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AI in the business world
The world is being taken over by robots! Okay, but seriously, this is a joke that has been slowly turning into less and less of a humorous statement and more of a serious point of emphasis over the last few years. As a point seemingly emphasized by Elon Musk, we should be wary of the quick advancement of AI and its capabilities. However, not all AI is evil, and that whole topic in and of itself is far too much for a blog post. One thing that can be discussed, however, is whether or not website design will become fully automated and built by AI in full. Let’s power up and compute not just whether or not this is the future of website design, but if it’s truly in the best interest of a business to do so.
Should Website Design Be Automated?
Despite AI making a website seeming like a good thing, there are numerous other factors that need to be considered. One of the main factors that one must take into consideration when pondering whether or not website design should be automated is the features that will be required. Although certain features, like a booking system, contact forms, and other more simple tools, may be able to be set up automatically, you’ll likely need to manually configure certain aspects of each feature. For instance, what features do you need in the booking system? Do you need to connect payments? You can see very quickly where the idea of a “fully automated website design” program would be extremely hard to implement without user intervention at some point in the process.
Another point of emphasis in the website design process that should be pondered is the size of the company and type of business. For example, it would be much easier for a salon to automate a website design build than it would be for a new tech company or e-commerce store. This isn’t to say it’s impossible, but, similarly to the previous point, complexity is really the main deciding factor here.
A few other things to think about would be things like ease of use, security, customizability, following best practices on an industry-by-industry basis, and so on. As you can see, although it may just seem ‘like a website’, for a successful site to work well, it must implement a broad variety of different factors in order to ensure it’s well done.
Is website design already automated?
One could make the argument that website design is already automated in many aspects. For example, if setting up a website through Shopify, once you select a theme, everything is already handled for you in the e-commerce setting, including handling payments, inventory, and more. While there isn’t a “fully automated design” from start to finish, it is very much done for you. Of course, there is a learning curve, and it’s still best to use an agency for your e-commerce website design project to ensure everything works as intended and follows best practices, but that is still one thing to think about.
Another example of this would be Google’s recent rollout of their auto-generated websites from a company’s Google My Business account. Chances are that you’ve come across one of these websites before, and it’s something that is done for you if requested. It includes things like a CTA, a gallery, hours, a contact form, and more—all done for you automatically. Objectively speaking, the pages it gives you look pretty bad, and are not set up well for optimal conversion from website visitor to customer, but it can be a good quick solution to get a web presence while you have your site developed and/or save up for a new professionally done website.
So, although a cliché answer, whether or not website design is already automated is largely up to your personal interpretation of what automation really needs and consists of. If one needs only an individual piece (s), or at least a large majority, of the process to be automated in order to consider this question true, then they may very well argue that website design is in fact already automated. Of course, the opposite is true if an individual is to believe that in order for the question “is website design already automated?” to be deemed true, there must not be any need for human intervention. A good happy medium for the time being is that there are slightly automated solutions out there, but true website design is still a ways away from being fully automated.
Benefits of a website built with AI
An AI-built website is not all doom and gloom, and surely over time, the capabilities of an automated design process will only continue to improve as time goes on. One example of how something like this would be beneficial is if it were to implement industry best practices when building the site, removing a big part of the thought process for a human developer. Things like where your main CTA should be, what to include on the homepage to best convert a visitor into a lead or customer, and/or what types of images tend to grab users’ attention most, could be automatically factored into the design when it’s built. Obviously, this would remove a lot of time from the process in terms of researching best practices for your industry and beyond.
Further, and similarly speaking, it’s entirely possible that with this process would come automatic further optimizations based on the analytics of your website. For example, if you have a very high bounce rate on one of your landing pages, the AI tool may take a look and use machine learning to know what to correct to lower that number. Additionally, it may be able to go even deeper by using existing tools like HotJar or Inspectlet to see where users are hovering their mouse the most, at what point of the page they drop off, what series of page views brings in the most revenue, and more. It’s quite easy to see how this would be extremely beneficial for a business and cut costs drastically while simultaneously improving revenue.
The Future Of Website Design
The future of website design is a toss up. While many experts like to push their claims about where the web is going, at the end of the day, nobody can predict the future. It’s because of this that users and businesses must stay on top of current trends in order to remain successful in the digital landscape. Whether Web3 will take over in the near future (or Jack Dorsey’s Web5 which he claims to be working on already), keeping up with the latest news will be more crucial than ever given the quick changing nature of website design and best practices. What steps can you take today to ensure your website improves and remains on top of the competition?