One of the many places that AI continues to be integrated is SMB marketing. Though AI is being thrown at everything these days, this is one of the places where it makes a lot of sense. And that’s simply because it addresses real pain points and gives back to SMBs the scarcest resource of all: time.
Under that umbrella – which includes AI-driven SEO and eCommerce – website building is a high-value AI integration that continues to develop. The latest comes from Bluehost, a website host in the WordPress ecosystem – the biggest one in fact – that continues to beef up its site-builder features.
Specifically, its new AI Website Creator lets SMBs create and customize a website in minutes by answering a set of questions. Rather than the usual technical work to assemble a given website, answers to SMB questions steer the automated creation of the site, including functions like eCommerce.
All the above sits under Bluehost’s WonderSuite. As we examined last summer when the product launched, this represents Bluehost’s formal expansion into robust website-building features. This type of functional expansion has become a strategic imperative for hosting players (more on that in a bit).
Balanced Diet
Going deeper into the particulars of Bluehost’s AI website creator, it works by guiding users through an onboarding questionaire as noted. This includes plain-spoken narratives such as business goals and functional components. Does it sell things online? Does it market itself on Instagram? And so on.
From there, the tool goes to work, integrating things in the background such as Yoast SEO, or WooCommerce for online store functionality. All along the way, it will also ask SMBs to upload business-specific visual assets such as logos; and connect the website to any relevant social accounts.
After this onboarding wizard-like function does its thing, it then spits out some options and variations – much like Generative AI tools like Meta Imagine give users a few image options based on their prompts. Manual tweaks to refine the website further are then enabled through WonderSuite’s editing features.
The idea here is a balance of automation and control. At this early stage of AI, SMBs want automation and time savings, as noted… but there’s also a broader cultural reticence to AI. So some degree of control is prudent. And let’s face it, generative AI isn’t good enough yet to get it right every time.
Name of the Game
Back to the broader strategic and functional expansion among web hosts, Bluhost is blitzing features that typically fall outside of the web host role, such as eCommerce. As background, WordPress often involves cobbling together a domain host, site host, themes, and plugins to customize a given website.
It’s that optionality that makes WordPress so expansive and customizable. But it also adds complexity. So the name of the game for SMB-focused website players is to simplify that mix with one-stop-shop functionality. So Bluehost has brought in more site-building functionality, such as WonderSuite.
Beyond SMB-friendly drivers, Bluehost is motivated by other factors. Hosting can be seen by some as a commototozied product, so the company is rightly adding features that engender differentiation and premium vibes. Some of these are upsells, while others – like the AI Website Creator – are baked right in.
The AI Website creator also follows Bluehost’s recent cloud-hosting offers, as well as AI site-building and domain-name generators from its corporate cousin (under the Newfold umbrella), Web.com. So expect more expansion from Bluehost, especially involving automation and AI that saves SMBs time.
