AI can write your website copy. So why would you pay someone?

Fair question.

Open ChatGPT. Open Claude. Tell it what your business does. Ask for a homepage.

Thirty seconds later: words.

Some of them might even be rather good.

So, as someone who has spent eight years being paid to write words for businesses, am I currently rocking gently in a corner?

No (not yet).

Because writing the words was never really the hard bit.

Your website has a bigger job than filling some boxes with copy

Before anyone writes Welcome to our website, there are a few things worth sorting out.

What are you actually selling?

Who are you selling it to?

What matters to them?

Why should they choose you?

What makes you different from the 14 other tabs they have open?

What needs to be on the homepage — and what absolutely does not?

Where should they go next?

And what do Google and AI search need to understand about your business?

That’s website strategy.

And without it, AI can produce 800 beautifully grammatical words that achieve approximately nothing.

AI is brilliant. I use it.

There. Nobody needs to whisper.

AI is fast. It can research, organise information, generate options, spot gaps, summarise enormous amounts of material and get a first draft moving while I’m still drinking my coffee.

Why wouldn’t I use it?

The interesting bit is knowing what to ask it to do.

And, perhaps more importantly, knowing when what it gives you is a load of old sugar honey iced tea.

Because AI doesn't know that your customers always ask the same question before they buy.

It doesn't know that the service you barely mention is actually your most profitable.

It doesn't know your competitor's website made you mutter oh, for God's sake because they've nicked the positioning you were about to use.

It doesn't know that one throwaway comment you made in a conversation is actually the best headline on the whole website.

That's the good stuff.

The words aren't the strategy

This is where I think we've got slightly confused about AI and copywriting.

If you think a copywriter's job is to sit at a desk and manufacture sentences, then yes: AI looks rather alarming.

But that's never been the most valuable part of what I do.

My job is to work out what we need to say in the first place.

The positioning.

The angle.

The hierarchy.

The key messages.

The customer journey.

The bits we make big.

The bits we cut.

The personality.

The calls to action.

The reason somebody lands on your website and thinks:

Ah. This is exactly what I was looking for.

Then we find the best words to make that happen.

AI can absolutely help with those words.

Good.

We have things to do.

And now there are more readers at the party

Your website isn't only being read by potential customers.

Google is trying to understand it.

AI search tools are trying to understand it.

And increasingly, people are asking those tools questions rather than typing three slightly wonky keywords into Google and hoping for the best.

So your website needs to be clear about who you are, what you do, who you help and what you know.

Not in a horrible SEO COPYWRITING SERVICES ESSEX UK sort of way.

In a natural, specific, well-structured, genuinely useful way.

That's also rather good for humans.

Clear beats clever-but-confusing.

Specific beats vague.

Useful beats waffle.

Personality makes you memorable.

And none of those require us to write like robots just because robots might be reading.

So, can you use AI to write your own website?

Definitely.

And if you know your positioning, understand your customers, have a clear site structure, know your search strategy and have a decent eye for copy, you might do a very good job.

I'm not going to pretend otherwise because I have an invoice to send.

But if you're staring at six pages of perfectly acceptable AI copy thinking this is fine, so why does it feel like it could belong to absolutely anybody? — that's probably the bit you're missing.

Not more words.

More thinking.

Which brings me to my £799 website offer.

Yes, AI is part of how I can offer a complete website for £799.

I'm not hiding it behind a curtain while pretending I personally chiselled every adjective from marble.

AI does some of the heavy lifting.

I do the thinking.

I work out the strategy, structure and messages. I decide what deserves space. I shape, rewrite, edit and improve. I design the thing. I build it in Squarespace. And I make sure the finished website actually feels like your business.

It's collaborative, too.

You know your business.

I know marketing, messaging, copy and websites.

AI is very good at doing what it's told.

That's quite a useful little team.

The point isn't to avoid AI. It's to use it well.

AI hasn't made good marketing less important.

If anything, when everybody can generate more words, more content and more stuff at the touch of a button, knowing what's actually worth saying becomes rather more valuable.

Use AI.

I certainly will.

Just don't mistake having the words for having the answer.

Need a new website rather than another afternoon talking to ChatGPT about one?

Strategy. Copy. Design. Build. £799.

View the offer here.