Small and mid-sized enterprises often struggle with funding, and as a result, they fail to invest in necessary infrastructure development. One such area that SMEs often hesitate to invest in due to a lack of funds is their website.
As per Forbes, a small business website can cost between $2,000 and $9,000 just for the design process. Annual maintenance costs can add another $1,200 per year.
Hence, it’s no surprise that many businesses struggle to fund a proper website for themselves, or they used to struggle at least. At present, many SMEs across the world are turning to AI website builders to help with the web development process. However, cost isn’t the only factor that is driving this trend.
Today, we’ll share a detailed explanation as to why so many small and mid-sized businesses are using AI for developing their websites.
Cost Effective
Developing a website can set your business back $1000 to $145,000 on average. Annual maintenance costs can further set you back almost another $10,000 every year. Freelance web developers can cost you $15 to $30 per hour. Depending on the size of the task, these hourly payments can add up and become a burden to your small business at some point.
Compared to hiring an agency or freelance web developer, using an AI website builder is relatively cheaper. You can even use an AI website generator, according to Hocoos, for free. Of course, the free version of such AI website generators will have fewer features or customization options. In that case, switching to a premium version of the website builder is a viable option.
Such premium AI website-building tools can cost you around $15 per month, which rounds up to $180 a year. However, if you opt for a yearly subscription, you can save as much as $30 per year on such a tool.
Also, know that this amount that you’re paying also covers your domain name and hosting costs. Therefore, you can rest easy knowing that there are no additional or hidden charges if you use an AI website builder. For a small business, especially those that are low on funds or capital, these savings are significant.
Easy to Build and Maintain
Developing a website is a mammoth technical task, so hiring professional web developers to build and maintain these sites is the norm. After all, you wouldn’t want to mess up your site simply because of not using professionals with technical expertise.
With an AI site builder, both the website design process and the maintenance side of things become much easier.
When building a website from scratch, you or your IT team need expertise in languages like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc. However, for building AI websites, you don’t need any knowledge of these.
An AI-generated website is built using prompts. You’ve probably used ChatGPT; using an AI website builder is somewhat similar to using ChatGPT.
The AI will ask you a few simple questions like what the business is about, what features and colors it needs, etc. Upon receiving your answers, it will work its magic and build the site for you.
As for maintenance and updating content, you’ll have your dedicated and easy-to-use dashboard. Small businesses spend around five hours every month on website maintenance. This, of course, involves bringing in web developers at times to check the website’s backend for bugs and other problems.
With the maintenance dashboard provided by the AI website builder, you won’t need to bring in a developer for routine maintenance. From adding and editing content to making changes to the design and adding features, you can do it all through this dashboard.
Little to No Chance of Bugs
A major issue with coding an entire website from scratch is that it might end up with a lot of unnoticed bugs. From minor syntax errors to more deadly logical ones, there’s a lot that can go wrong and lead to bugs on the site.
These bugs can render your site useless at times. For SMEs, this is an even bigger issue. That’s because you have to pour in more money and resources in finding and removing the bugs.
With an AI website builder, there’s almost zero chance that your site will have bugs. These AI site builders are flawless when it comes to developing the backbone and overall design of the site. This, in turn, means that small businesses don’t have to spend resources or any funds in trying to find and fix the bugs.
All in all, there are several reasons why small businesses are turning to AI for the development of their websites. SMEs that lack the funds to invest in professional developers are rapidly making the switch to AI website builders.
Going forward, as the technology gets even better, we’ll see larger corporations also make the switch to AI for web development.