Can you make your business website with AI yourself? Eight things AI won't do unless you ask

One evening you open an AI chat and ask for a website for your business. A moment later you have the code. You open the file in a browser and see a decent page with a headline and buttons. It is tempting to make the website with AI yourself and be done with it.

For a simple test page, it is often enough. For a site that is supposed to bring in customers, a few things are usually missing, and AI won't take care of them unless you ask. We described what happens to the simplest request for a website in a separate post about our test.

When a website you made with AI yourself is enough

If you want to test an idea, or show someone what your offer could look like, a page made with AI is fine. It doesn't have to be perfect. It only has to help you see whether anyone is interested at all. You don't need to know how to code for this. You describe your business and ask for changes until you like the result.

The same goes for a page you need for a short while, until the proper site is ready. Just know what is missing, and don't leave it like that for years.

Eight things AI leaves out unless you ask

AI does what you ask. Someone who doesn't work with websites usually doesn't ask for the things below, so they don't get them.

• Page titles and descriptions for Google. Each page should have its own title and a short description, the text people see in search results. Without them Google picks a piece of text on its own, and it doesn't always pick well.
• Image weight and speed. A photo straight from a phone is often many times heavier than it needs to be. The page then opens slowly, especially on a phone with a weak signal.
• A contact form that actually sends. A plain HTML file has nowhere to send a message. You need a server or a service that receives it. The form also needs a consent text for processing personal data, and its wording under GDPR is worth checking with a lawyer.
• A privacy policy. AI will happily write one, but a generic one. It has to describe what your site really does with data. Check this with a lawyer too.
• Whether the name and domain are free. Before you order a sign and business cards, check that the domain is free and that no other company already uses a similar name. A domain registrar will tell you about the domain. For the name, look in company registers and trademark databases, and ask a lawyer if in doubt.
• Hosting and a domain in your own name. The file has to live somewhere. The domain and the hosting account should be in your company's name, not in the name of the friend who helped. If the tool publishes the site for you, check whose account it sits on and whether you can take it away from there.
• Ease of use on a phone. A site can look fine on a laptop and have tiny text on a phone, with buttons that are hard to hit with a thumb. Your phone number should start a call when someone taps it.
• What happens when something breaks. The domain expires, or the form stops sending. Someone has to notice and know where the files and passwords are. AI won't message you to say something has stopped working.

How to check a website made with AI

Once the site is online, put its address into our free website scan. There is no sign-up, and the result appears right on the screen. Among other things, the scan checks speed in the Google PageSpeed test, basic SEO, accessibility, the SSL certificate, security headers, and whether search engine and AI robots can see the site. It also shows GDPR and cookie signals, but it is not a legal assessment. In the same scan you can add up to two competitor sites and see the results side by side.

Check the rest yourself. Send a message through your own form and see if it arrives. Open the site on your own phone and go through it with your thumb from top to bottom. Once the site shows up in Google, search for your company name and look at the title and description it shows. If it is a random piece of text, go back to the point about titles and descriptions.

A test page made with AI is something you can safely put together on your own. If it is meant to bring in customers, go through the list above point by point before you show it to anyone.