Build your website with AI (Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini)

Five years ago, “just build a website yourself” was bad advice for busy business owners. AI assistants can draft a simple website from your description. You still need to check the content, layout, and behavior. This guide is the process we’d use with a friend who’s never seen a line of code.

Once it is published, use Get your website AI ready to check whether search crawlers and agents can read the public content. Building with an AI assistant does not automatically establish crawler access or AI search visibility.

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.

Keep customer data out of the draft

Use public business facts and fictional or carefully redacted examples. Do not paste customer lists, private messages, passwords, recovery codes, payment-card data, health information, or confidential contracts into a general AI chat merely to make the prompt more realistic. Redaction must remove identifying detail, not just a name.

Review the provider’s current controls for your exact account: retention, model-training use, sharing, connected apps, and authorized access. A paid label alone does not establish the protections you need. If you cannot confirm the arrangement fits the data, use a fictional example instead.

Canada: the privacy commissioners’ generative-AI principles explain that privacy responsibilities apply to organizations using these tools, as well as developers. Do not assume permission to answer an enquiry allows uploading it into another service.United States: the FTC’s business data-security guidance supports minimizing sensitive collection, restricting access, and reviewing service-provider safeguards. State and sector obligations may add requirements.

Keep a person responsible for the result. AI must not invent testimonials, licences, business locations, prices, or promises. Review drafts before publication; do not allow an assistant to send customer replies, accept bookings, or promise refunds automatically as part of this website-writing exercise.

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 or external dependencies. Use system 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” reduces moving parts; generated code can still contain errors.

Step 3: Iterate like you’d brief a designer

Treat the first result as a draft, then preview it and ask for specific changes:

• “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 (a useful starting point, not a guarantee of search visibility)
• A 404 page if you have more than one page

Check before publishing

• Read every claim, business detail, and image caption for accuracy.
• Open the site on a phone and a desktop; check navigation, readable text, and overflowing content.
• Test phone and email links. Submit a contact form and confirm the message arrives; a visual form without a working service does not deliver enquiries.
• Follow the accessibility review for keyboard focus, readable text, image alternatives, form errors, and embedded customer journeys. AI suggestions and automated scores do not establish conformance.
• Save the source files and follow the backup and restore workflow outside the original account failure boundary.
• Make one practice content change, publish it, and confirm you can restore the previous version.

Do not publish until these checks pass. If you cannot fix a problem confidently, get help or use a supported builder.

Ongoing edits

Keep the conversation (or start a new one and paste the current file in). Ask for the hours change, inspect the revised page, and redeploy. Keep a dated copy of the previous version so you can undo a mistake. Allow time for review; editing speed depends on your experience and the change.

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. Frequent visual editing, multiple editors, accessibility needs, and support requirements can also make a builder worth paying for.