Guide · Websites
Build your website with AI (Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini)
The step-by-step process — including the exact prompt structure — for getting a professional small-business website out of an AI assistant, no coding knowledge required.
Updated 2026-07-19
Five years ago, “just build a website yourself” was bad advice for busy business owners. Today, AI assistants write excellent websites — you describe, it builds, you ask for changes in plain English. This guide is the process we’d use with a friend who’s never seen a line of code.
What you’ll end up with
A folder containing an index.html file (and maybe a few others). That folder is your website. You’ll host it free on Cloudflare Pages — total cost, $0.
Step 1: Gather your ingredients (15 minutes, no AI yet)
Write down, anywhere:
- Business name, what you do, and the area you serve
- Your services — names and one-line descriptions (prices optional)
- Hours, phone, email, address if you have a shopfront
- 5–15 decent photos of your work (phone photos are fine)
- One sentence on what makes you the right choice
- Links you want included (Google reviews, Instagram, booking app)
The quality of the site tracks the quality of this list far more than anything technical.
Step 2: The build prompt
Open Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini (free tiers work; paid tiers do better on bigger sites) and paste something like:
Build me a complete single-file website (one index.html with all CSS and JavaScript inline) for my business. Requirements: mobile-friendly, fast, professional but warm, with sections for [services / about / hours & location / contact]. No frameworks, no external dependencies except maybe Google Fonts. Use placeholder boxes where photos go and tell me how to swap in real ones.
About the business: [paste everything from Step 1]
Two things in that prompt do heavy lifting: “single file with everything inline” keeps deployment drag-and-drop simple, and “no external dependencies” keeps it fast and unbreakable.
Step 3: Iterate like you’d brief a designer
You’ll get a working first draft in one shot. Now just… talk:
- “Make the colour scheme match my logo — it’s forest green and cream.”
- “The services section feels cramped, give it more breathing room.”
- “Add a section with my three Google reviews, here’s the text.”
- “Make the phone number a tap-to-call link.”
Ask for one or two changes at a time. Preview as you go: save the file the AI gives you as index.html and double-click it — it opens in your browser. (Ask the AI itself how to do this on your computer; it will walk you through it.)
Step 4: Photos
Put your photos in the same folder as index.html, named simply (bathroom-reno-1.jpg). Tell the AI the filenames and it will wire them in. Ask it to compress/resize guidance if photos are huge — or just say “my photos are 4MB each, what do I do?”
Step 5: The pages most owners forget
Before calling it done, ask the AI to check for:
- A title and description for Google results (it’ll know what meta tags are)
- Alt text on photos (accessibility + SEO)
- Your business name, city, and service in the headline (this is most of small-business SEO)
- A 404 page if you have more than one page
Ongoing edits
Keep the conversation (or start a new one and paste the current file in). “Change Saturday hours to 9–2” is a 30-second round trip, then redeploy — which is drag-and-drop and takes two minutes.
When this approach runs out of road
AI-built static sites happily handle multiple pages, galleries, menus, and contact forms (ask for a Formspree or Web3Forms contact form — free tiers exist). Where you’ll outgrow it: online payments with inventory (e-commerce guide) and logged-in user accounts. For everything else a small business does, this is the whole game.