Building your own website with AI: do’s and don’ts

Lovable, Framer, Wix with AI: you type a few sentences about your business and half an hour later there is a website that looks surprisingly good. That is genuinely impressive, and we understand why more and more business owners try it themselves. We use AI every day too.

But a website that looks good is not yet a website that works. In this article we list honestly what you can do perfectly well yourself with such a tool, and where it often goes wrong in practice. So you can decide for yourself.

What AI site builders do well

• Showing something fast. Testing an idea, a simple one-pager for a starter or a page for an event: they are ideal for that.
• A good-looking starting point. Layout, colours and fonts look polished straight away, even without design experience.
• Editing it yourself. Changing a text or a photo is usually quick, without having to call anyone.

The do’s

1. Start with your content, not with the prompt

First write down who your customers are, what you do for them, why they should choose you and what they should do next (call, email, ask for a quote). Give the AI that as a basis. Otherwise you get a text that could just as well be about your competitor.

2. Register your domain name yourself, in your own name

Your domain name is your address on the internet and often your email address too. Make sure it is in your name, with a registrar where you can log in yourself, separate from the tool you build the site with. Then you can always move.

3. Check whether you can take your website with you

Find out beforehand what happens when you stop the subscription. Can you export the site and run it somewhere else, or do you start over? That does not have to be a reason not to use the tool, but you want to know before you put a lot of time into it.

4. Test on your phone, and not only on wifi

Most visitors reach your site on their smartphone, often on the go. Open your site on your own phone over mobile data and check how fast it loads, whether everything is readable and whether buttons are easy to tap.

5. Turn on Google Search Console from day one

Search Console is free and shows whether Google knows your pages and which search terms people find you with. With “URL inspection” you also see how Google actually reads your page. It is the fastest way to discover that something is wrong.

6. Read every sentence, and click every button

AI likes to fill gaps on its own: opening hours that are wrong, services you do not offer, or customer reviews that were never written. Everything on your site counts as your promise to your customer. But reading alone is not enough: you cannot see where a button or link leads just by looking at it. So click every button, every phone number and every email address yourself, and do it on your phone too.

The don’ts

1. Do not simply replace your old website

Already had a website that people found? Then Google knows your old addresses (URLs). If your pages get a new address without a redirect (a 301 redirect), visitors land on an error page and you lose the rankings you built up over the years. So first make a list of your existing pages and make sure every old link ends up somewhere sensible.

2. Do not forget your email

When you move a domain or its DNS, email on your own domain often drops out for a while, or your mails suddenly end up in spam because settings like SPF, DKIM and DMARC were not moved along. Check this before you flip the switch, not after.

3. Do not assume Google sees everything

Some AI tools build a site that only assembles its content with JavaScript in the browser. Google can usually handle that, but not always completely, and many other services cannot. Share the link of a page on WhatsApp or LinkedIn: do the right title and image appear? And check in Search Console whether your texts are really being read.

4. Do not skip the legal basics

In the EU, a business website has to show your company details, such as your company name, address and registration or VAT number. If you collect data through a contact form, you need a privacy policy. If you use analytics or advertising cookies, you have to ask for consent first. An AI tool does not always get that right on its own.

5. No form without testing it

A contact form that looks perfect but never delivers costs you customers without you noticing. Send yourself a test message after every change, and check your spam folder too.

6. Do not only count the subscription

The monthly fee of the tool is rarely the real cost. Also count the hours you spend on texts, images, changes and problems. Would that time be better spent on your own customers? Then doing it yourself is not necessarily cheaper.

What we see in practice

Recently we checked a website that had been made with an AI site builder. Clean design, nice fonts, polished copy. At first glance there was nothing wrong with it. Until we started clicking the buttons.

• The call button dialled a fake number abroad. The correct number was right there on the page, but the link behind it had never been changed.
• The “Contact us” button sent emails to the template maker’s address, not to the business owner.
• The most important button on the site, the one to book a call, did nothing at all.
• Anyone who shared the site on WhatsApp or LinkedIn saw this in the preview: “A short introduction about what you do goes here.”
• On a phone, the headline took up six lines. The button to get in touch only appeared after scrolling.

The owner was unaware of every one of these mistakes. That is what makes them treacherous: you will not spot a single one just by looking at your site. They had all been there from day one, and they were costing customers without anyone noticing.

Do it yourself or have it done?

Doing it yourself is a good idea if you need a simple site, you enjoy getting your hands dirty and you do not mind if it is found less well for a while.

Help pays off if your website has to bring in customers, if you are already found well and want to keep it that way, if you work in several languages, or if your site has to work with other systems such as a webshop, bookings or your accounting.

It does not have to be either-or. You can build it yourself and have someone look at it before you go live, or have a professional base built that you then maintain yourself.

Already built it yourself? Have it checked

Have you already made a website with AI, or are you working on one? Send us the link. We check whether Google reads it properly, how fast it is on a phone, whether your form and email work and whether the legal basics are in order. Then we tell you honestly what is fine and what could be better.