Building a website with artificial intelligence: is it really that simple?

In recent years, several tools have appeared that promise to create a website from a simple prompt written in natural language: describe your business, and within seconds you get a draft site, with text, images and structure already set up.

It's a useful technology, and in some cases an impressive one. But between generating a draft and having a website ready to truly represent a Ticino business, there's a gap that many people only discover once they've already started.

What these tools actually do

AI website generation tools work well on one precise task: quickly producing a plausible basic structure from a small amount of information. They're useful for getting an idea, for quickly seeing a possible starting point, for getting past the classic "blank page" block.

The problem arises when this draft is treated as a finished product, ready to be published and used to represent the company in front of real clients.

The first difficulty: understanding what the site actually needs to do

Even before design, a website needs a clear purpose: generating leads, selling products, presenting services, collecting applications. An AI tool can generate plausible text, but it doesn't really know your business, your typical customers, or what has worked and what hasn't in your direct experience.

The result, often, is a website that looks correct on the surface but doesn't reflect the company's real priorities: generic sections, messages that could apply to any similar business, no clear guidance on what to do for someone who wants to become a customer. We talked about this in the article company homepage: what a visitor needs to understand in the first few seconds, an aspect that requires choices made for each individual company.

The second difficulty: design and style consistent with the brand

Another delicate point concerns design. AI tools generate aesthetically acceptable layouts, but ones that are often not very distinctive: colours, fonts and structures that resemble each other, regardless of the sector or the company's identity.

A company that already has a logo, an established colour palette or a precise tone of communication often finds itself having to manually correct much of what the AI has generated, because it isn't consistent with the image it wants to convey. In some cases, fixing these inconsistencies takes more time than building the design from scratch with clear criteria from the start.

The third difficulty: the technical requirements AI doesn't see

Even when the text and design seem fine, there are aspects that a generative tool rarely handles well:

• correct SEO structure , with headings, content hierarchy and technical optimisation designed to be found on Google;
• loading speed , often penalised by code generated in a non-optimised way;
• accessibility and mobile usability , checked only superficially by automatic tools;
• specific integrations , such as booking forms, payment systems or links to management software already in use;
• security and compliance , aspects that require technical expertise.

These requirements need to be defined upfront, knowing exactly what the project needs. AI can carry out instructions, but it doesn't replace the ability to determine the right requirements for that specific company.

And then comes the moment to publish

This is often where the most concrete obstacle lies. Generating a draft website is the easy part. Actually publishing it, in a stable and secure way, requires a series of technical steps that many AI tools don't include, or only include partially:

• registering and configuring a domain with the right name for the company;
• choosing reliable hosting, capable of guaranteeing speed and uptime;
• setting up professional email linked to the domain;
• configuring security certificates and basic protection against common attacks;
• arranging regular backups, in case of future problems;
• understanding how to update content over time, without having to start again from a new prompt every time.

Many users who start with an AI generator find themselves, at this point, facing a platform that still requires technical skills to be published correctly, or a monthly subscription tied to that platform, with little freedom to move the site elsewhere in future.

A real case: a website ready, but stuck on the computer

This situation isn't theoretical. A financial services company active in Switzerland found itself in exactly this scenario: an in-house team member had built the entire website with artificial intelligence, including design, structure, content and management. The site was, in fact, ready and working.

The problem was that it only existed as a file on the computer. The skills needed for the technical part were missing: choosing and configuring hosting, managing the domain transfer without interrupting the company's already active email, publishing the site securely with a valid SSL certificate.

We took care of it: analysing the situation, a clear cost proposal, choosing and configuring the hosting, transferring the domain without any disruption, final publication. The site went online, exactly as it had been created, without having to redo it, within a single day of the project being approved. You can read the full case in our case study: a website built with AI, put online.

It's the clearest example of where the boundary of artificial intelligence applied to websites currently lies: excellent for building, still not autonomous enough for actually publishing.

When AI is a useful tool, and when it becomes an obstacle

Artificial intelligence applied to building websites is useful as a creative starting point, for quickly generating ideas or drafts to discuss. It becomes an obstacle when it's treated as a complete solution, capable of replacing strategic, technical and design choices that require knowing the company.

The comparison is similar to the broader one between a website built on a standard template and one truly designed to measure: we discuss it in the article when a bespoke website is worth more than a CMS, a principle that also applies to AI-generated websites.

How we work

We can build your website entirely from scratch, with a structure, design and content truly designed for your company, or work on any platform you're already using, including drafts generated with AI tools that you want to turn into a publishable, reliable website.

We handle both the creative side and all the technical work needed to publish the site correctly: domain, hosting, security and ongoing support, with our hosting and IT support service. If you'd first like to understand what level of investment makes sense for your project, the article how much a website really costs may also be useful.

Get in touch

If you've already tried generating a website with artificial intelligence and don't know how to get it published, or you simply want to start off the right way from the beginning, we can help.

Get in touch: we'll work out together exactly what your project needs, from structure to content, right through to publication.