It removes the blank page
The reason small business websites go unbuilt for years is rarely money. It is that starting is unpleasant. Choosing a template, filling in placeholder text and deciding where things go is a lot of small decisions with no obvious right answer.
A generated draft turns that into editing, which almost everybody finds easier. You can react to a page. Reacting is faster than inventing.
That alone is worth the exercise even if you rewrite most of it, because rewriting something is a different kind of work from writing it.
What it does well
- Conventional page shapes. A landing page, a service page, a portfolio, an event page. These have known structures and the output reflects that.
- Sensible defaults. Responsive layout, readable type, a colour scheme that holds together.
- Section suggestions you had not thought of, such as an FAQ or a service comparison.
- Speed. Ten minutes to something reviewable rather than an evening.
What it cannot do
The list is short and it matters.
It does not know your prices, your delivery areas, your opening hours or your actual policies. Anything specific it produces is a guess, and a guess printed on your website reads as a fact to a customer.
It does not know what your customers ask you. The FAQ it writes will be the generic one; the useful one is in your inbox.
It does not have your tone. Generated copy tends towards the confident and slightly grand, which is wrong for most small businesses and actively off putting for some.
Describing the site properly
The quality of the first draft tracks the quality of the description more than anything else.
- Say what the business does in one plain sentence, as you would to somebody at a bus stop.
- Say who the page is for and what you want them to do when they reach it.
- List the sections you know you need, and say what goes in each.
- Say what to leave out. Explicitly ruling things out is more effective than most people expect.
- Give the tone as an example rather than an adjective. Sounds like a letter from a person, not a brochure.
Then read the result and correct it with follow up prompts rather than starting again. Iterating on something is where the technique is strongest.
Checking the draft properly
Generated pages look finished before they are correct, which is the specific danger.
Read every factual claim and either verify it or delete it. Prices, timescales, guarantees, qualifications, locations, anything with a number in it.
Then read it out loud. Anything you would not say to a customer standing in front of you does not belong on the page, however well written it is.
The version control matters here too: the version before the last set of AI changes is kept, so you can put it back if a change made things worse.
When to write it yourself
When the page is the product. If the writing is what people are paying for, generated copy will not survive contact with the audience.
When the details are the whole point, such as legal, medical or regulated content, where getting a phrase wrong has consequences.
And when you already know exactly what you want to say. In that case the draft is something to argue with, and writing it directly is faster.