Our new website: designed, developed, and maintained with AI

Anyone who has a website knows: websites don't age well. More than five years after founding our company, we too felt it was time for a new online presence.

It wasn't just that we wanted a new look. We were also unhappy with the technical foundation (a WordPress CMS).

The decision to go with AI

Most of our team are software developers who enjoy trying things out and learning (see also our interview with Bernhard on AI in autoscan software development). So it quickly became clear: we would use AI to put our new website on a new footing.

That's how we designed and developed autoscan.app with the help of AI tools. And that's not all: the website doesn't need a content management system!

For those who want the details, here are the (AI) tools we used:

• Claude Design to give the website a new look based on the old design.
• Vercel as our hosting, build, and deployment platform of choice.
• Next.js as the framework for the website.
• Git for source control management.
• OpenClaw as a local development environment with AI.
• Telegram for communicating with OpenClaw to maintain website content.

So how's the new website doing?

Thanks for asking – it's doing well! The website runs reliably, and we're getting used to managing content via Telegram (it's nice when the AI "thinks along" and, for example, points out a mistake in the text). One of the biggest advantages is that design changes can be made easily, directly, and quickly without extra help from developers.

What to consider for a project like this

In case you're wondering whether this approach would work for your own website project, here are a few lessons from ours.

1. In principle, you can have AI develop anything – as long as you understand the specification yourself and can review what the AI has done. The more complex the project, the more in-house expertise you need. We couldn't have built our new website without it.
2. At the moment, a lot of time and brainpower still goes into figuring out how to use today's AI tools and connect them with each other.
3. You also need to think carefully about what you actually need in your specific case. For example, do you still need a content management system, meaning a visual view of the site and its content for editors? We decided to work without one, since our site is small and easy to keep track of (and only two editors work on it). That also saves us the license costs for a CMS.
4. AI isn't the right choice if you want a truly creative, new design for your website. For our new site, we simply evolved our existing design. What mattered most was showcasing our modern scanning solution and keeping things clear and easy to navigate – so no special design challenges that still call for the human creative mind!

Launching the website is just the beginning

Of course, this website project isn't finished – any more than the development of our software products autoscan and autosign is. Even while this article was being written, we were trying out new AI tools for the website. Who knows what things will look like in a year. Either way, we'll stay on it.

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This article is of human origin. Claude.ai was allowed to give feedback, most of which was ignored.