Developing your website using AI: a complete guide for SMEs and entrepreneurs

Introduction: The Rise of Generative AI in Web Creation

In recent years, generative artificial intelligences have disrupted many industries—including web development. Tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and GitHub Copilot now allow users with no technical background to venture into website creation.

This movement extends what SaaS platforms like Wix, Squarespace, and Webflow started long ago by emphasizing no-code development. Today, these platforms leverage AI to automatically create mockups, texts, and even handle graphic design.

But is it really possible to create a website entirely using AI? What are the limits, advantages, and available tools?

This guide offers a complete, structured approach to AI-assisted website creation.

STEP 1 – Ideation, Positioning, Targeting, and Goals

This first step is essential for structuring your entire web project.

It’s about understanding why the site is being created, who it is for, and what it should achieve. This is where you lay the strategic foundation of your project: vision, mission, key messages, audience, and specific goals (visibility, sales, lead generation…).

The choices made here will shape the content, design, tone, and even the site’s features.

To-Do List:

• Competitive analysis: Understanding your market is key to your site’s success. Is it easy to penetrate? What best practices from competitors should you emulate? AI is a valuable tool here. In seconds, it can provide market share data, competitor lists, and best practice suggestions. However, interpreting these results strategically remains a human task.
• Identifying targets and personas: Knowing your audience is the key to impactful content. Tools like ChatGPT, Mixo.io, or HubSpot AI can generate sample personas (job, goals, pain points, channels). A good starting point, but too standardized without real-life context.
• Defining site goals: What do you want from the site? Awareness? Leads? Sales? AI can offer goal-setting templates based on your industry. Helpful for structuring your thoughts, but expert guidance is needed to prioritize them.
• Finding project names and slogans: Coming up with a great name or slogan can be tough. AI (via Namelix, ChatGPT, Copy.ai…) is great for idea generation, using wordplay, symbolism, and industry trends. It sparks creativity—but the final version will rarely come directly from AI.

AI Tool Pros & Cons

Pros:

• Source of inspiration: No more blank page syndrome. AI constantly feeds you ideas and encourages constructive iteration.
• Time-saving: Strategic content creation can be 30–50% faster, especially during brainstorming.
• Alternative angles: AI can suggest segments or arguments you may not have considered.

Cons:

• Stereotypical results: Suggestions often lack industry nuance or personalization.
• Surface-level understanding: AI doesn’t know your company culture, real customers, or internal constraints.
• Risk of unclear positioning: Over-relying on AI can lead to a generic, diluted message.

AI Relevance Score: 60%

At Knok Studios, we believe this is the most critical step.

AI can provide relevant leads, but only human interaction brings out the true uniqueness of an SME: its strengths, market, and identity.

We use AI for inspiration and rapid thinking, but positioning remains a human endeavor, based on listening, business analysis, competitor knowledge, and user behavior.

We help clients clarify their vision, translate values into messages, and ground their site in their market reality.

STEP 2 – Content Creation

Once the foundation is set, the next step is producing the content that will populate and bring your future website to life.

Here, you’ll create the texts, images, videos, icons… that best convey your message, engage your target audience, and appeal to visitors—while respecting SEO best practices.

Often time-consuming, content creation is where AI can be a major asset.

To-Do List:

• Text writing (homepage, about, services, etc.): AI (ChatGPT, Jasper, Notion AI) can quickly generate structured, SEO-optimized paragraphs. You must still proofread, personalize, and adapt the tone to fit your brand.
• Blog posts or FAQs: Great for drafting basic content quickly, but risks generic or repetitive results. Ideal as a starting draft.
• Visual content: Canva, Midjourney, and Adobe Firefly let you create striking visuals without graphic design skills. But beware of inconsistent imagery.
• Simple video creation: Tools like Lumen5 or Pictory use AI to turn text into videos. Quick results—but limited to standard formats. Use sparingly to keep your site loading fast and clean.

AI Tool Pros & Cons

Pros:

• Increased productivity: Content writing can be up to 3x faster than traditional methods.
• Accessibility: You don’t need to be a writer or designer to produce decent content.
• Helps with structure: AI offers article outlines, treatment angles, catchy titles.

Cons:

• Generic content: AI pulls from massive databases. If not reworked, the result will lack personality—and readers will notice.
• SEO pitfalls: Automatically generated content too similar to others’ can hurt your ranking.
• Lack of storytelling: AI doesn’t know your journey or tone. It needs human guidance to tell a compelling story.

AI Relevance Score: 70%

At Knok Studios, we use AI to boost efficiency, not replace the human voice.

In content creation, LLMs like Gemini, Claude, Grok, or ChatGPT help with first drafts, structure, and ideas. But your site stands out by telling your story, showing depth, and expressing your values. Unique, sourced, well-designed content enriched with media is vital for user and search engine engagement.

As for visual content, MidJourney, Canva, and DALL-E now produce stunning, realistic images in a wide range of styles. But achieving a consistent visual identity across an entire website remains difficult. You’ll likely need to iterate heavily, pay for credits, and still may not match professional quality.

Our writers and designers use AI as a base—then bring nuance, tone, and meaning to it.

STEP 3 – Visual Identity and Design

The visual identity is the graphic DNA of your site. It should reflect your values, appeal to your target audience, and ensure consistency across all your communication materials.

Logo, colors, fonts, layouts: all of this contributes to your brand image. The website design (UX/UI) acts as the bridge between your identity and practical site navigation. AI plays an increasing role here, especially in generating brand guidelines, wireframes, and mockups.

To-Do List:

• Logo and color palette creation: Tools like Looka, Logomaster AI, or Canva allow you to generate basic logos along with color palette suggestions. Ideal for a first draft, but rarely sufficient for a professional result.
• Moodboard and visual inspiration: Midjourney or Krea AI can generate custom visuals from a prompt describing your brand universe. A great way to develop a style or ambiance.
• UI design (mockups): AIs like Uizard or Framer AI generate interfaces from text descriptions. This speeds up the prototyping phase but still requires manual adjustments to achieve real UX quality.
• UX structuring (site map, user journey): AI can suggest standard navigation models or page structures based on your goals, but it cannot replace a UX audit based on real users.

AI Tools: Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Quick start: Enables you to create an initial visual version in minutes.
• Accessible to non-designers: No need to master Figma or Adobe XD to create a usable draft.
• Great for exploring multiple visual directions: You can quickly generate and test different graphic directions.

Cons:

• Lack of overall consistency: The elements generated may look good individually but lack cohesion together.
• No UX-driven visual hierarchy: AI doesn’t understand the business stakes behind each graphic decision.
• Undifferentiated identity: Risk of looking like other sites if you rely on raw AI templates.

AI Relevance Score: 65%

At Knok Studios, we use AI as an excellent visual prototyping tool, but never as the final solution. Branding is too strategic to be automated. We believe every company deserves a custom art direction designed to both attract and convert.

AI will save you time early in the process. As Napoleon said, “A good sketch is better than a long speech.”

Also, creating basic mockups for your site or app, and early versions of logos based on your ideas, will help designers understand your project more quickly — a huge time-saver for them.

But in our view, only experienced professionals with a trained eye can turn your ideas into a coherent and impactful visual universe — and deliver the proper files you’ll need in the best conditions (e.g., vector files for your logos).

STEP 4 – Development

Development is the stage where your project becomes a functional website. It involves transforming mockups into web pages, integrating dynamic content, connecting tools (CRM, forms, newsletter), while ensuring performance, security, and cross-device compatibility.

AI can write code, generate components, or suggest solutions — but it cannot manage a full technical project or do everything for you.

To-Do List:

• HTML/CSS/JS code generation: Tools like GitHub Copilot, Codeium, or ChatGPT can generate components, sections, or scripts based on a brief. Useful for developers, but not usable alone by a novice.
• API and script integration: AI can generate code snippets, but won’t always know how to properly integrate them into your structure.
• Responsive design and browser compatibility: AI provides a foundation, but manual testing is essential to ensure proper display on all devices.

AI Tools: Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Significant time savings for developers: Up to 40% of initial code can be automated or assisted.
• No-code accessibility for simple websites: Wix ADI, Framer AI, or Durable.co allow you to build full sites without coding, by answering a few questions. Great for simple projects but quickly limited in customization. Many entrepreneurs now launch a functional first version in just a few hours.
• Help with simple bug fixes: ChatGPT can analyze code, identify errors, and suggest fixes.

Cons:

• High technical risk if used alone: Poor configuration can lead to security flaws or slow sites.
• Lack of architectural coherence: AI doesn’t always understand the whole project — it thinks in sections. You need an “architect” to put everything together coherently.
• Low maintainability: AI-generated code can be unreadable or hard for human developers to update.

AI Relevance Score: 50%

We see AI as a development assistant, not a developer.

In a serious web project, code must be structured, secure, and maintainable. For that, humans are essential. AI helps you prototype faster and fix issues more quickly, but it will never replace a skilled developer who can spot inconsistencies and structure the project for long-term success.

STEP 5 – Hosting, Domain Name, and Launch

Once your site is finalized and all content integrated, it still needs to be launched properly. This involves buying a domain name, choosing a host, configuring servers, SSL certificates, and technical deployment.

AI plays a very minor role here: it can explain how to do it, but it won’t do it for you.

To-Do List:

• Domain name selection: AI can suggest names that balance keywords and branding, but won’t necessarily know which are actually available.
• Choosing a host: ChatGPT can compare offers from OVH, Ionos, Hosting.com, etc., based on your needs.
• DNS and SSL configuration: Entirely manual, unless you’re using CMS platforms like Wix or Webflow where it’s automated.
• Launch and production testing: No AI tool currently handles this. It requires technical skills.

AI Tools: Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Clear explanation of steps: AI can produce detailed tutorials to guide you through the process.
• Help comparing tools and services: Saves research time.

Cons:

• No real technical automation: AI can’t modify your DNS, deploy a site, or set up a database.
• Tasks often too technical for beginners: Jargon can be confusing, and AI explanations may raise more questions than answers.
• Risk of critical errors: Poor configuration can block access to your site or compromise security.

AI Relevance Score: 30%

At this stage, a poor technical choice can ruin weeks of prior work or cause major delays.

At Knok Studios, we regularly meet clients who have lost their domain or hosting info, misconfigured their servers or security… And in these cases, AI can’t do much except teach you how — it can’t log in or perform the necessary steps or test your site’s functionality.

For any SME looking for a reliable technical foundation, calling in a professional is essential at this launch stage!

Conclusion: Acceleration, Not an Autopilot Revolution

Artificial intelligence is a major step forward in web creation.

It allows everyone, even non-tech users, to grasp the digital landscape more easily, test ideas, and accelerate repetitive or creative tasks. It also gives clients more power to challenge designers, developers, and content creators.

The result: richer conversations, better-formed requests, more ambitious projects.

But beware: Accessibility doesn’t mean complete simplicity — or instant results. Behind the automation promises remain many essential skills: technical choices, graphic consistency, SEO, site structure, performance… Without support, you risk falling into the same traps we’ve seen with AI-generated content: generic-looking sites with technical flaws or strategic gaps — that just don’t compare to professionally built websites.

What’s the point of spending days trying to build your own website with AI if, once it’s online, it ranks lower on Google or converts less than your competitors’ sites?

Like in any market, there will always be a comparative advantage!

Yesterday, that advantage was whether a team adopted AI tools. Today and tomorrow, it will be the presence of real professionals who know how to stand out from the crowd of amateurs.

You can give them the same plans and the same tools — the skilled artisan will build a solid house, while the beginner lays bricks unevenly. AI doesn’t replace craftsmanship!

In short, a 100% AI-made site, free and effortless, is a myth.

The good news? Even if you don’t use AI internally, your business already benefits from it! Web agencies that have successfully adopted these tools now offer faster turnaround and higher quality than five years ago.

In other words, you don’t need to do everything in-house to benefit from technological progress — it’s already baked into the services you’re paying for!

AI accelerates. Our expertise leads. At Knok Studios, this alliance is what makes the difference.