More and more, one of the first questions we are being asked is whether we use AI when designing and developing websites.
The answer is that we use it to help and assist rather than to do the work for us.
Here is how we use AI across different parts of the website design process.
Website design and development
Every website we create is built specifically for the individual customer using WordPress. We would never use a website that has been generated by AI. In our opinion, they often look visually similar to one another and can miss important details around usability, mobile design, search optimisation, performance and the individual requirements of the business.
Using WordPress gives us a well-established platform that can be maintained, updated and developed as the website grows.
Security is also a major part of our development process. We keep WordPress, themes and plugins properly maintained and use trusted payment providers such as Stripe to handle sensitive payment information securely.
These are details that can easily be overlooked when a website is generated automatically. A website needs to be secure, reliable and properly maintained once it goes live.
Business logos
We never produce AI-generated logos. AI tools cannot reliably provide consistent brand colours, usable font files or true vector artwork, which means the finished logo may not reproduce accurately or scale properly across different applications such as business cards, workwear, shop signage etc.
For that reason, our qualified graphic designers create logos using professional design software such as Adobe Illustrator. The finished logo can be supplied in any required format and as vector artwork, meaning it can be made extremely small or extremely large without losing its sharpness or quality.
Website images
Wherever possible, we prefer to use original photographs supplied by the customer. Search engines heavily favor original website images because they provide unique value and better user engagement compared to generic stock or AI generated photos.
Real photographs of your team, premises, products, vehicles or completed work can give visitors a much better understanding of the business and help your website feel genuinely yours.
Where suitable images are not available, we may use carefully selected copyright-free stock photography or where appropriate, AI-generated images.
The important part is choosing the right image for the page rather than filling a website with generic pictures simply because they are easy to generate.
Website wording
Good website content should be clear, useful and easy to understand. Like images, Search Engines love original wording that is easy to read and understand. There is a number called the “Flesch Reading Score”, which looks at things such as sentence length and word complexity to give an indication of how easy a piece of content is to read. The aim for us is that all website content scores highly on this and is easy to understand.
If a customer can not provide any content, or they have produced draft content using AI, we may also use AI to help analyse the information and identify areas that need improving.
However, we do not simply paste AI-generated wording onto the finished website.
The content is reviewed and rewritten so that it is clear, natural and relevant to the actual business.
Website Audits
This is an area we believe AI can be particularly useful. A modern website can contain thousands of lines of code, scripts, page elements and pieces of data.
Manually reviewing every individual line would take a considerable amount of time.
AI tools can help analyse large amounts of information quickly and highlight potential problems that may require further investigation.
However it can often produce complex answers or false information so having the core expertise to analyse its response is key to its effectiveness.
AI is a tool, not the finished product
AI is changing the way many industries work, and website design is no different. Used properly, it can save time, analyse information and help experienced people work more efficiently.
What it cannot replace is real customer support, good design judgement, technical experience or the ability to look at a website and know whether it actually works for the customer.
At Inventis, we are happy to use new technology where it genuinely improves the service we provide, but it is the experience and expertise of our qualified team that makes the real difference to the websites we create.
