Good morning leaders, for many of us it was what’s been dubbed “back to business week”, did you survive it?
Last Week: Harry’s take on disrupting the legal industry with branding rocked the boat, you can you enjoy it below:
Thanks for those who emailed and DMed this week on my investigation into job and hiring scams - I will be adding to the post as a continued resource, please hit reply or drop me a line with anything you have seen or been approached with.
This Week: We have tackling why bots are hindering many businesses they just haven’t thought through the use case
On to why you likely need to re-think use of AI and bot sites and microsites.
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Why Letting Bots Build Your Website Could Cost You Customers & Clients
By Stevie Roberts, Connect On LinkedIn Or Through Kaydee Web
We’ve all seen the adverts: AI tools that promise to build you a shiny new website faster than you can make a cup of coffee. When you’re already juggling a dozen priorities to keep your business running smoothly, AI taking website design off your plate feels like a godsend.
However, your website should be a human-centric touchpoint designed to connect with real people, build trust, and drive sustainable growth.
AI is great for research, brainstorming, testing layout ideas, and getting a quick prototype off the ground. But letting an algorithm loose on your entire digital experience? That’s where things get risky.
Imagine an independent consultant uses an AI builder to launch their website. A prospect tries to view the website on their mobile, but the AI-generated layout has hidden the ‘Contact’ button behind a menu glitch, or listed services the consultant doesn’t actually offer. The prospect loses trust and closes the tab.
There’s a reason it’s called co-pilot, not captain; you still need to be the one flying the plane.
Fast vs Faceless
You can’t deny the pitch is intriguing. In an on-demand era, instant setup sounds brilliant, until you realise that “quick to build” usually translates to “quick to bounce” for your visitors.
You have roughly 6 seconds to grab a user’s attention. If your website looks like countless other digital doppelgangers, people won’t stick around long enough to learn what makes you special.
Sure, AI-generated copy is clean and grammatically correct, but it’s also devoid of humour, warmth, and humanity. People buy with emotion and justify with logic later. Relying on algorithms and buzzwords strips away the emotional spark required to convert a customer.
In a fiercely competitive market, blending into the background is the fastest way to dilute your brand authority.
To ensure your brand is anything but bland, lean into the things that simply can’t be synthesised:
Your Origin Story: AI doesn’t know your backstory or the lessons you learned from failure. Tell your story to create authentic connection.
Your Real Voice: Ditch the jargon. If you use humour, passion, or specific phrasing in your client meetings, put it on your pages.
Real Faces, Real Mess: Swap out AI-generated and stock imagery for photos of you, your team, and your workspace. Perfection isn’t real; authenticity builds trust.
Messy Mechanics
AI-generated websites might look polished on the surface, but behind the scenes, they’re often a structural mess. It’s the digital equivalent of tidying up for unexpected guests by shoving all your clutter into a cupboard.
AI tools generate code to satisfy a prompt, not to run efficiently. Look under the hood of a typical AI build, and you’ll often find pages loading painfully slowly because the tool generated thousands of lines of redundant CSS to format a single page, resulting in bloated back-end files, sluggish load times, and fractured mobile views.
Search engines ruthlessly prioritise smooth, fast user experiences. When your website is weighed down by heavy code and weak metadata, it quietly crushes your organic search visibility.
Untangling a web of buggy AI code almost always eats up more time and budget than building a solid technical foundation from scratch.
Here are 5 SEO principles to make sure your digital groundwork is airtight.
The Other ‘AI’: Accessibility and Inclusivity
True web accessibility, like hitting vital WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) standards, demands intentional, human care.
We’re talking about proper colour contrast, logical keyboard navigation, and meaningful alt-text that helps users navigate.
AI toolkits frequently gloss over these critical nuances. Recent economic research shows that inaccessible websites cost businesses approximately £17.1 billion annually in lost revenue, with up to 75% of users with disabilities abandoning purchases due to digital friction.
Search engines pay close attention to accessibility; if your website doesn’t meet their standards, Google’s algorithm flags your site as a poor user experience, which tanks your rankings.
When you let an algorithm guess its way through accessibility, you aren’t just accidentally shutting out a massive segment of your audience; you’re sabotaging your optimisation and leaving your brand wide open to entirely avoidable (and expensive) compliance issues.
Delegate, Don’t Abdicate
There is a balance. By all means, use AI to streamline processes such as:
Drafting wireframes: Map out initial layouts and streamline user journeys.
Exploring creative angles: Generate placeholder text or brainstorm messaging variations.
Organising raw research: Process data and competitor analysis to inform your strategy.
We’re not categorically saying don’t use AI to build websites. There are circumstances where it is appropriate and useful, for example:
Startups: When you just need to get online, now.
1-page websites: AI can easily handle a basic, single-page layout.
When ranking isn’t a concern: AI-built websites may be entirely sufficient if your goal isn’t to climb up the Google ladder.
Short-term Campaign Landing Pages: If you need to set up a quick landing page and have all the content ready, AI can get it live fast. However, true marketing is like investing in the stock market; it relies on trust. Successful content builds relationships between your website, search crawlers, and people. You can drive paid traffic to an AI landing page, but if you aren’t backing it up with a strong website and blog, it’s less likely those visitors will actually bite.
It’s the digital equivalent of handing a junior a template and saying, ‘just get us online.’ It checks a box, which is perfectly fine when you’re starting out, but it doesn’t craft a standout digital presence.
Long-term commercial success isn’t built on automated shortcuts; it’s rooted in trust, credibility, and digital experiences designed by, and for, real human beings.
Use your CMS as a tool to genuinely help your audience.
Answer their real questions with multimodal content, such as pairing blog posts with supporting videos.
It sounds like extra work, but this process acts as training for your internal team. Content can also be repurposed off-page, for LinkedIn articles, Substack posts, or to answer questions on Reddit. All of this boosts brand recognition and cements your business as an industry authority.
Pair your expert content with highly valuable lead magnets, and you’ll have prospects tripping over themselves to join your mailing list.
Be careful with your calls to action (CTAs). Multiple requests can overwhelm your audience; decide on one clear goal per piece of content: is the ideal outcome for them to contact you directly, or should you point them toward a sign-up form?
Technology should support you, not replace you.
If you want a digital space that converts, ranks, and builds authority, don’t outsource your originality; build something real, human, and uniquely you.
— Stevie
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👋 WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU 👋
We are only a few weeks away from our landmark 100th edition of the newsletter.
So we’re going to do a celebratory Podcast and newsletter combo, Room 101 style. We are going to talk through and then banish the things we HATE in modern marketing.
We’d love to hear what would you put in Room 101? We’ll pick two of the most popular from you guys and add them to the agenda.
Let us know on here by hitting reply, leave a comment, ping us on LinkedIn or you can email us at mu@dannydenhard.com
Thanks for reading again this week and we will see you next Friday
Danny & Harry