How to spot an AI-built website: start with how it works
Spotting an AI-built website by its purple gradient is the lazy test, and it will be out of date in a month. The tools keep getting better at looking different.
The reliable test is how the site works. AI is brilliant at producing something that looks finished. It has no idea what it is like to land on a page with one thumb and ten seconds of patience. A person who understands users makes thousands of small decisions that never show up in a screenshot. A generated page skips them.
This is a field guide to the tells, in the order we usually notice them: the look first, then the flow. One thing before we start. The question is never whether a machine touched the site. It is whether a human who understands users shaped what came out.
Tell 1: The gradient hero that could be anyone's
A soft purple-to-blue gradient. A glowing blob behind a centred headline. A little pill above it that says "New" or "Now in beta". Two buttons underneath. You have seen this page a hundred times, because the tools learn from millions of pages and drift towards the most common look.
Now read the headline. "Build the future of work." "Powerful tools for modern teams." Swap the company name and nothing changes. A headline that fits every business tells you about none of them.
The check: read the top of the page without scrolling. Can you say what the company sells, who it is for and why you would pick it? A good hero answers all of that in one line.
Tell 2: Three cards, three icons, the same shape every time
Scroll down. A row of three cards, each with a small icon in a rounded square, a two-word title and a sentence of grey text. Then another row of three. Then a grid of six. Same corners, same soft shadow, same padding, same grey text, all the way down.
Look at the icons. They come from one stock set, chosen by keyword: a rocket for "fast", a shield for "secure". They decorate the point instead of explaining it, and you could swap them round without anyone noticing.
Tell 3: Nothing on the page is real
Old placeholder text was easy to catch. The modern kind is smoother: "We are passionate about delivering exceptional results." It reads fine and says nothing. Hunt for the things only a real business has: a name, a place, a price, a photo of an actual person, a description of how the work really goes.
Then look at the testimonials. "Sarah J., Marketing Director", a polished portrait, and the line "This completely transformed how we work." No company and no link. Search the name. Check the logo strip too. If those companies have never heard of the site, the site has a problem.
The deepest tell is the lack of anything specific. No address, no opening hours. Real businesses are full of awkward specifics about how they do things differently. If a site has none, nobody who runs the business was in the room when it was made.
Tell 4: It looks tidy, but nothing leads the eye
The spacing is even. The font is a clean sans-serif. The colours are consistent. It all looks fine, and fine is the problem. Squint at it. Is anything clearly the first thing to read? Usually every section has the same heading size and the same gap. Generated pages are very good at consistency, and consistency gets mistaken for hierarchy.
The buttons give it away. "Get started", "Learn more" and "Book a demo" side by side, all filled in the same colour. When everything is the main action, nothing is. The page then ends in a footer, or a banner that repeats the hero, with no answer to what a visitor should do next.
Tell 5: The flow doesn't match how people behave
Start with the form. Name, email, phone, company, job title, company size, budget and a message, all before you can ask one simple question. People give you what they are comfortable giving, and every extra field costs you enquiries. A human decides which fields earn their place. A generated form asks for everything, because more data sounds better.
Then the journey. An account wall before you can see anything. A pricing page with no prices. A menu labelled with the tool's guess at business words ("Solutions", "Resources", "Company") instead of what visitors are looking for, and sometimes no "Contact" in it at all. A nervous first-time buyer needs to know about delivery and returns. The page gives them a feature list.
Pick the most common reason someone visits. Now count the taps it takes to finish it. If the answer is more than you expected, the site was built from a template with no customer in mind.
Tell 6: Mobile, keyboards and speed were afterthoughts
Mobile first. A large share of visits happen on a phone, yet generated layouts tend to look right at desktop width and merely shrink from there. Tiny tap targets, long lines of text, a sideways wobble when you scroll, a menu that opens behind the content, a sticky bar covering half the screen.
Now press Tab on a keyboard. Can you see where you are? Often the focus outline has been removed because it looked untidy, or the "buttons" are really clickable boxes the keyboard cannot reach. Add pale grey text on white and images with no descriptions, and the page works for some people and breaks for others.
Last, speed. Huge unoptimised images and a heap of code pulled in for one animation. It feels instant on a fast laptop at your desk. Try it on one bar of signal on a train.
Run the 60-second test on any website
Seconds 0 to 10. Read only the top of the page. Can you say what they sell and who it is for? If you have to guess, give it one mark.
Seconds 10 to 25. Scroll fast. Can you find one real face, number, place or price, or is it all identical cards and matching icons? All template and no specifics is a mark.
Seconds 25 to 40. Find the main button. Three that look equally important is a mark. Open the contact form or sign-up and count the fields: too many is a mark. No clear next step anywhere is a mark.
Seconds 40 to 60. Open it on your phone: if it falls apart on a small screen, that is a mark. Then press Tab a few times on a computer: if you cannot see where you are, that is a mark. Score out of seven (one mark per slip above). One or two is a busy human who ran out of time. Three or more, and nobody steered it.
What to do if your own site looks like this
First, don't panic or feel daft. Plenty of founders built a first site with a tool because it was fast and cheap, and that was a reasonable way to start. It only becomes a problem when it stays the finished version.
Fix it in this order. Say something specific in the headline: what you sell and to whom. Replace stock imagery with real photos. Delete any testimonial you cannot trace to a real customer, today, because in the UK faked reviews are against consumer rules and they cost you trust long before that.
Then give each page one main action and make every other button quieter. Cut the form down to what you really need to reply. Test on a real phone, on a slow connection and with the Tab key. Then ask someone who has never seen the site to do the one thing you want visitors to do, and watch where they get stuck.
A machine can draw the page. Somebody still has to care who is looking at it.