What to Expect from Website Builders in 2023
In the changing landscape of website building, driven by trends in generative AI, startups and incumbents are trying to answer the question: What does one expect from a website builder in 2023?
Wix, a longtime fixture in the web building space, believes that today’s customers do not want to spend excessive time customizing every aspect of their site’s appearance.
The company has recently announced its new AI Site Generator tool. This tool allows Wix users to describe their intent and generate a complete website, including homepage, inner pages, text, images, and business-specific sections like events and bookings. The goal is to provide customers with real value as they build their sites and grow their businesses.
Ambitious AI Experiments by Wix
AI Site Generator is Wix’s most ambitious AI experiment to date. It builds on previous experiments, such as Wix’s text creator powered by ChatGPT for generating personalized content for specific sections of websites. Additionally, Wix offers an AI template text creator for generating all the text for a given site, an AI domain generator for brainstorming web domain names, and a suite of AI image editing, fine-tuning, and creation tools.
The CEO of Wix, Avishai Abrahami, sees AI as a way to streamline and simplify the process of building back-end functionality, infrastructure, payments capabilities, and more for customers’ websites.
Simplifying Website Creation for Small Businesses
Small businesses often struggle to launch and maintain websites, which can result in missed income opportunities. According to a survey by Top Design Firms, almost 27% of small businesses still do not have a website. Low traffic, adding advanced functionalities, and cost are the top challenges they face with their websites.
AI Site Generator aims to address these challenges by taking prompts or descriptions of desired sites from users and using a combination of in-house and third-party AI systems to create custom web templates. ChatGPT generates personalized text for the website, while Wix’s AI creates the site design and images.
Unique Features of AI Site Generator
While other platforms like SpeedyBrand offer similar capabilities, Wix claims that its AI Site Generator is unique because it can automatically incorporate e-commerce, scheduling, food ordering, and event ticketing components based on a customer’s specifications and requirements.
According to Abrahami, AI Site Generator allows users to create a complete website where the design fits the content, as opposed to selecting a template and trying to fit the content within its structure. This approach generates a unique website that maximizes the user experience relevant to the content.
However, customers are not limited to the designs generated by AI Site Generator. They have access to Wix’s full suite of editing tools, both manual and AI-driven, to make tweaks and changes as needed.
Future Editing Capabilities and Concerns
In addition to AI Site Generator, Wix has plans to introduce new editing capabilities such as an AI page and section creator, allowing users to add new pages or sections simply by describing their needs. Other upcoming features include an object eraser and an AI assistant tool that suggests improvements and personalized strategies based on analytics and site trends.
It is worth noting that there are concerns regarding generative AI models and the potential for lower-quality content generation. Additionally, AI-generated content can risk clogging up search engines and burying legitimate sites.
Wix did not provide specific details about the steps they are taking to combat these issues but assured users that they use a variety of tools to manage spam and abuse. Wix believes in creating a safe digital space where users’ fundamental rights are protected and plans to utilize moderation from OpenAI to prevent inappropriate content generation.
Only time will tell how successful Wix’s strategy will be in addressing these concerns and delivering value to its users through AI-powered website building.
