3 mistakes I made building my website with AI
Everyone says you can do it in 5 minutes. You can. But here's what nobody tells you.
I've now built three websites using AI. This one — coreandcode.ai — is the third. And each time I've learned something I wish I'd known before I started.
The first website I built was about 8 years ago, in Squarespace. I remember trying to add a blog and it taking days. Then I moved it to Wix and that was a whole other saga. I'm not technical. I don't code. I was just a Pilates teacher trying to have a website that didn't embarrass me.
So when I discovered I could build a website by talking into my phone — describing what I wanted, looking at it on my laptop, saying "no, when I click that button it should go to the top of the page" — it felt like a superpower. And it is. But it's not magic. There's still a lot of back and forth. There's still a lot of refining. The difference is you're talking, not coding.
Here are the three mistakes I made. Learn from them.
I didn't give it enough context at the start
This is the biggest one. The more specific you are in your first prompt, the less time you spend going back and correcting things later. I was vague. I said something like "build me a website for my Pilates studio." And it built something. But it wasn't me. It didn't sound like me, it didn't look like my brand, and I spent hours fixing it.
What you should tell it before it builds a single page:
- What kind of website you want and what it needs to do
- Who it's for — your target audience, specifically
- Your voice and tone — warm, direct, no corporate speak, sounds like a real person
- Your brand colours and fonts
- Any logos you have — upload them
- Any websites you like the look of — give it references
- If you have an existing website, paste the URL and say what you want to keep from it
The more you give it upfront, the less you have to undo later.
I didn't give it my photos and videos before it started building
I let it build the whole site with placeholder images — grey boxes where my photos should be. Then I went back and tried to swap them in. This sounds fine in theory. In practice it meant the layout had been designed around placeholder proportions, and my actual photos didn't always fit the way I wanted.
Upload your photos and videos before you start. Tell it which image you want where. Give it your hero photo, your studio photos, a photo of you. If you have a brand video, give it that too. Let it design around your actual assets, not placeholders.
This alone will save you hours of back and forth.
I didn't think about compliance until it was already built
This one is less obvious but genuinely important. If you're in Europe — or anywhere with data protection laws — your website needs to comply with the rules that govern your country. For most of us in the EU, that means GDPR. That means a privacy policy, a cookie notice, and being clear about what data you collect and why.
I didn't think about this until the site was already built. Then I had to go back and add it. It's not complicated — AI can write the privacy policy for you — but it's much easier to build it in from the start than to retrofit it later.
Tell it at the beginning: "I'm based in Portugal / the EU. Make sure this website is GDPR-compliant. Include a privacy policy and cookie notice." It will handle it.
Other things to check while you're at it: is the text readable over your hero image? Is there a clear call to action above the fold? Does it work on mobile? These are the basics that are easy to miss when you're deep in the details.
The honest truth about AI website building
You can build a website with AI in 5 minutes. That part is true. But the 5-minute version looks like it was built in 5 minutes. Getting it to the point where it sounds like you, looks like your brand, works on mobile, is compliant, and is set up to be found on Google and ChatGPT — that takes longer. It took me a lot of back and forth, and I used a lot of credits getting there.
What I'd tell anyone starting: treat it like a conversation, not a one-prompt job. Be specific. Give it everything upfront. And expect to refine.
The thing that makes it worth it is that you're talking, not coding. You're describing what you want in plain English, looking at it on your screen, and saying "no, move that up" or "make that button coral." That's genuinely accessible in a way that Squarespace never was for me.
I'll cover the SEO and AI visibility side of website building in a future chapter — making sure your site is set up with proper page titles, descriptions, and schema markup so ChatGPT and Google can actually find you. That's a whole topic on its own.
— Victoria
Coming next
Chapter 4: How I stopped thinking about Google PostsSetting up a weekly automation so the post gets drafted without me having to think about it.