How I built my website with AI

By Mildred Foo · 17 October 2026 · 5 minute read

I built my business website with AI in a weekend, without writing a line of code. The only costs were my domain name and my Claude subscription. Here's what it actually looked like, what I kept firmly in my own hands, and what it taught me about running operations in a small business.

• TimeOne weekend
• CostDomain name + Claude subscription
• Coding neededNone
• HostingGitHub Pages (free)

Not a template, not a page builder, and not a web designer. Just me, a clear idea of what I wanted, and an AI tool I could talk it through with.

If you're picturing someone typing 'make me a website' and getting a finished site back, it wasn't like that. It was much more like working with a very fast, very patient collaborator. One who never got tired of 'can we try that again?'

Where I started

I knew what I wanted the site to do. Explain what fractional operations support is, show who I work with, and make it easy to book a call. One page, clear and warm, that sounded like me.

I'd tried building a site myself with page builders before, and found them restrictive. I've also maintained WordPress sites, so I knew that wasn't the platform I wanted for my own. And I didn't have the time or budget for a big design project.

What finally nudged me was a Business Gateway webinar on AI. I came away curious enough to give Claude Cowork a try over a weekend. Cowork is a mode of Claude that lets you build things together step by step, rather than just chat.

And a weekend is all it took. Granted, it was a busy one, with a lot of back and forth and more iterations than I'd care to count.

What working with AI actually looked like

It started with a brief. Who I help, what I do, the problems my clients come to me with, and how I want to sound. The better the brief, the better the first draft. That turned out to be the most important lesson of the whole project.

From there, it was rounds of back and forth:

• Words first. The AI drafted copy from my notes and my LinkedIn profile. I rewrote anything that didn't sound like me, and binned any phrases that felt like marketing speak.
• Then the look. Claude gave me a wide range of colour palettes to choose from, grouped by feel: Professional, Calm, Punchy and Approachable. We tried fonts and layouts too. I settled on deep blue-teal and apricot, with a clean, friendly typeface.
• Then the details. Buttons, spacing, the FAQ answers, the booking link. Small things, but they add up.
• Desktop and mobile, without the fiddling. This part was a breeze. I didn't have to make any of the intricate adjustments I'd dreaded from page builders. Claude got both versions looking right to my satisfaction. When one section felt cramped on a phone, it turned it into a swipeable carousel for the mobile view, so it's much easier to read.

The AI did the heavy lifting: writing the code, producing options in seconds, and fixing things the moment I spotted them. I didn't need to write a line of code, but I learnt plenty along the way, from how the pages fit together to getting the site live on my own domain. Still, the most useful skill was one I already had: knowing what I wanted, and explaining it clearly.

What did it cost?

Very little. I bought my domain name, and the site is hosted for free on GitHub Pages (GitHub's free website hosting), as I already had a GitHub account from other work. Don't let the techie name put you off: setting up the hosting only took a few minutes, and opening a GitHub account is free. So apart from my Claude subscription, the domain was the only cost.

Where I stayed in charge

AI is quick, but it doesn't know your business, your clients or your instincts. Those parts stayed with me.

• The message. What I offer, who it's for, and what I'm not. For example, I'm not a virtual assistant, and the site needed to make that clear.
• The voice. Every line had to pass the test: would I actually say this to a client over coffee?
• The decisions. The AI could give me five options. Choosing one was my job.
• Real feedback from real people. I showed the site to friends before launch. One pointed out that my original logo, which turned the last 'o' of my surname into a tick, made my name hard to read. She was right. We changed it the same day.

AI can't tell you how something lands with a person seeing it for the first time. People can.

What it taught me about operations

Halfway through, I realised the process felt very familiar. It was good operations work, just with a faster pair of hands.

1. A clear brief saves hours. Vague in, vague out. That's true of AI, and it's true of delegating to a new team member or a freelancer.
2. Small rounds beat one big reveal. Checking in little and often caught problems early, when they were quick to fix.
3. Someone has to own the decisions. Without a person making the calls, you get endless options and nothing finished.
4. Fresh eyes catch what you can't. The logo issue was invisible to me because I already knew how my name was spelt.

If you've ever handed a task to someone and got back something that wasn't quite right, the fix is usually the same: a clearer brief, a quicker check-in, and a named owner.

The tools will keep changing. What won't change is that the thinking has to come first: knowing how your business actually runs, what good looks like, and who makes the call. Get that right and everything else, AI included, gets easier.

Building my website with AI was quicker, cheaper and more enjoyable than I expected. But the result is mine because the thinking was mine.

A note on tools: I used Claude (Cowork mode) by Anthropic. I'm not affiliated with them and wasn't asked to write this. It's simply what worked for me.