What AI is REALLY going to do to the web design industry...
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“Is AI going to take my job?"
That's the question in the minds of a lot of us who work online and I have absolute empathy and understanding for the fear that that question raises. We all know full-well that media makes money off of fear, so we should take whats said with a grain of salt.
But is there a thread of truth in the doomsday predictions around jobs, or is it the media just over-hyping the next theme they can instill fear with? I want to speak specifically to my fellow web designers today and give my predictions for the web design industry in a world of AI.
AI web design predictions for web designers
To start though, let's look at a prediction that was made about 15 years ago, this is when do-it-yourself website builders like Squarespace and Wix started gaining momentum.
The prediction at the time was that those DIY platforms would eliminate designer & developer jobs.
As we know now, developers & designers are just as in-demand as ever, sometimes being hired for really complex site builds which need more development work than is possible on these DIY platforms and interestingly often times being hired to work on the DIY platforms like Squarespace & Wix when the client still wants someone with expertise to build them their site.
These new tech tools to the market meant both more small businesses and brands and bloggers could get websites built because the costs that were prohibitive before were lower with these tools, making the industry as a whole larger, new jobs were created in the form of Squarespace designers & Wix designers, and the developers & designers retained their jobs too and just worked on more complex projects off these platforms.
So now AI is the new Squarespace & Wix. It's the disruptive tech tool. But is this time different?
Let's look at some real-world cases and I'll predict in a world of AI, who will win the job, the designer or AI.
Redesign of a complex website - designer or AI?
I was on a business trip recently with a friend who runs an industry-leading yoga & wellness business in the German market. Like any good business owner, she was looking to keep costs reasonable, but also knew she was in desperate need of a website overhaul.
She runs a completely online business, so her site is literally her entire storefront and it was getting pretty unwieldy and outdated looking. She asked my honest opinion,
“should I even hire a designer for $15k - $25k, or should I just wait soon for when AI might be able to do it way cheaper?”
Context: She has a blog with hundreds of posts, dozens of sales pages, sales funnels, email marketing integrations, checkout software integrations, Zapier automations, she wanted to move to a different website platform too, and a very specific design style.
For anyone who knows the web design industry, you'll know that this isn't just a web design project, it's a project management job too. This amount of old content, automations, integrations, etc. will take a ton of coordination and working in tens of different softwares to move and reintegrate.
I told her my honest thoughts, she was going to need a web designer for this. If she just wanted a new basic 4-page website with a nice design, maybe AI in a couple of years would be able to make her something she'd like, but this wasn't just a website project, this was an entire online business management & moving project, and she was going to need a human, or 3 to do it.
Designer: 1 AI: 0
Simple website build for a dentist - designer or AI?
But not every client has a 10-year-old online business, what about a more simple project?
Just after that first conversation, a good friend who is a dentist was visiting us in London. He showed me his new website for his dental practice.
"How much did you pay?" I asked.
10k Euros. He responded
The website has 4 pages, looked modern, included an online booking option, and some light SEO work.
It overall was a pretty basic project.
And knowing what I do about DIY site builders, I was curious and asked
"Did you consider building it yourself? Or getting your admin assistant at the front desk to do it?"
He looked at me like I was crazy.
"I'm an expert at root canals not websites, and have a practice to run. And my admin assistant is busy as it is. We just hired a designer another dentist friend recommended and had it done in a month."
His response sounded like the response I had heard from dozens of business owners over the years. They're an expert in their industry and have a business to run. They know their time is better spent generating revenue, not penny-pinching.
In an AI world, this friend is one to whom the latest website-building tech or AI is irrelevant, he's going to hire the expert to do it and do it well no matter what happens in the industry, so he can get back to running his business.
Designer: 2 AI: 0
How does AI work for non-tech savvy clients?
In my student community Facebook group there was a discussion about AI, to which Nancy said
"A lot of my clients aren’t tech savvy enough to use a Google Drive so I don’t think they’re going to use AI to write a website anytime soon."
This reminds me of one of my personal favourite clients, a lovely lady who was running a wedding venue.
She had a dream project, gorgeous images of her beautiful wedding venue, had a design style I loved and just personally she was a ball and so pleasant to work with.
Granted it wasn't the easiest project in the world as she was a little older on average than most of my clients, so things like explaining how to watch a Loom, or make a Pinterest inspiration board, or create subfolders in the Google Drive for her site content or complete the online workbooks I'd created took a lot longer to explain and assist with.
I was happy to do it, but there's no doubt it definitely added a level of complexity to the project.
Which brings me to another type of project I doubt AI will be taking over anytime soon, projects with people who aren't digital natives, who are hiring a designer specifically because the tech overwhelms them.
Designer 3: AI: 0
Okay so complex projects, projects with busy ROI-on-their-time-focused business owners, and projects with people who are probably pretty firmly safe projects designers will continue to do... but what about someone who is reasonably with it in terms of tech ability, wants a new normal sized site, no madly complex integrations, but to whom brand & a real luxury feel in the site is important.
AI for designing a high-end website
When AI website-building tools came out, I decided to take one for a test drive and see what it could do. I asked it to build me a site for a luxury wedding photographer. I figured if I was a client, I'd likely want something like this amazing site from KT Merry.
This is what AI produced...
Not quiteee the look I was going for, but I mean... A for effort.
AI website building tools in their current stage are at the point where you can give some basic prompts and it'll full the page with a few sections, and maybe throw a few relevant words & copy in.
But it's not really matching the design style to the prompts, or getting the essence of the point. if you're a luxury wedding photographer, you communicate that in a very subtle way, through the use of visuals and design and branding, not through splashing the words LUXURY across your website.
Granted where AI site builders are right now, they'll put together a rough start of a website for you, which then you'll then DEFINITELY need to spend a significant amount of time editing yourself to actually match it to your vision... I'd argue that what an AI site builder would start you off with is even worse than just picking a template you like.
NOW I do believe this use case is the one we'll see the greatest development in.
So while our website designer would still hands down win this website project right now, AI will definitely make improvements in this area and maybe in a few years time, people who are luxury wedding photographers who want a very specific look & feel to their site may consider AI site builders as an option when they improve significantly.
But I think designers we're pretty safe in still landing these projects over the robots in this case for the forseeable future.
Designer: 4 AI: 0
AI for unique, luxury pieces
Speaking of the luxury category... let's talk about the Christmas present my husband got me the other year.
A piece of fine art.
A beautiful painting of a forest at the change of the seasons which now sits beautifully above our mantle and fireplace and which brings me joy every time I look at it. It was painted by hand by an artist. It has texture to the piece, there's blobs of paint that are imperfect and unique.
This hand-painted piece was obviously significantly more expensive than going and getting a piece of art from Ikea to fill the space above the fireplace.
But that's the thing, we weren't just looking for something to put above the fireplace. It took my husband a long time to find that one-of-a-kind piece in which the image itself, the changing trees along a path, had a sentimental meaning to us and which fit the colors of the space.
It probably would have been a lot easier and less time-consuming to buy a piece from Ikea, it would obviously have been a lot cheaper, and maybe even a piece of art from Ikea would have been a more perfect piece of art.
But he bought me this instead.
Why?
Because we place a value on creativity and because I don't want to own the same Ikea-art that everyone else decorates their house with. I place a value on something custom-created by an artist by hand. When creativity is done cheaply & is mass market, it kind of ruins the art aspect of it, and make a section of the market want to go the other direction to honestly be special.
And my prediction is that will be the same for website design.
When AI can build everyone some templated blah for $59, just like you can buy a piece of art from Ikea to fill the space above your fireplace, a section of the market is going to want to go in the opposite direction and get something really special.
It's the same reason people buy designer handbags for $40,000. Designer bags for $40,000 are beautiful yes. But there are plenty of smaller more independent bag brands for maybe $1,000 or $2,000 with the same level of beauty & quality.
So why buy the bag with the telltale Chanel symbol? Or the Hermes clasp?
They're showing status. They're buying into the brand. They want to be the type of person who owns a Hermes bag. They like what that bag says about them. They want to be associated with the brand. They want to be different.
Designer: 5 AI: 0
AI vs web designers to help stop procrastination & get the job done!
Now we've chatted about luxury handbags and hand painted art and how that relates to AI website design, let's discuss yoga classes because it relates.
My sister is constantly touting the benefits of her daily 20 minutes of yoga with Adrienne which she does from home, and questions why I'm blowing money on yoga classes at a studio.
Yoga with Adrienne from home would take less time because of the lack of needing to commute to class, would cost less, and now apparently she even has a YouTube live feed with 24/7 live classes if I kinda want the live feeling.
So why do I still book & pay for yoga classes?
To force myself to go do the workout!
I legit pay the $20 for a class, because I'm the type of person who 8 AM hits and the only reason I'm dragging myself onto the mat is because I paid for it and I'm going to feel guilty if I don't go because that'll then be a waste of money.
That's why I don't do yoga with Adrienne. This is the same reason people hire personal trainers, not because they don't know how to work out, but because unless they put down $100 and someone shows up at their house and tells them to pick up the barbell, they're realistically going to procrastinate.
And that's the same for website design projects.
Clients have procrastinated a zillion times before to get their site images together, and to learn to build the site, and to pick the website building tool, and to try to figure out their copy, and to find the time in their schedule, etc.
Often clients intended to build the website themself, but a year later still without a new website, they pay a designer to do it, just to force themselves to complete the project.
They're literally paying more for the kick in the butt than they are the actual site design. I'm curious for the day a robot can actually manage force a person into completing this type of project. Somehow I don't see AI calling up their web design client and gently reminding them to send over their photos otherwise they'll loose their $2,000 project deposit.
Designer 6: AI: 0
So where is AI better than web designers?
Okay, so I've shared some examples with you and designers so far are clean-sweeping, but the truth is, I do believe a small segment of the web design market is going to use AI tools over website designers in the future. Let's talk about those scenarios.
We have a young, tech-savvy guy or gal with more time than money on their hands.
This was me at the start of my business to be honest.
I was straight out of university and definitely didn't have any money for a custom site design, so I learned to do it myself.
These ladies & gents are going to use whatever tool is the best out there for website building and making their design idea on the page.
Now honestly, as we saw from my fantastic luxury wedding photography AI website example... it probably won't be AI right now, but as it progresses, an AI-enabled software or AI tool might be the best. And in that case, I do believe, this person in this case is going to DIY it with AI and not hire a designer.
Designer: 6 AI: 1
Granted. This isn't necessarily cutting down on the pool of work designers currently have. Because even today, that person wouldn't be hiring a designer anyways. They'd probably be going to Squarespace to build the site themself, so this again isn't really cutting into the pie of potential web designer projects, but it is a sector who are likely to be early adopters of AI techniques.
Ballin’ on a budget - AI vs web designers
But what about client who wants a really great website, they don't have a crazy massive budget, they're not the "luxury people" making a statement, and they don't have a crazy budget, but they have a little budget nonetheless.
This website design client, want a good site, but they also want the confidence it's done correctly, meets design best practices, looks really good, functions well, etc.
(Which honestly, these are a lot of the same reasons why people hire website designers now even with the availability of DIY website building platforms.)
So my prediction is they'll hire a designer who uses AI to build the site faster than the designer could doing it without AI
(Again, in the future, this still isn't possible right now), that client gets a custom site but at a lower rate because the designer does it in a day versus a week which it used to take the designer to create a site.
This means custom sites become more accessible to more people. Designers do faster projects because AI helps them do it, meaning the designer can take on more clients, they get paid less per project but because they can do more projects, they make a similar profit at the end of the day.
Sam Altman, the founder of Open AI & Chat GPT was asked if programmers & developers would lose their jobs? His response...
"I think the world is going to find out that if you can have 10 times the amount of code at the same price, you can just use even more of it."
You can see the rest of that interview with Sam below…
And seeing that nearly 1 in 3 small businesses in the US alone still don't have a website... I think we can safely say that probably also applies to website design too. The world can use a lot more websites.
So for this scenario, I'm going to give the point equally to AI & web designers.
Desinger: 6.5 AI: 1.5
So my fellow web designers, take heart. The AI tools that are out there right now are FARRRR from capable of doing what you do, and while they will improve, as we've seen, I think there's still a lot of other reasons people will still hire you, as I've explained.
Oh and the website https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/web-developers rates website developers, website administrators and graphic designers at low risk of losing their jobs to automation, due to the demand of the jobs for "both a mix of technical and human-centric skills". So there's that too.
So if you still have an interest in learning to become a designer after all of this but don't really know how to get started, watch this video next as I share How I Would Learn Web Design (If I Had To Start Over Again).