We often hear claims like

"Anyone can build a website these days in minutes".

These claims are not new. They have been floating around for ages.

The concept of building websites without traditional coding dates back to the early 2000s, with the emergence of tools like Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe Dreamweaver. These platforms aimed to simplify web development by providing visual editors that allowed users to design websites without writing complex code.

While groundbreaking at the time, these tools were still far from user-friendly and soon lost their popularity. As of today, all these platforms are discontinued.

Now with GenAI taking the world by a storm, could ai powered modern website builders become so powerful that they render designers and frontend developers obsolete?

First, let's explore some of the popular website builders in the market today, and their capabilities.

Modern AI Powered Website Builders and their Capabilities

Webflow

Webflow integrates advanced AI capabilities to streamline the web design and development process. Its AI Assistant provides in-context guidance for generating and modifying content directly within the platform, enabling users to rapidly create page sections that align with existing design systems. Additionally, Webflow’s AI tools offer features like A/B testing through Optimize, which analyses visitor interactions to tailor content and layouts for improved engagement. The platform also supports Localization, a machine learning-driven feature for translating and adapting websites to global audiences.

Wix

Wix's Website Builder streamlines the website creation process by utilizing artificial intelligence to design personalized sites tailored to individual needs. By engaging in a simple chat, the AI gathers information about your business goals and preferences, enabling it to generate a fully functional, custom website in minutes. Additionally, Wix offers AI tools that assist in creating new site content, such as generating text for various site and business types, which can be manually edited to suit your brand needs.

Squarespace

Squarespace integrates AI through its Design Intelligence suite, enhancing website creation with features like Blueprint AI, which generates personalized site templates based on user input. It also offers AI-driven content generation tools that assist in drafting and refining website copy, streamlining the design process for users.

Framer

Framer is a cutting-edge website builder that combines ease of use with powerful customization options, leveraging AI to enhance the web design process. With its intuitive drag-and-drop interface, users can create visually stunning and interactive websites without any coding knowledge. Framer’s AI capabilities extend to optimizing design workflows, providing intelligent suggestions for layouts, animations, and responsive designs. It also integrates seamlessly with tools like Figma, allowing designers to import projects and refine them with advanced interactive elements directly within Framer. This makes it an ideal platform for both novices and experienced designers aiming to create dynamic, engaging web experiences effortlessly.

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These tools excel at generating boilerplate. By offering pre-built templates, automated layouts, and AI-driven content generation they help you get up and running quickly.

Does this mean it's the end for UI/UX designers and frontend developers?

What people do that these tools can't?

Website design is not just about generating layouts, images and information. Here are some things designers and frontend developers do that are difficult to replace:

1. Understanding Business Goals: A human is required to engage in deep conversations to uncover the heart of a business. What it's values, goals, and audience are? No tool can replicate the empathy and intuition needed here.
2. Complex User Journeys: AI powered website generator platforms are powerful in generating static web pages with information but limited in generating complex user journeys. For eg. creating a paid content website where exclusive content is behind a paywall would not be possible easily with any of the available website builders.
3. Collaboration: A well designed website is often a result of collaboration between designers, marketers, and content creators. Coordinating these efforts requires human leadership and adaptability.
4. Understanding User Psychology: Designing intuitive user interfaces requires deep knowledge of target audience and user behaviour.
5. Building complex web/mobile apps: Apps require a highly customised user interface with complex API integrations. AI powered website generators are not yet capable of building complex apps.

Conclusion

With these powerful tools coming into the picture, the expectation from UI/UX Designers and Frontend Developers would be to use these AI powered website generators to quickly generate base templates and boilerplate code to build more creative frontends in lesser time.

The value of building simple/standard web layouts is going to go down as AI powered frontend platforms are going to be able to achieve these tasks easily. Junior designers and frontend developers would have to step up their game.

However complex web projects will still require the expertise of designers and developers to understand user requirements, construct complex user journeys and build highly customised user interfaces and experiences.