My Team is offering to build an AI website for our company. Should I trust them?

The short answer is no, unless they are the ones who previously managed it! Especially if this is a first redesign.
But the long answer, while AI-generated websites can look very sleek, at times much better than our current websites, moving to a new website especially generated by AI without expert supervision is strictly not advised.
But Why? I often say, moving to a new website is similar to moving a tree off the ground and removing the roots, should be done with so much care, knowledge of the tree and the soil. The tree is your website and the soil is the search engines and backlinks that drive the traffic, all hooked with your Keywords and metadata offered and indexed on each search engines…and, let’s not forget AI Searches nowadays proceeding typical old fashion Google and Bing search.
So how AI can help to make a website?
AI Generated websites could save great deal of time when it’s done with our most senior experts. Why? because they know what’s needed and how to write the prompts, tweak them and find issues to arrive at the desirable results. It saves them a great deal of time to not code – a recent term called Vibe Coding that’s trending and has become popular amongst programmers and developers.
Using AI for writing code is great, perhaps no human can write as fast and as good code as AI and LLMs can do! But they are missing the human intuition and the purpose. For instance, when asking AI to build a site, the first thing it misses is the SEO, often using a single page to develop a good looking website. While the next task is simple to prompt requesting for SEO considerations, indexing, sitemap, and checking all critical requirements step by step.
AI doesn’t fully get your brand, and it can drive your image to a standard that’s no longer original. Unless you have the branding predefined and utilized within the AI coding process, there AI can be a significant help to simplify standardization and ensuring a quality output.
And AI doesn’t know what’s next, so we always need to find what is the gap to our desired outcome and form that. In this process, AI can produce significant support to speed up and increase the quality of testing and generating code for developers.
Thus while AI has reduced the development teams size, many testing and QA jobs, and more junior roles are fading while fewer people are needed to drive those results. In similar aspects, companies are now more capable to do more, and create higher quality content given their workforces stay the same and having them train and work with AI.
Today, AI adaptation is amongst the most vita forces many companies need to embrace. The order of AI and it’s use is no longer reversible and we have to find ways to work along this increasingly speeding force.
Here are some prompts to use when building a website with AI to ensure some basics are respected:
Website Purpose and Target Audience:
- Clearly define the primary purpose of the website (e.g., e-commerce, lead generation, informational blog, portfolio).
- Describe the ideal target audience, including demographics, psychographics, needs, and pain points.
- What specific problem does this website solve for its visitors?
Core Content and Key Pages:
- List all essential pages (e.g., Home, About Us, Services/Products, Contact Us, Blog, Privacy Policy, Terms of Service).
- For each key page, provide a brief description of its purpose and the primary information it should convey.
- Identify 3-5 core keywords or key phrases relevant to the website’s main topic that should be naturally integrated into the content.
Brand Guidelines (Simple):
- Primary Color: X (Specify the exact hexadecimal color code, e.g., #RRGGBB).
- Secondary Color: Y (Specify the exact hexadecimal color code).
- Accent Color: Z (Specify the exact hexadecimal color code).
- Tone of Voice: (e.g., professional, friendly, authoritative, playful, minimalist).
- Key Messaging/Slogan: (Optional, but helpful for consistent branding).
- Logo: (Describe if one exists or if a placeholder should be used).
SEO Requirements:
- Keyword Integration: Ensure natural integration of specified keywords (from point 2) throughout page titles, meta descriptions, headings, and body content.
- Mobile Responsiveness: The website must be fully responsive and optimized for viewing on all devices (desktop, tablet, mobile).
- Page Speed Optimization: Prioritize fast loading times for all pages.
- SEO-Friendly URLs: Generate clean, descriptive, and short URLs for all pages.
- Image Optimization: Implement proper alt text for all images.
- XML Sitemap: Automatically generate and keep updated an XML sitemap for search engine crawling.
- Robots.txt: Generate an optimized robots.txt file.
- LLMs.txt: Generated an optimized LLMs.txt file for AI indexing.
Schema Markup (Google Standards):
- General Website Schema: Implement
WebSite
schema.org markup. - Organization/Local Business Schema: If applicable, implement
Organization
orLocalBusiness
schema with relevant details (name, address, phone, URL, logo, business hours). - BreadcrumbList Schema: Implement breadcrumbs for easy navigation and SEO.
- Article Schema: For blog posts or articles, implement
Article
schema (including headline, author, publication date, image, etc.). - Product Schema: If an e-commerce site, implement
Product
schema (including name, description, image, price, currency, availability, reviews). - FAQPage Schema: If there are FAQs, implement
FAQPage
schema. - Review/AggregateRating Schema: If reviews are present, implement appropriate schema.
- Service Schema: If offering services, implement
Service
schema. - ContactPoint Schema: For contact information, implement
ContactPoint
schema.
Compliance and Legal Requirements:
- Privacy Policy: Generate placeholder content or outline sections for a comprehensive Privacy Policy.
- Terms of Service/Use: Generate placeholder content or outline sections for Terms of Service.
- Cookie Consent Banner: Implement a clear and compliant cookie consent mechanism (opt-in/opt-out).
- Accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA): Ensure the website meets WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility guidelines (e.g., proper heading structure, sufficient color contrast, keyboard navigation, alt text for images, ARIA attributes where necessary).
- GDPR/CCPA Compliance (if applicable): Outline basic considerations for data privacy compliance if targeting users in specific regions.
Technical and Structural Elements:
- Navigation Structure: Define a logical and intuitive navigation hierarchy.
- Call-to-Action (CTA): Integrate clear and prominent CTAs on relevant pages.
- Internal Linking Strategy: Suggest a robust internal linking structure to improve SEO and user experience.
- Contact Forms: Include functional and spam-protected contact forms.
- Search Functionality: (If applicable) Implement a site-wide search bar.
Output Format and Deliverables:
- Generated Website Code: Provide the full HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code.
- Content (Text): Generate all textual content for the specified pages, adhering to the tone of voice.
- Image Placeholders: Suggest appropriate image types and dimensions, using placeholders where actual images are not provided.
- Schema Markup JSON-LD: Output the generated schema markup in JSON-LD format.
- SEO Report/Checklist: Provide a brief summary of how the generated website addresses the SEO requirements.
- Accessibility Report/Checklist: Provide a brief summary of how the generated website addresses accessibility.