not a second opinion, and it is not accountable for your website. Someone still has to know what good looks like and take responsibility for the result.
That is how we use it: our WordPress and Elementor experience, design, UX and QA, with AI taking on more of the production. The standard of the finished site is still ours to meet.
Five questions to ask any agency using AI
Who reviews what the AI produces, and at what stage?
How is the content checked for accuracy?
Will my team be able to edit the site in the normal way afterwards?
What is being done to protect my search rankings?
Who is responsible if something is wrong?
Our own answers are in how it works, and you can read what clients say about working with us in our reviews.
Talk to people who build websites
If you would like to know what an AI-assisted website redesign would mean for your business, speak to someone at our Elementor design and development agency. Book a call, and you will get a straight answer from a person.
