There are three ways to build a website: do it yourself, use AI, or hire a professional. Doing it yourself suits you if you want to keep costs to a minimum, AI if you want both a fast launch and low cost, and a professional if you want to hand over everything from sorting out your strengths to the design. Before you choose, decide in one sentence what you want your website to do.
There are 3 ways. The difference is where people spend their time
Websites can be built in three ways: by yourself, with AI, or by hiring a professional. Whichever you choose, the flow is the same: get a server and a domain, plan the structure, prepare the text and photos, and publish. The difference is which parts you do yourself and which parts you leave to someone else.
Building it yourself costs the least but takes the most time and learning. Building with AI gets you live faster, because AI drafts the structure and text, but the result depends on the quality of the tool you use. Hiring a professional costs more, but it puts a specialist's time into sorting out your business strengths and into the design.
The 3 ways compared in one table
| Item | Do it yourself | Use AI | Hire a professional |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost | Mainly domain and server fees | From tens of thousands of yen | From several hundred thousand yen |
| Time to launch | Several weeks to several months | Several days to several weeks | About 1 to 3 months |
| Who writes the text | You | AI drafts, you review | A creator interviews you and writes it |
| Design | Choose from templates | AI proposes options | Designed specifically for you |
| Updates after launch | You do them | Depends on the tool | Can be handed off under a maintenance contract |
| Best suited for | Companies with time who don't mind learning | Those who want to start fast and cheap | Those who want to build from their strengths |
The amounts and timeframes in the table are guidelines showing general trends. Actual costs vary with the provider and the number of pages. As one piece of published data, a survey by Web Kanji found that when small and medium-sized businesses commissioned website production, the average cost was ¥1,044,000 and the median was ¥573,000.
How to build it yourself
Building it yourself follows these steps.
- Decide your goal in one sentence. Make it something you can count, such as "get 5 more quote requests a month"
- Get a domain name. Choose something short that shows your company or service name
- Rent a server, or sign up for a website builder service
- Decide which pages to make. To start, four pages are enough: top page, services, company profile and contact
- Prepare the text and photos and put them on the pages
- Check the display on a smartphone and publish
- Register with Google Search Console and confirm your site appears in search
The strengths of this method are the low cost and being able to fix things right away. The weakness is that time is concentrated in steps 4 and 5. If you're not used to it, planning the structure and text of a single page can take a whole day.
How to build it with AI
Building with AI means leaving the structure and text drafts, from the steps for doing it yourself, to AI. Some tools produce text and design proposals when you answer questions, while others have you ask a general-purpose AI such as ChatGPT to write the text and paste it into the page yourself.
What to look at when building with AI is the quality of the text. Text produced by simply asking AI to "write text for my website" tends to use wording that could apply to any company and doesn't stay in the reader's memory. Check how far the tool you choose builds in proven patterns for writing that sells, and whether there is a step where a person reviews the content before it's published.
How to hire a professional
When you hire a professional, you first tell the production company about your business and goals, and start by identifying your strengths and designing the structure. Next you look at the design proposal and settle on a direction, prepare the copy and photos, then move through production, review and launch in that order.
The strength of this method is that a third party helps you sort out your business strengths. It's not uncommon for an advantage you take for granted to be exactly the reason customers choose you. The weaknesses are the higher cost, and that you also spend time preparing copy and photos.
A guide to choosing
Answering the following questions will show you a direction.
- Can you spend 3 or more hours a week on updating your website? If so, building it yourself is also an option
- Are you in a hurry to launch? If so, building with AI suits you
- Do you need to be chosen over your competitors? If that need is strong, a professional's strategy and design will make a difference
- Can you keep up with updates and maintenance after launch yourself? If not, choose a way that lets you hand off maintenance too
If you're unsure, it's also effective to first build with AI, prioritizing speed and low cost, then see the response and bring in a professional to refine it. The way you build is not something you can't change once you've decided.
Common mistakes when choosing
Deciding on cost alone
Deciding on cost alone often leaves you with a website nobody sees after launch. A website only helps when it is found in search, read, and leads to inquiries. Compare not only the initial cost but also the monthly cost after launch and the cost of making changes.
Starting without a goal
Without a goal, you can't decide what to include, pages just keep multiplying, and the site never gets finished. Write your goal in one sentence, then build only the pages that goal needs.
Underestimating the preparation of copy and photos
What takes the most time in production is not the coding or design but preparing copy and photos. Whichever way you choose, someone has to do this preparation. If you build it yourself, that's you; with AI, you'll spend time answering questions; and when you hire a professional, you'll spend time in interviews.
Not thinking about maintenance after launch
CMSs such as WordPress keep getting updates to the core and plugins. If you stop updating, the display can break and security weaknesses can remain. Decide before you build who will keep up with backups and updates.
Estimating cost and time in a real scenario
Let's look at the differences between the three ways using a small company as an example. Here we imagine a construction company with 5 employees building a website of four pages: services, company profile and an inquiry page, plus the top page.
If you build it yourself, in addition to domain and server costs you'll be working on weekday evenings and holidays. Taking photos and drafting text takes the most time, and it's not unusual for launch to take several months. Since this runs alongside work at the job site, updates tend to stall.
If you build with AI, a draft of the text is produced as you answer questions, so the time to launch is short. One person to review is enough to move forward, and the cost stays low at the initial stage.
If you hire a professional, you need to set aside interview time to identify your strengths. It does take your staff's time, but you spend less effort thinking up the text. Even for the same four pages, whether the finished pages resonate with readers depends on the quality of this interview.
Whichever way you choose, what remains at the end is updating after launch. Deciding before you build how much updating you can keep up, such as posting one project example a month, keeps things from stalling after you build.
How to decide when you're unsure
If you can't decide among the three, narrow it down in this order. First, decide when you want to launch. If you want to launch within a month, building it yourself or with AI are the candidates. Next, think about whether you have time to think through the text. If you don't, leave it to AI or a professional. Finally, think about whether you need to stand out from your competitors. If you do, a professional's strategy design will help. Once you have these three answers, you'll have narrowed it down to one or two candidates.
FAQ
Building it yourself. You can start with just domain and server fees. However, you pay in the time it takes to plan the structure and write the text.
Whether a site was built with AI does not decide its search ranking. Google Search Central has indicated that content created with the help of AI is treated no differently as long as it is useful to readers. What matters is whether the content is useful to the reader.
It varies with the company and the content. About 1 to 3 months is one guideline. Preparing copy and photos often uses several weeks of that.
Yes. What you wrote on your own website can be used as a draft when you refine it later. If you register the domain in your own name, moving it later is also easier.
Updating whenever you have new information is enough. However, information that changes easily, such as prices and business hours, should be fixed each time it changes. If outdated information is shown, customers leave before they get in touch.
We'll help you choose the way that suits you
Merci Ltd. offers two ways to build: site-factory, led by AI, and Custom-Made Production, led by creators. site-factory suits those who want to start fast and cheap, and Custom-Made Production suits those who want to build from sorting out their strengths through to the design. If you can't decide which suits you, we'll guide you after hearing about your concerns.
We have a page that compares the two on a single page. It lays out pricing, timelines and how the copy is written, so please take a look first.
