Hot take, I know.

But after running 20+ website projects through our studio this year, I’m pretty confident about this: AI gets you to 80%. The last 20% is what actually makes you stand out. And that part? Still very human.

Let me explain.

The 80% problem

If you build a website today with Lovable, Bolt, or any vibe coding tool, you’ll get something that looks pretty good. Clean layout, decent structure, it works.

But you’ll also look like every other website built that way.

The messaging is generic marketing speech.

And especially people in tech immediately notice the AI-generated look & feel.

They read your headline, feel nothing, and leave. Your website looks fine. But it doesn’t work.

And the thing is, you don’t even know why it’s not working. Because it looks good.

What didn’t change about our process

Everyone talks about how AI changed everything. For us, our design process is almost the same. And I think that’s the point.

Here’s how we actually build websites at Grauberg:

1. The workshop

Every project starts with a 90min workshop.

What’s the goal of your website?
Should it get signups on its own?
Should it help your sales team close?
Should it just build trust?

We look at your customers, your product, your competitors. We create a mood board.

This step has to be human. AI can summarize the notes after, which is fine.
But the conversation itself? No shortcut for that.

2. The site map

This is where AI is actually great. Structuring pages, building a conversion-optimized layout, figuring out what goes where. Tools like Relume or just FigJam save a lot of time here.

To be fair, Claude pretty much knows how to structure a good website at this point. I've recorded guides and YouTube videos on conversion optimized pages, reviewed 50+ websites, and what Claude spits out without any context is pretty accurate.

3. The copy

This is probably where we use AI the most.

But here’s the thing: getting a good copywriting setup took us almost 20 projects to get right. Your tone of voice, the way you talk about your product, making it sound like a real person wrote it. That’s hard to get right with a basic prompt.

We built a custom skill for this internally, and it works incredibly well now. If you want it, just reply to this email. I’ll send it to you. It’s not public yet.

4. The actual design

This is where we don’t use any AI. We create a few variations of the brand, the look and feel, put in the copy we already wrote, and present options based on the mood board from step 1.

This is where the 20% magic happens. Beautiful animations. Custom visuals. A brand that feels like yours.

You can’t generate that.

5. Apply and build

After the hero sections are locked in, we apply the design to all other pages and prepare it for development. We either build it directly in Webflow, Framer, or Lovable, or hand it off as a developer-friendly Figma file. This part is still pretty manual. Maybe AI will get there, I don’t know. (open to suggestions)

The 20% that matters

The design itself. The animations. The graphics. The copy that makes someone read your headline and think, “This is exactly what I need.”

That’s the part AI can’t do for you. And that’s exactly what we focus on.

To me, AI is an incredible tool for the first 80%. It saves time, it handles structure, it helps with copy. But if you want a website that actually stands out, that people remember, that converts, you need a designer who knows what good looks like.

As Massimo Vignelli once said: “Design is not about making things pretty. It’s about making things work.”

Want to stand out?

If you have a website that looks fine but isn’t doing anything for you, let’s talk. You can book a free consultation with me here: https://cal.com/nik-zechner/strategy-call​

Talk soon, Nik