An AI can design a whole website in under a minute. The trouble is that, left to itself, it designs the same one every time: a centred headline over a soft gradient, three cards with an icon each, and a button that says "Get started". It is not a bad design. It is just everybody's.
The difference between that and a site that looks like yours is almost never the AI. It is what you give it to work with. This guide covers what to give it, how to review what comes back, the mistakes AI design makes most often, and how to put the finished site online for free, on your own domain, without paying for a website builder.
Why so many AI-made websites look alike
Ask for "a website for my business" and you get the average of every business website the model has seen. That average is a centred hero, a gradient, a row of feature cards and phrases like "Welcome to" and "We are passionate about".
Nothing went wrong there. The AI had nothing to go on, so it played safe. Every detail you add moves it away from the average and towards your site.
Give it a direction, not adjectives
"Modern and clean" is what everybody asks for, so it changes nothing. These do change things:
- A reference. Name a site you like and say what you like about it: "the big serif headings and all the white space", "the way the photos run edge to edge". If you can, paste a screenshot of it. Most assistants accept images now, and a picture says more than a paragraph of adjectives.
- A mood in concrete words. "Feels like a printed menu", "like a quiet gallery", "loud and playful, like a gig poster". A comparison with a real object gives the AI something specific to aim at.
- Who visits, and what they need first. "People looking us up on their phone on the way here, who need the opening hours and the address" is a design brief. It tells the AI what goes at the top.
Compare:
Make a modern, clean website for my flower shop.
with:
Make a one-page site for Fern & Stem, a flower shop by the station. It should feel like a hand-written chalkboard: warm, a little rough, not corporate. Most people visiting are on their phone and want our hours, our address and how to order a bouquet for delivery, so put those first. Use deep green and cream.
The second one gets you a site that could only be that shop's.
Decide three things yourself
These are the choices that make a site look designed rather than generated. They take two minutes, and the AI handles everything else.
Colours. Give it one or two. Use the exact ones if you have a logo or a shop sign, or describe them: "the green of our awning". Then ask it to keep body text dark on a light background and to check the contrast. The accessibility standard is a ratio of at least 4.5 to 1 for ordinary text. An AI can work that out for you, and pale grey text on white is one of the commonest reasons AI-made sites are hard to read.
Typefaces. Name one, or one for headings and one for text: "a classic serif for headings, a plain sans-serif for everything else". If you have no preference, say so and ask for no more than two. A page using four fonts is one of the quickest tells of a design nobody looked at.
Density. "Lots of white space, a few big things" and "packed like a catalogue" are both good designs, for different sites. Saying which saves a round of changes.
Bring your real content first
Design shapes itself around content. If you let the AI fill the page with placeholder text, the layout fits the placeholder. Then the real paragraph is three times longer and the design falls apart.
So give it the real words first: your name, what you do, prices, hours, the paragraph about you. If you have not written them yet, ask the AI to help you write them before it designs anything.
Photos are the biggest single improvement. Your own photos, even from a phone, look more like you than any stock image. Two things are worth asking for:
- Make them smaller before publishing. A photo straight off a phone can be several megabytes. Ask the AI to resize images to around 1,600 pixels wide and compress them. The page loads faster, and the site stays well inside free storage.
- Write a short description for each. This is the alt text that screen readers read aloud and search engines index. Ask for it explicitly; AI designs often leave it out.
AI-generated images are fine as decoration: textures, backgrounds, illustrations. Do not use them in place of your actual products, your premises or your team. Visitors notice, and it reads as a business with something to hide.
Design for the phone first
Most people will see your site on a phone, and a layout designed on a wide screen and squeezed down is where AI designs often break. Say it outright:
Design this for a phone first, then let it spread out on a wider screen. Nothing should scroll sideways, and every button should be easy to tap with a thumb.
Then check it on your own phone, not only in a narrow browser window.
Review it like a designer would
When the first version comes back, do not ask for "better". Look at it on your phone and go through these questions:
- What is the one thing a visitor should do? Call you, book, buy, read. Is that the most obvious thing on the screen? If three buttons compete, ask for one.
- Can you read everything? Small grey text, text over busy photos and light text on light backgrounds are the usual problems.
- Is it consistent? One button style, two fonts at most, the same spacing between sections.
- Does anything move that does not need to? Animations should help a visitor notice something. Text that slides in as you scroll mostly makes them wait.
Then give feedback the way you would to a person: "the hours are too far down, put them under the headline", "the green is too bright, make it darker and more muted". A screenshot with the problem described is the fastest feedback there is.
What AI design gets wrong most often
A few mistakes come up again and again. Check for each before you publish:
- Invented proof. Testimonials from customers who do not exist, "trusted by thousands", star ratings, logos of companies you have never worked with. AI adds these because real sites have them. Delete every one that is not true: they are claims about your business, and they are the first thing a sceptical visitor checks.
- Links that go nowhere. Menu items and buttons pointing at
#, social icons linking to the platform's homepage rather than your page. - Forms that send nothing. A contact form needs somewhere for messages to go. Ask what happens when someone presses Send. If the answer is "nothing yet", either finish it or use a link that opens the visitor's email app.
- Leftover placeholders. "Lorem ipsum", "Your Company", an example phone number, last year in the footer.
Publishing it, free, on your own domain
What your AI designed is ordinary HTML, CSS and JavaScript, which is a website you can host anywhere. You do not need a website builder subscription to keep it online, and you are not tied to the tool that made it.
To publish it from the same conversation, your assistant needs to be able to send files, not only write them. That means an agent on your computer, such as Antigravity, Cursor or Claude Code, or a chat app with DashPloy added as a connector. A plain chat in a browser tab can design the whole site and still have no way to publish it. Which AI do I have? sorts out which is which.
With DashPloy, you paste one line into your assistant and it publishes the site to a live, secure address. The free plan includes:
- two websites
- one custom domain, so the site can live at your own name rather than ours (how to connect one)
- 50 MB of storage per site, which is plenty once the photos are resized
- 100,000 requests a month. That is requests rather than visitors: one page view fetches the page plus its images and fonts, so one view of a page with photos is often ten requests or more.
What free website hosting actually gives you compares that with the usual limits elsewhere, and the pricing page has the paid plans.
Redesigns are safe. Every version you publish is kept. If a new design turns out worse than the old one, ask your assistant to go back to yesterday's version and it is restored in one step. So try the bold version: the old one is never more than a sentence away.
A prompt to start from
Fill in the brackets, paste it after the DashPloy line, and change whatever does not fit:
Design a one-page website for [name], a [what you are] in [place].
Who visits: [who they are and what they need first].
It should feel like [a concrete comparison], not [what to avoid].
Colours: [one or two]. Fonts: [a preference, or "at most two"].
Here is the real content:
[your text, prices, hours, contact details]
Design for a phone first. Keep text dark on a light background with at least
4.5:1 contrast. Resize and compress any photos, and give each one alt text.
No made-up testimonials, ratings or logos. Ask me before using a web address.
Questions people ask
Can AI design a website for free?
Yes. Most AI assistants can design and write a complete website on their free tier, though free tiers limit how many messages you can send. Hosting the result can be free too: the files an AI writes do not need a paid website builder to stay online.
Do I need to know how to code?
No. You describe the design and the AI writes the code. Being specific about what you want counts for far more than knowing how it is built.
Will an AI-designed website look professional?
It will if you give it your real content, a clear direction and two or three decisions of your own, then review it on a phone. Most AI-made sites look generic because they were asked for something generic.
Can I use my own domain on a free plan?
On DashPloy, yes: the free plan includes one custom domain, with the HTTPS certificate set up for you.
The short version
- Give the AI a reference, a concrete mood and who your visitors are.
- Pick the colours, the typefaces and how dense it should be.
- Hand over the real words and resized photos before it designs.
- Ask for a phone-first layout, and review it on your phone.
- Delete anything invented, then publish it free on your own domain.