What To Do in the Age of AI Built Websites and AI Built Everything!

It Was Never the Website. It Was Always the People.

Every few weeks, someone proudly tells me, “I built my own website with AI.”

My response is usually the same. “That’s awesome.”

Because honestly? It is. AI has lowered the barrier to creating things. You can build a website. You can write a blog post. You can make a logo. You can even build a marketing plan. All within seconds after you give Claude your prompt. If you’re offended by technology doing a part of your job, get used to it; it’s going to happen more. Technology doesn’t care about feelings; it keeps evolving no matter what. Best to stay ahead of the curve unless you want to be run over by the future.

But here’s the question nobody asks about building a website using AI.

Should you?

It’s a little like changing the oil in your own vehicle. Can you do it? Absolutely. Lots of people do.

Just because you can change your own oil doesn’t mean you should

For most of us, we’d rather spend that hour doing the thing we’re actually great at while someone who changes oil every day takes care of it.

The value was never the oil. It was the mechanic.

The same thing is happening in marketing.

People keep asking if AI is replacing websites, designers, marketers, photographers, writers, or agencies. I don’t think it is. Because it was never the website. It was the people behind the website. It was the service after you launched; it was the mechanic who cared enough to talk to you about preventative maintenance, gaining your trust.

It was never the logo. It was the people behind the logo.

It was never the social media account. It was the people who answered the comments, showed up at community events, remembered birthdays, and cared enough to listen.

If your website is nothing more than a digital business card, something you’ll build once and rarely touch, AI might be exactly what you need. There’s nothing wrong with that. We’ve ALWAYS had easy-to-use out-of-the-box website builders; remember Squarespace or Wix? I do! I still remember at least 15 years ago, a friend in the industry said that WordPress is a bad platform to build on. “It will never beat custom solutions!” Well, sweetheart, I think time has spoken, and WordPress is still a GREAT platform to build on.

Your website is your best salesperson!

But if your website is your best salesperson…

If your marketing is supposed to build trust…

If your business depends on relationships…

Then the technology has never been the competitive advantage. The people have. YOUR people have. We go to your website to see who works with you. Don’t have an About Us page telling your story? Showing your people? Introducing your team? That’s a red flag!!!

PS: Your About Us page is more valuable than you might think

Humans want to work with people we know, like, and trust. If I go to your website and I don’t see an image of you, and I don’t see a video of you, you aren’t giving me many reasons to like you, let alone trust you! We naturally look up organizations before we work with them; that’s why, done properly, your website can be your best sales tool. You just need to start (and keep) telling your story. Why you started, what you do now, quirks about your business, the best day on the job, literally ANYTHING that teaches me about who you are and why you do what you do.

People trust people.

We’ve seen this movie before. When the internet arrived, people said it would replace everything. SPOILER ALERT! IT DIDN’T! Instead, we just ended up watching a lot more cat videos.

When you’re buying a house, choosing a surgeon, hiring an accountant, or picking a marketing agency, you probably don’t trust a website alone. At least you shouldn’t!

You certainly don’t ask AI to make the final decision. You ask people. Sure, for small decisions, AI is great. But for more expensive decisions, we’d all much rather rely on someone (a human) we trust.

People who have experience. People you look up to. People who care.

We use AI every single day. It helps us brainstorm. It helps us edit. It helps us organize ideas faster than ever before. But it doesn’t choose for us…..YET!

The magic was never in the tool

But the magic has never been in the tools. The magic is still in the humans using them. So if you’re wondering how to compete in an age of artificial everything, here’s my advice.

Be more human. Laugh. Admit mistakes. Send the flowers. Bake the cookies. Give away the lottery ticket! (Okay, that’s mine, but come up with your own!)

Call instead of emailing. Show up to the meeting; it’s better than on Zoom. Learn your customer’s kids’ names. Film real people instead of using stock photos.

Tell stories instead of writing advertisements. Do things that don’t scale. Because those are exactly the things people remember.

Over the next decade, the businesses that win won’t necessarily have the best AI. They’ll have the most human one.

The brands that stand out will be the ones that learn to scale the unscalable. And that’s something no algorithm has figured out…… yet.