Wix Debuts a Web Design Tool with Artificial Intelligence

Need a small business website? (Hint: if you don’t have one, you need one). Wix already makes it possible for a small business to establish an online presence without having to learn a single shred of code.

[Related: Nearly Half of U.S. Small Businesses Don’t Have a Website]

Now, the company has gone a step further by introducing Wix ADI—short for Artificial Design Intelligence—a website creation technology that goes beyond drag-and-drop templates to help small business owners instantly stake out a unique, professional-quality online presence. Nir Zohar, president and chief operating officer at Wix, told Small Business Computing that the two-year effort to bring the artificial intelligence (AI) powered technology to customers in many ways parallels the great strides developers have made to modernize the Web.

Zohar noted that, in less than a decade, the Web design industry has largely “moved from Flash to HTML5,” which provides experiences that feel more like interactive applications than the largely static websites of yesteryear. Template-driven website building tools are similarly due for a revamp.

While templates are handy and “people create amazing websites from them,” Zohar said it was time to incorporate two major drivers of the business software market these days—built-in intelligence and automation—to the world of designing and building websites.

Your Own Personal, Virtual, Web Developer

Wix ADI doesn’t replace the company’s current and continually evolving tool set, said Zohar. The technology acts as a complementary offering and provides “a great jumpstart” to the website-building process for both novices and designers alike, he said.

You begin the guided process by answering a few questions pertaining to your business or line of work. Wix ADI will then help select an appropriate theme and pull your company’s images and content—from the Web and related social media accounts—to automatically generate a responsive, mobile-friendly website.

And there’s no danger of ending up with a cookie-cutter design. “Every website is unique,” assured Zohar. Wix claims ADI’s advanced algorithms can generate billions of unique combinations, which lets small business owners stand out in a vast sea of me-too websites.

The AI technology searches out “data from [your company’s] previous activities, gathering information and replacing content” to flesh out the new website with a minimum of work on your part, said Zohar. This AI-powered curation process not only helps entrepreneurs get their websites up and running quickly, it helps novices avoid common mistakes that often doom their websites sites to online obscurity.

Web Designed Tailored to Your Business Needs

Wix ADI also takes into consideration the industry in which you operate, and it creates a site tailored to the needs of your particular business. Wix claims an 86 million user customer base—across several industries—and the new ADI technology draws from the company’s 10 years of best practices and experience helping businesses craft their websites, said Zohar.

From online storefronts to personal trainers, to hospitality services, Wix ADI conjures expert designs that fit a small business owner’s brand, and more importantly, the expectations of mobile consumers.

Currently rolling out to the company’s existing customers, Wix ADI will be available to new customers in the coming months, said Zohar. Once the rollout is complete, Wix ADI will represent the “biggest use of AI in world,” he claimed.

As adept as Wix ADI may be at creating a website, there’s still room for small business owners to add their unique stamp, said Zohar. You can further tweak the website design and add content using Wix’s familiar-yet-expanding set of Web design tools.

If small business owners care to expand into the realm of ecommerce, Wix offers integrated online store capabilities and specialized solutions for other types of businesses. For example, earlier this year, the company launched Wix Restaurants, which lets eateries take online and mobile orders. In January, the firm flipped the switch on Wix Bookings, which lets a company’s customers schedule appointments online.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Small Business Computing. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.