CHRIS HUNTER
0:19
Hello everybody, and welcome to AI Marketing Experts. My name is Chris Hunter, and I’m joined here with a whole bunch of really cool— marketing experts that are really cool and good with AI. So just like we do, uh, every week here on the AI Marketing Experts Show, we talk about AI and geek out a little bit on that kind of stuff. We have a topic today that’s kind of near and dear to every single one of our hearts here. Um, and that is, should you let AI build your website? Do you actually need to know when it comes to this? Let’s just start here. Laura, uh, you had a lot to say about that right before we jumped on here, so let’s start with you.
LAURA SUTHERLY
1:00
Well, I think it’s a conversation, especially after the big Super Bowl. We had a lot of commercials out there and people were leaning in and, and taking more interest of, ooh, what can I do? And of course, with your, um, as people are tuning in to us every week or listening to our episodes, we are encouraging to incorporate AI into their business all different aspects. But when it comes to websites, that one’s a little bit different only because there’s a lot of pros and a lot of cons to say I’m gonna turn it over to AI and let them run with it. Um, there’s the trust factor. I know there’s been AI— or excuse me, there’s been website builders out there for years. And we as agency owners have seen there is a place for them. Um, but it’s not always a great place for businesses, especially if you’re an established business and you have specific needs. That’s a great opportunity to build a partnership with an agency or to have an in-house team that wants their web presence to be more than just a website.
LAURA SUTHERLY
2:05
So I think that’s our— gonna be our conversation, or I think that’d be a very, um, a lot of value to our listeners and our viewers to understand as to where you might maybe look at what an AI biller could, um, do for inspiration ideas, but I know Jen’s going to go deep on what you need to look for immediately regarding those aspects. And I know over the 28 years that I’ve been, you know, happily helping businesses build their websites, it’s more than a website. There’s strategy. We do discovery. We want to find out what that customer journey is going to be like, how they like to connect with their, um, the Precision Ag dealerships like to connect with their growers. Some of them want the voice, um, they want the phone calls, they want the text messages. Others want forms filled out. So there’s journeys, um, you know, how it interacts with their CRM.
LAURA SUTHERLY
3:00
So there’s a lot more than just pretty pictures. We say that we’re going to put their business online, just not their, uh, build their website. So 100%.
CHRIS HUNTER
3:12
Yeah. And, and I agree with 100% of that because I mean, you know, it— in this day and age, yes, AI can do it, but just because it can do it, should it do it? Okay. Um, and that really is the question, what it comes down to. What do you think about that, Jen?
JENNIFER CREGO
3:29
Well, first of all, it depends on how you’re going to use the website. Uh, I’ll just throw it out there that, um, in general, when I’m thinking about it, I’m thinking about a small business that they’re getting people to their website online, whether it’s from, um, the Google Map Pack or,
LAURA SUTHERLY
3:52
um, um, you
JENNIFER CREGO
3:52
know, the organic search results, things like that, maybe ads, things like that. Where I think that AI sites can, can be really beneficial, uh, is maybe it’s, um, It’s a, a business, uh, that they’re all in on YouTube and they’re, they’re doing YouTube and they’re sending just a ton of traffic to their website from YouTube. And they are— they’re not a local business, they’re not looking for that, you know, online. So okay, sure, that, that might work well for them, you know, just in general. Um, that’s not the businesses that, that I have in mind anyways. And I think actually, Chris, As I was saying that, I forgot what you even asked me. I’m, I’m all over the place when it comes to websites. Was there something specific that you asked?
CHRIS HUNTER
4:38
Well, I think that, you know, just because it— we can have AI build it, should we have AI build a website?
BRAD KILGORE
4:47
Right.
CHRIS HUNTER
4:48
Right. And, and have a small business owner directing it to be built. Yeah. Right. I think that’s really the key there.
JENNIFER CREGO
4:56
Yeah, you know, there— I’m sure we’ve all gotten messages from, uh, small business owners, uh, who say, here’s what I want. I want a website that’s just like this other site. Um, like just like this competitor or, you know, um, just a site in general. And I think that it’s, um, a misconception, um, that people have that just because there’s another website out there means that that website is actually performing well. You really, um, don’t want to just make that assumption. Um, as professionals, like, we know there’s so many examples of like gorgeous websites, beautiful websites that do nothing for the business. And so when we have clients that come to us, and I know that you guys are the same, like, I’m not interested in just every website that, uh, that could be built. I want to make sure that my clients have a website that will make them money, that will connect with their audience, that will move the— their, uh, visitors through the journey.
JENNIFER CREGO
6:05
And that’s rarely the most gorgeous website that it could possibly be, although ideally we have both gorgeous and, and, and that it does a really good job.
BRAD KILGORE
6:16
But well, I think it ties into things that we’ve dealt with for years as, uh, agency owners and web developers or designers, whatever you want to classify us as. The, the fact of the matter is, for many years, even before AI came on the scene, a business owner could, uh— they kind of get bombarded, but they could use GoDaddy, they could use Wix, they could use all these free builders, um, you know, to, to get a business card website up, as we’ve called it, for years, right? So yes, could you do it? Sure, you could do it. Could you save some money? Absolutely you could. Would it be effective? In most cases, no, you know, because really it’s kind of like, uh, could I go out and, uh, fix a problem on my car? Uh, ChatGPT could tell me about it, right? Uh, I could probably get some wrenches, uh, from my neighbor. I could start banging away on that thing. But honestly, even if I fixed it, would it be really fixed right or effective? So it’s the same thing. Um, now that AI is in the picture, I think there are many pieces of AI that can be used in portions of your website, like your blog, um, uh, graphics, uh, those types of things. But when it comes to building it, um, why would you not, uh, if you have any sort of a marketing budget, why would you not hire a professional to do it correctly? Because at the end of the day, if you want just an ornament, business card website.
BRAD KILGORE
7:42
Yeah, you could do it. Um, but again, even if you— even, you know, there’s a lot of coding, uh, LLMs or, or, uh, AI models now that can code things. And there’s Lovable, and there’s all these different things that are really cool. And you can geek out on those things, and you could hit the button and say, yep, this looks really cool, but now what? Where do you host it? Uh, how do you connect your email? How do you make it functional? How do you optimize it? There’s so many levels to it that again, you could probably figure it out. And if you got more time than money, maybe that’s the way to go. But if you want to be smart about this, I would say it’s not there yet when it comes to just like build my, build my amazing website with AI. I like Joe’s down the street. So here’s a, here’s a link.
BRAD KILGORE
8:32
So make it look like that and blah, blah, blah. I, I don’t think it’s fair yet.
LAURA SUTHERLY
8:37
Yeah.
JOHN CLENDENNING
8:37
So I’m gonna be inappropriate. Um, it’s called marketing incest. It’s what it is. And most business owners, um, suffer from marketing incest. And it’s— this isn’t a new thing. You see, you know, all the other carpet cleaners are 3 rooms in a hall for $99, so I have to be— why was my business 3 rooms in a hall for $500? To be disruptive. Um, back in the day before websites, You could— yeah, and still to this day, you can hire Postcard Mania to put out a whole bunch of really glossy postcards of babies lying on carpets and all that kind of stuff to every door mail in the neighborhood. Or you could test the big pink flyer that guys who know what I’m talking about know, which is 11 by 17 and printed off in all kinds of copy.
JOHN CLENDENNING
9:23
And people go, oh, that looks absolutely ugly. Yeah, it looks ugly, but it made tens of thousands of dollars a month more than the postcard. Because the psychology is the point. The human reading it needs to be influenced in a certain way. We all get bombarded with propaganda every single day. We watch the Super Bowl, there was tons of propaganda thrown at our faces, and we just kind of drip, drip, drip feed it. When— if you want a website that after somebody’s made a buying decision, they’ve signed the contract, you’re selling, you know, widgets or whatever, or, you know, whatever, and then they just want to go, yeah, who’s the owners, what are these people, oh, there’s the faces, okay, yeah, I feel good about it, and it’s is sort of like that, it has no selling to do, then put up a brochure website. If you need a website that when they come to this thing, do I trust these guys? You need to have trust elements above the fold before they even scroll.
JOHN CLENDENNING
10:13
And if you don’t believe me, check your Google Analytics numbers. 95 to 98% of all traffic to your website did nothing and bounced away because your website sucks right now. So do you think AI can make your website suck less? No, it will just make it look pretty and that’s not what they want. What they need to do is, can I trust it? Do I feel good about it? And the consumer doesn’t even really know what it is. It’s, it’s, it’s subliminal. So you, you, you have the trust elements and now they scroll down. The old days, or what they call it above the fold, because the newspaper used to see it on the newsstand and, oh, you know, the war started today. I’m by— that’s above the fold.
JOHN CLENDENNING
10:46
You flipped over to the second. Most people never make it all the way down your page within those first two, the there and the first scroll on a full website, mobile optimized, whatever, um, they, they have to have gotten to the psychological moment that brought them there. The story that was told, that it continued, it said the right things. Just like landing pages for pay-per-click. If you get— you run a pay-per-click ad, you don’t run it to— you just run it to the homepage of your website, and you don’t run it to a landing page that’s being split test all the time for the best results, you are wasting money. So yeah, your website could, could get— could sit there and you could get one or two bookings out of 500 people showing up and make $1,000, or you could have 50, 60 bookings because they go, oh my God. Oh, and they get drawn in like a good long copy sales letter with the right story. Dan Kennedy, John Carlton, Gary Halbert, the psychology of sales needs to be put in, in that, that, that, that website.
JOHN CLENDENNING
11:43
And that’s just for the human. Brad touched on the other part. I’ll leave it there for, um, anybody else, but that’s just for the human once they get there. Does AI have any clue how to write all the schema code, all of the, you know, all the interlinking and all the pages, the 20-some-odd pages you need on a local service website nowadays for all your services, all your service areas, tie it all together, your blog posts and all that kind of stuff just to make it even relevant before adding one new page a week to make it even actually start to rank and compete against everybody else. So if all of that sounds doable, um, I’m hiring. I got— I, we need more web developers. You know, don’t, don’t do your whatever you’re doing. Come and work for us.
JOHN CLENDENNING
12:22
If you wanna spend all your time learning that, you are now one of us. You’re a digital marketer. If you’re actually a business owner, go out and sell your business. Go and talk about business. Go, go to the chamber, go knock on doors, grow your business and let like you are a professional at, and let other professionals put the psychology and the coding and all that stuff in place. Cuz you didn’t actually save yourself money. You bent over to pick up pennies and the dollars were flying outta your back pocket.
JENNIFER CREGO
12:48
Ooh, I love that.
LAURA SUTHERLY
12:50
That’s very, very— yes, on point, on point.
CHRIS HUNTER
12:54
Yeah.
LAURA SUTHERLY
12:54
And I think that it’s been touched upon in many of— as we’re all speaking here, is the fact of the integrations. Again, it’s— every business is ran differently, and if they’re looking for efficiency, as we’re doing that strategy sessions and really discovering what we can, um, you know, what their expectations are for what they want their websites to accomplish, it gets exciting when we’re saying, oh, did you realize that you can eliminate this or eliminate that if we make this connection? And I know Brad has, um, visited on this, and well, we’ve all kind of touched on it before, as the scheduling and different things that we can now automate. Yes, AI comes into play there, but if that conversation didn’t happen up front and those connections had not been made as to, okay, let’s connect the dot A, B, and C— look, we not only had the phone call or the form filled out, but a schedule was made, text messages were— reminders went out, and then it was a complete loop. And then they were able to be in that business environment that you’re able to have continuous conversations with your growers or with your clients, with your customers. So there’s a lot of exciting things out there, but just to say, oh great, this is the easy button, I’m going to click it and be done, I don’t think so. Um, personally, I I know that the, the businesses I deal with, they’re busy. I know we all deal with very, very busy business owners. Having AI maybe to help us craft an, um, initial thought, that is also a benefit, but to have it as the final product, that would be not what I recommend to, um, like there’s always a place, but we’re here to take their businesses further.
BRAD KILGORE
14:43
So I would agree with a lot of the things that Laura just said and the fact that, uh, you know, we live in a world where there’s a lot of features and there’s a lot of things that can be handled by AI now. Um, but it really ties back to what was mentioned earlier in the show too, of, uh, even if you could do it, even if you choose to do it, are you going to get stuck? Do you know how to put in Google Analytics? Do you know how to connect your website to Google Search Console? If you— if AI has created HTML code for you or whatever it, it supplied to you, where are you going to host that? Where are you going to— where are you going to paste it onto? You know, it’s just not that simple. Um, there’s a lot of nuts and bolts and moving parts on the back end of a website. Uh, how do you connect your email? How do you make it a How do you optimize it for, for search? So I, I think that there’s just a lot of pieces that are still cons at this point. So, uh, Chris, what do you think?
CHRIS HUNTER
15:46
So I’m going to back this all up. Every single thing that y’all have talked about here, I’m going to back it up with a story. Okay. And this is a recent story. This is some, some, you know, a client. Has taken control of his own website. Okay. And completely destroyed his own marketing.
CHRIS HUNTER
16:09
Okay. So I had a client that, that, um, just recently, you know, 3, 4 months ago asked to get access to their website. We’re like, okay, cool. What for? Because we usually manage it. We do all this stuff for them.
LAURA SUTHERLY
16:23
Right.
CHRIS HUNTER
16:23
So he wants to simplify it and clean it up. And I said, okay, cool. Just be careful. Don’t remove any of the text, right? What does he do? They’ve removed all of the text. And guess what? That’s what Google consumes, right? It reads text. I mean, that’s literally what it consumes. So, um, long story short, we’re looking at, at their heat maps, you know, and their rankings just drop and drop and drop and drop and drop. And And he took almost— he had taken almost all of the text off of the front page altogether.
CHRIS HUNTER
16:59
They, they removed actual service pages that we had set up for them that were— they were ranking very high. They were getting leads off of. He calls me, uh, you know, a week ago. It’s like, hey Chris, I can’t afford y’all anymore. I’m like, well, why not? Well, we’re not making any sales. Why not? Well, we’re not getting any leads. Oh, well, I can tell you exactly why not and exactly what happened on that. And so we went through it and I showed him, you know, remember we had this nice big headline here that, that, you know, told Google exactly what you did.
CHRIS HUNTER
17:35
And it’s not only that, but it was in a StoryBrand framework so that we were also attracting clients because we were getting in the story that was in their head. Oh, well, I, I wanted to simplify it. I said, I know that’s what you talked about 3 months ago, but you— the result of you messing with your own website is that you’re no longer ranking. You’re not even on the first 10 pages anymore because you just told Google you no longer do that service. So the reason that I illustrate this is because I’ve seen this happen over and over and over and over and over again in the past 23, 4, 5 years, whatever it is that I’ve been doing this, right? Is that business owners don’t— y’all might know roughly what you want to happen, but it’s the professionals that know how to get you there. Okay. And, and sure, ChatGPT can tell you something, but do you trust it yet? You know, do you trust Claude? Do you trust— there has to be some sort of level of something somewhere that is going to say, well, you know, I tried that 10 years ago and that didn’t work. Okay.
CHRIS HUNTER
18:46
Or I’ve tried that before and I— with other people and other websites and that didn’t work. So to me, yes, you can do it in, in Lovable AI, even Claude Code. And you’ve been able to do it for the past 10 years in, in Wix and Squarespace.
LAURA SUTHERLY
19:02
Right.
CHRIS HUNTER
19:04
Uh, and, and, and I get tons and tons of roofers that come to me that are like, well, you know, I’m not getting anything from my website. Well, what is it? It was a Wix website that I built. My cousin-in-law built, or my brother’s cousin’s friend’s sister built, right? Uh, because they know how to do— what— but it’s not doing anything for them because it’s a one-page website. It doesn’t talk to their target audience. It talks about them, uh, and how great that they are, right? It has zero call to actions on the entire website. There’s— you can’t even find their phone number, you know, just simple things like that, that we’ve tested. As professionals over the years and we know works, right? So to me, that’s the bottom line really, is it just— again, just because you can do it doesn’t mean that you should do it.
JOHN CLENDENNING
19:54
I think, I think that’s a great, great point. I think that’s the summing up of what we’ve, we’ve kind of all put out there. It’s, um, just because you can rally your buddies together and a case of beer and put a roof on— ship— take off your shingles and put them on. And I did that in my 20s. I’ve been on roofs of my brother-in-law’s house and stuff like that. And then eventually the real roofer had to come in because it eventually leaked. Didn’t know about the ice and water guard on the front and didn’t like whatever, because you know, all of that kind of stuff. You can rent a Rug Doctor or a Bissell machine from the grocery store and clean your carpets.
JOHN CLENDENNING
20:26
Anybody out there listening that’s, you know, in the carpet cleaning world, the cleaning world? Yeah, you can. But you all know as carpet cleaners, oh gosh, no, no, Mrs. Jones, you shouldn’t do that. My $40,000 truck mount in my $80,000, right? That’s a much better suction. It’s got this many CV— CFMs and blah, blah, blah. And they’re, they’re going, is it better cleaning? Yeah. Okay. Come clean for me then if it’s better.
JOHN CLENDENNING
20:46
Cause I, I tried it a couple times and the dog pee smell is still there. So yeah, you can build your website. Um, but the dog pee smell will still be there if you’re doing it yourself.
JENNIFER CREGO
20:57
I, I, I can do my own taxes, but— You should. Like, that’s— I, I can cut my own hair. I can, like, there are lots of things I can do. That does not mean that I should. Do them. I’m clearly not the best person to do my taxes.
BRAD KILGORE
21:15
Well, your hair looks nice though, Jen.
JENNIFER CREGO
21:17
Well, thank you, but I don’t cut my own hair.
LAURA SUTHERLY
21:21
And I think we all know that, again, we’ve talked about different levels and we know that we’re not for everyone and agencies aren’t for everyone. And, you know, but to the points that have been made, it’s those extra steps that if you’re ready to expand your business, to stand out online, to put your voice forward, uh, and be the experts that you are as you’re shaking hands and meeting people, that digital footprint matters. And so you need to know about— if you’re looking at your Google Console, how— what are those adjustments that you can make? And to Chris’s point, what is being read by Google or the AI systems? Is that still in play? And so yes, it’s not just a quick through, let’s glance and see if it’s pretty. It goes so much deeper, whether it be the heat maps or the other connections or simplifying your business so it’s more efficient because you build it in a certain way to streamline things that help you in your office and your, uh, team. Yeah.
CHRIS HUNTER
22:28
All right, I think that’s, uh, that puts a pin in absolutely everything here. Anyone else have anything to jump in on? On this topic?
BRAD KILGORE
22:37
I think we covered it.
JENNIFER CREGO
22:39
I think that’s a good place to end.
CHRIS HUNTER
22:41
Okay. All right then. Well, everyone, if you’re still here, thanks for listening in to us old nerds talk about websites and AI and all that kind of stuff. Click on the, the subscribe button. Make sure you like this video. Be sure to follow us. We’re, we’re adding things like this every single week. So keep on coming back.
