Building a website with AI? Everything that went wrong for me

For someone who tells other people how to get found online, not having a website of my own had been an embarrassing gap for a while. I had a Wix account and a domain name, but no site.

So I decided to build nicciseverens.nl step by step, together with AI. Claude, to be precise.

Below is everything that went wrong along the way, because you rarely learn anything from what went right. Is it actually possible, building a website with AI?

The short answer: yes, but AI doesn't build for you, it builds with you. AI supplies the measurements, the structure, the SEO copy and the code. You make the decisions about taste, and along the way you discover every quirk of your website builder yourself.

AI was the architect, I was the hands

In Wix I still had to drag every block, fill in every measurement and pick every colour myself. AI provided the measurements and the structure. I wrote the copy, did the clicking and made all the decisions about taste.

That turned out to be a fair division of labour. Although it sometimes felt like I was the hands of an architect who couldn't hold a mouse and couldn't resist measuring every single pixel.

Why did my site look like a template?

Because I started from a template and built it step by step. I chose the Wix template Minimalist Layout and had it tell me what to do, element by element.

After a few sections it looked like exactly what it was: a template with my name in it.

The solution was to reverse the order. First I had a complete visual design made for each section, with exact measurements, colours and spacing. Only then did I rebuild it in Wix.

Designing and clicking are two different jobs. Do them at the same time and you get a website that smells of both.

How do you choose a font for your website?

By finding a great many fonts ugly. I started with Cormorant Garamond for the headings. Elegant, neat, and after three days far too well-behaved. I wanted something with more guts.

Abril Fatface (for the name alone) and Bebas Neue weren't in the Wix library. I found Anton really ugly. Instrument Serif I found hideous, and that's the official record.

It became Playfair Display Bold for the headings and Avenir Light for the body text, on a cream background with an amber accent and only black-and-white photos.

I briefly considered making everything black and white. Then I came to my senses, more or less.

What doesn't AI know about Wix?

The quirks you only discover by doing it yourself. A few from my collection:

• Entering an X or Y position often only works the second time, so always enter it twice and check.

• Press Cmd+A without clicking into the text first and you select every element on the entire page. Handy if you want to move everything, less handy if you wanted to change one sentence.

• After typing, the text size jumps back to the theme default.

• You don't set the height of a section with a number, but by dragging a little purple pill.

• You can't colour an underline separately from the text. That's why my amber lines under links are separate line elements, lying neatly under the text and pretending.

AI knew none of these tricks in advance. Every time I came across one, it became a fixed rule in the workflow. That's how we both learned, although only I was allowed to swear about it.

What happens when AI gets to click for itself?

These days I also work with a Claude that is connected directly to Wix and builds pages itself. That saves a lot of dragging. It also brings new surprises.

When it created a new page, it ended up as a separate item in my main menu. As a result the menu no longer fitted on one line and Books disappeared behind a More button. Another time it accidentally clicked the editor away to the dashboard while I was working in it myself.

The most human moment: it couldn't see a file I had been given in another conversation. Two AIs in the same browser, and me as the postman in between.

Where did my domain actually live?

Not with my new site. My domain name turned out to still be attached to an older Wix Studio site, built on a template called Camille Brown.

So for weeks I was building a house while my address was still registered at my ex-site. Everything is at the right address now.

What does AI do well when building a website?

Everything that takes precision and patience. Exact design specifications per section, copy in my tone of voice, SEO titles and meta descriptions, alt texts and FAQ schema for every blog post.

Work I would normally do in bits and pieces in between was ready before I'd made coffee.

What AI doesn't do

AI can't say something is ugly and mean it. When I opened my first blog post, it still contained an English sample text from Wix about communication, with a photo of tulips.

Not a single language model had warned me that my SEO article contained flowers. Looking is still human work.

What would I do differently?

Design first, then build. Choose fonts before I fall in love with a colour. Connect my domain properly straight away. My own golden rule stood firm: always save, never publish by accident.

Faster, but still mine

AI made the building faster, but it didn't make the choices. This site is still mine, including every ugly font that didn't make the cut.

Frequently asked questions

Can you build a website with AI?

Yes, but AI builds with you, not for you. AI supplies measurements, structure, copy and code. You make the decisions about taste and check whether everything is really right in your website builder.

How do you stop your AI website from looking like a template?

First have a complete design made for each section, with exact measurements, colours and spacing, and only then rebuild it. Designing and building at the same time gives you a site that keeps smelling of the template.

What is AI good at when building a website?

Precision work: design specifications, copy, SEO titles, meta descriptions, alt texts and structured data such as FAQ schema.