Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a game-changer for many industries, including web design. Whether you’re a beginner or a professional web designer, AI tools can help you create websites faster and unlock new possibilities for your projects.
If you’re interested in using this new technology for web design, this guide is for you. We’ll show you how to design a website with AI and explore various AI web design tools and their applications.
Ways of Using AI for Website Design
AI tools provide several benefits in web design, such as:
- Making web design easier for beginners. Free AI website builders allow you to design a fully operational website without any programming knowledge.
- Offering design assistance at a lower cost. AI tools are often cheaper than human help. For instance, AI image generators can create near-realistic images for your website, eliminating the need to hire an illustrator or buy stock images.
- Accelerating the website-building process. Many professional web designers today use various AI tools to automate manual tasks, saving time and effort, and allowing them to concentrate on the more creative aspects of their work.
- Enhancing web design through data-driven insights. AI tools driven by machine learning can analyze websites to pinpoint areas that need optimization. This is particularly useful for business websites or online stores looking to increase conversions.
Despite these benefits, finding the right AI web design tools can be a challenge. Before designing a website, it’s important to research and select the best platform that suits your needs, skill level, and budget.
How to Design a Website With AI
This part will discuss how to design websites using AI tools like website builders, image generators, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) models. To ensure a smooth process, it’s important to understand the basics of website construction.
1. Use an AI Website Builder
Utilizing AI website builders is one of the simplest methods of using AI to design a website. With an AI website builder, you can create a custom site without any coding knowledge.
The website builder will typically ask you to describe the site you need. Then, the AI will automatically generate a new template based on your submitted prompt.
Hostinger Website Builder is an excellent example of this. It offers an intuitive interface that guides you through creating your website. Go to the AI website builder page and click Try For Free to check out how the platform works.
For a personal website, consider getting the Premium plan, which starts at $2.59/month. It comes with a free domain name, unlimited bandwidth, and 100 GB of SSD storage. These are enough resources to run a blog or a portfolio.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to using Hostinger Website Builder:
Purchase a hosting plan and create your account. During the onboarding process, click Select Hostinger Builder.
Then, you can buy a custom domain, connect an existing one, or use a free temporary subdomain to build the website.
On the next page, press Start creating.
2.Enter the following information:
- Brand name. It can be your personal or business name, depending on what the website is for.
- Website type. The options available are Online store, Blog, Business showcase, Portfolio, and Other.
- Website description. Tell the AI what kind of business or project you are running. Be as descriptive as possible so that the tool can come up with the best template for your needs. Click Show example for inspiration.
3.Click Create a website and wait for a few minutes.
The AI will make three custom website templates with text and stock images.
4. After picking one of the AI-generated templates, modify the design elements to your preferences.
Feel free to:
- Change the color palette and typefaces. Choose one of the pre-defined color and font combinations that suit your branding better.
- Add new pages. Create pages using pre-made templates for an online store, blog, business showcase, and appointment page.
- Give feedback. Tell us your thoughts about the AI-generated templates so that we can improve the model.
5. To customize the web design further
Click Continue in the top-right corner to go to the drag-and-drop editor. You can move and add new elements, edit the site’s mobile version, change the styles, manage the pages, and optimize the meta title and description.
6. Once done, click Preview to see the website’s appearance when published.
Then, select Go live to make it publicly accessible.
Gather Web Design Ideas With AI
AI can help with site design by providing inspiration for your project. Instead of scouring through different resources and platforms on your own, AI tools can visualize ideas based on your exact criteria.The AI image generator DALL-E is excellent for this purpose. Its diffusion model can create near-realistic illustrations based on your prompt. Users get 50 free DALL-E credits in the first month and another 15 each following month.
To use DALL-E, provide a detailed web design prompt that describes what you’re looking for. It should include the type of website and page, its purpose, color scheme, and web design style.
Here’s an example: “Homepage of an online store selling tennis shoes. Vibrant green color palette. Brutalist web design style.”
Below is what DALL-E came up with:
You can pick an image and create more variations for extra inspiration, like so:
Midjourney is another platform that can generate images based on user prompts. To use it, you need a Discord account and join the Midjourney beta server. From there, use the “/imagine” command in the chatbox and insert your prompt.
Same with DALL-E, it’s best to make your prompt as specific as possible. Here’s an example prompt used to generate homepage design examples. The user mentions the type of company that website is for, its color scheme, and preferred aesthetics.
At this point, you can pick a version with your desired visual appeal and create new variations.
Keep in mind that Midjourney has been receiving a large number of new users. As such, free credits may not be available, and purchasing a paid subscription may be necessary. The premium plans start from $8/month.
Utilize AI to Build the Website Structure
When starting a new web design project, you may not have a clear idea of how to properly structure it. This is where AI tools can assist you.NLP models like ChatGPT can act as a virtual web designer and provide website structure ideas based on your needs.
ChatGPT is free, but the Plus version has the latest advanced features and faster response times. It costs $20/month.
Follow the steps below to use ChatGPT to create a website structure:
1. Log in to ChatGPT and start a conversation with the following message:
I want you to become my prompt engineer. Your goal is to help me craft the best possible prompt for my needs – to design a website structure for [type of website] targeted at [target audience]. I need you to come up with 25 questions to help you create the best prompt to assist me in this task.
Here’s an example of what ChatGPT may ask:
2. Answer the questions accordingly until it finalizes the prompt. Here’s an example that ChatGPT came up with:
3. From here, tell ChatGPT to generate the website structure based on the prompt it just created. Based on the example above, ChatGPT made the suggestion below:
4.Review the suggestion and refine the structure as needed. Use it as a blueprint for creating your web pages and organizing the content.
Make AI-Generated Website Layouts Based on an Example or Sketch
Besides offering design inspiration, AI can convert a sketch or a screenshot into ready-to-edit wireframes.
Visily is one of several AI tools that can help you achieve this. For screenshots, simply upload a web design image and choose whether the wireframe should match the picture as closely or loosely as possible.
Here’s what the interface looks like after uploading a Hostinger landing page:
Let AI Generate Content for You
Content creation is one of the most common use cases of AI in design. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Jasper have helped many web designers create unique content to save time.
In fact, Hostinger Website Builder includes a built-in AI text generator. Simply describe the type of content you need, and the feature will replace the current copy with an AI-generated version. Leave it as it is, or ask the tool to try again.
Additionally, AI image generators like DALL-E and Midjourney can help create custom pictures or illustrations for your website. They can provide visual assets tailored to your design needs.
AI photo editors can also be useful when making small changes to a picture. For example, Canva offers features like a background remover, photo enhancer, and a brush to remove or add photo-realistic elements to your images.
