AI is changing web design quickly.
Not hypothetically. Not someday.
It's already happening.
I've spent more than 15 years working in eCommerce and digital development, and over that time I've had a hand in nearly every part of building websites: photography, videography, graphic design, wireframes, page layouts, copy, merchandising, UX, testing and working side by side with developers to turn an idea into something functional.
I've also watched websites take months to build.
Sometimes many months.
I've worked on projects that cost tens of thousands of dollars, and one of the more expensive builds I was involved with approached $100,000.
There are websites that cost far more than that.
For a large company, that may be a reasonable investment.
For a small or midsize business, it can be intimidating.
They know their website needs work. They know customers judge them by it. They know their competitors are improving.
But historically, doing something truly custom could become expensive very quickly.
AI is changing that equation.
The Biggest Shift Is Speed
One of the most obvious ways AI is affecting website development is the amount of time it takes to get from an idea to working code.
Five years ago, if I wanted a custom interaction on a website, the process might look something like this:
Define the feature.
Create a wireframe.
Explain it to a developer.
Get an estimate.
Wait for development.
Test the first version.
Find problems.
Send revisions back.
Wait again.
Repeat.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that process. In complex development, some version of it is still necessary.
But for many everyday website features, AI has compressed that cycle dramatically.
Today, I can describe a section or interaction, generate an initial version of the code, place it into a development environment, test it, identify the problems, revise it and continue iterating.
Sometimes within minutes.
That doesn't mean the first version is good.
It often isn't.
But the starting point arrives much faster.
AI Is Especially Powerful When You Already Know What Good Looks Like
This is an important distinction.
AI makes building easier.
It doesn't automatically make someone a good web designer.
If I ask AI to create a section for a website, it can usually produce something functional.
But functional and good are not the same thing.
It may create too much spacing.
The hierarchy may feel wrong.
The typography may not fit the brand.
The mobile experience may be awkward.
The interaction may technically work but feel clumsy.
The code may conflict with something else on the page.
Or the entire section may simply look generic.
That is where experience becomes incredibly valuable.
After years of working in eCommerce, you develop instincts about how a page should flow.
You know where the eye tends to move.
You know when there is too much information.
You recognize when an important action is getting buried.
You understand that desktop and mobile are not the same experience.
You know that the technically correct solution isn't always the best customer experience.
AI can accelerate execution.
It doesn't replace judgment.
Coding Is Where the Economics Have Changed the Most
For years, custom development was often one of the most expensive parts of building a website.
Even a relatively small custom feature could add significant cost.
Take something like a product finder.
A company has a broad product assortment, and customers aren't always sure which product is right for them.
You want to ask the customer a series of questions and then recommend the best option based on their answers.
Not that long ago, something like this could require a developer to build custom logic, styling and interactions from scratch.
Depending on the complexity, that could easily become a multi-thousand-dollar feature.
Today, with the right experience and careful testing, AI can help build a significant portion of that functionality extremely quickly.
The same applies to custom Shopify Liquid sections, CSS, JavaScript interactions, calculators, comparison tools, selectors and other elements that previously required considerably more development time.
That doesn't make development expertise irrelevant.
For complicated integrations, databases, applications, APIs, security-sensitive functionality and highly custom systems, experienced developers are still essential.
But the threshold for what requires a full custom-development engagement has changed dramatically.
And that's good news for smaller businesses.
Your Budget Can Go Further
I think this is one of the most exciting consequences of AI in web design.
The benefit isn't simply that websites can become cheaper.
It's that the same budget can accomplish more.
Instead of spending a large percentage of the budget getting basic functionality developed, more resources can go toward the things customers actually experience.
Better photography.
Better messaging.
Better product information.
Better mobile UX.
Custom interactions.
More thoughtful merchandising.
Stronger storytelling.
More useful tools.
A small or midsize business can increasingly build an experience that feels much closer to what you would expect from a significantly larger company.
The gap is shrinking.
But AI Still Needs Someone at the Helm
There is a tendency to talk about AI as though you give it an instruction and a finished product appears.
That's not how I use it.
The process is much more collaborative.
Generate.
Test.
Break it.
Fix it.
Adjust the spacing.
Change the hierarchy.
Test mobile.
Find another issue.
Rewrite part of the code.
Test again.
Sometimes AI solves a problem immediately.
Sometimes it confidently creates something that doesn't work at all.
And sometimes fixing one problem creates another.
You still have to know what you're looking at.
You still have to test the work.
You still have to recognize when the result is poor.
And you need enough understanding of the underlying platform to know where the problems are likely coming from.
AI is incredibly useful.
But unsupervised AI can turn a website into a mess surprisingly quickly.
The Hardest Thing for AI to Replace Is Authenticity
There is another side of web design where I think AI has much further to go.
Authentic imagery.
Real people.
Real facilities.
Real products.
Real work.
Real stories.
AI-generated imagery can be impressive. It continues to improve rapidly.
But if you're trying to build trust around an actual business, there is enormous value in showing the actual business.
Your employees.
Your customers.
Your equipment.
Your location.
Your products being used.
The work being performed.
The little imperfections that make something feel real.
For years I've worked in photography and video as part of the broader eCommerce process, and I still believe those skills matter tremendously.
A beautifully generated image might catch someone's attention.
A genuine image can make them believe you.
Those are not necessarily the same thing.
Where AI Becomes Extremely Useful With Real Imagery
That doesn't mean AI has no place in photography or video.
Quite the opposite.
One of my favorite recent uses of AI came from a website project where the company didn't have a particularly deep library of still photography.
What they did have was a short video.
It was only about a minute long, but it contained a variety of scenes showing the company, its people and its work.
Historically, grabbing screenshots from video is usually not ideal.
Video frames can have motion blur.
They may not be particularly sharp.
They weren't necessarily captured at the exact moment a photographer would have chosen.
But there were excellent moments buried inside that footage.
So I pulled frames from the video and used AI—in this case Adobe Firefly—to clean them up.
The goal wasn't to reinvent the images.
I wasn't changing people's faces.
I wasn't replacing the environment.
I wasn't creating fictional scenes.
I simply wanted to sharpen the image, reduce some of the artifacts and make the still frame feel more like a deliberate photograph.
The results were excellent.
A one-minute video suddenly became the source for a much larger library of usable still imagery.
That's the kind of AI application I find particularly exciting.
It didn't replace authentic content.
It helped us get more value from authentic content that already existed.
That's the Difference Between Using AI and Letting AI Use You
The temptation with any new technology is to use it everywhere simply because you can.
I don't think that's the goal.
The best use of AI is often much quieter.
Remove repetitive work.
Speed up development.
Expand existing assets.
Prototype ideas.
Solve technical problems.
Create more room in the budget for things customers actually notice.
The technology should support the experience.
It shouldn't become the experience.
What AI Still Can't Replace
For all of the capability AI brings to web design, there are things I still wouldn't hand over to it.
Taste.
Knowing that something technically works but still doesn't feel right.
Strategy.
Understanding what the website needs to accomplish for the business.
Customer empathy.
Recognizing where a real person might become confused, skeptical or frustrated.
Brand judgment.
Knowing what belongs on the page and what doesn't.
Authenticity.
Capturing the people, stories and details that make a company real.
Experience.
Knowing when the AI-generated answer is wrong.
Those things matter just as much as they did before.
Maybe more.
Because when production gets easier, judgment becomes more important.
AI Isn't Replacing the Craft. It's Changing the Tools.
I've worked through enough generations of web development to know that the tools always change.
We moved from rigid layouts to responsive design.
From hand-coded pages to content management systems.
From custom commerce platforms to systems like Shopify.
From manual photo retouching to increasingly intelligent creative tools.
Every shift changes what is possible.
AI is another one of those shifts—just a particularly large one.
For someone with experience, it feels a little like having an additional developer, researcher and production assistant available at all times.
That's incredibly powerful.
But you still have to give those tools direction.
You still have to decide what should be built.
You still have to recognize what good looks like.
And you still have to create something that feels genuinely connected to the company behind it.
AI can help build a website faster than ever before.
It can help make custom functionality accessible to businesses that couldn't justify it a few years ago.
It can dramatically expand what one person or a small team can accomplish.
But the best websites won't be the ones with the most AI in them.
They'll be the ones where you barely notice it was involved at all.