How to make your website look less AI-generated

You built the site with an AI tool, added your logo and switched the colours to match your brand. It works. Yet when you look at it next to a competitor's, they could have come from the same place.

That's because your logo and colours change the label, not the design underneath. Visitors don't need to know an AI was involved to notice the defaults: the same fonts, cards, gradients and pictures they've seen on plenty of other sites.

Why do AI-built websites all look the same?

Many AI site builders start from the same handful of design defaults.

AI website builders tend to produce a similar look because they start from shared component libraries and the safest, most common design choices. Adding your logo and brand colours doesn't change the fonts, layout, spacing or images underneath, so the result still looks familiar.

The tool makers say so themselves. Vercel's v0 starts new projects with the shadcn/ui component library and is trained on its default versions. Anthropic, which makes Claude, wrote that a landing page built without guidance almost always uses Inter fonts, purple gradients on white backgrounds and minimal animations. That's why so many AI websites end up purple.

Nielsen Norman Group, a usability research firm, tested AI design tools on a real redesign and found outputs with "a similar, generic look". Even when a tool used the brand colours it was given, the designs lacked clear hierarchy, sensible grouping, even spacing and readable contrast.

None of this means your site should look strange. A Google study of first impressions found that people rated typical-looking company websites as more attractive than unusual ones. Keep the structure visitors expect, such as the navigation at the top, a clear first screen and contact details where people look for them. What needs to change is what fills that structure.

Which defaults make your site look generic?

Look at your homepage as a visitor would, one element at a time.

This table lists the defaults to look for and what to use instead.

What you see	Why it reads as a default	What to try instead
The same plain sans-serif font everywhere	It's the starting font of many tools	A heading typeface that suits your business
A purple or blue gradient behind the hero	A common builder default, unrelated to your brand	Your own colours, or a real photo
Three cards with an icon and a vague line	The standard "features" block	Something only you can show: a photo, a price, real steps
Smiling people who don't work for you	Stock or AI images of strangers	Photos of your team, place and work
Every box with the same rounded corners and shadow	One style applied to everything	Different treatments for different jobs
Fade-ins and glowing effects on scroll	Motion added for decoration	Little or no motion

One or two matches may be fine. When most rows match, visitors have little to tell your site apart from the next.

What can you change yourself?

Several of these fixes need no designer, only time and a few decisions.

1. Replace the people photos. Use photos of you, your team, your premises and your work; a recent phone in good daylight is a fine start. Nielsen Norman Group's eyetracking research found that people ignore decorative stock photos but look closely at real people connected to the company. For a service business, show the work in progress as well as the finished result. Swap the image in your WhatsApp link previews too, since it can be the first picture people see.
2. Give colour a job. Use your main brand colour for buttons and key highlights, not every background. Remove any gradient that didn't come from your brand.
3. Choose a heading font with some character. One distinctive heading font and one readable body font is enough. Check the licence before you use one. The Google Fonts repository says most fonts use the SIL Open Font License. Read the individual font's licence before using it.
4. Replace the identical cards. Three equal boxes say "a template was here". Show the thing itself instead: a photo of the service, the actual steps of your process or a price range.
5. Cut decorative motion. If an animation doesn't help someone understand or use the page, remove it.
6. Delete anything you can't back up. Builders can fill a page with sample testimonials, invented numbers or logos of companies you've never worked with. Remove them before a visitor spots them.

If your site lives in a builder, start inside it. Lovable, for example, offers design directions and questions for typography, palettes and layout. Give the tool your real photos and real words. Placeholder content gives it nothing specific to work with.

What needs a designer?

Some problems sit in the design system itself, and changing photos won't reach them.

Most of these are gaps Nielsen Norman Group found even in good AI output, and all of them are hard to judge from the inside:

• Hierarchy. What the eye reads first, second and third on each screen.
• Grouping and spacing. Related things sitting together, with consistent gaps between sections.
• Contrast. Text and buttons that stay readable on a phone in daylight.
• One system across pages. Every page using the same type sizes, colours and components, instead of each section looking separately generated.
• The right page pattern. A law firm's homepage shouldn't be laid out like a software product page.

A designer makes these decisions once and applies them everywhere. That's the difference between a site that has your colours and one that looks like your business.

If your site works but still doesn't look like your business, we can design the identity it's missing. For a written review of what visitors see, our website audit covers design, UX, speed, copy and SEO. For a website built with an AI tool, we'd usually rebuild it from scratch around a design that's yours, which tends to be quicker and cleaner than patching each section. If it's a product with features that have to keep working, we clean up the existing code instead. A free intro call commits you to nothing, or you can write to hi@aruno.studio, WhatsApp or Telegram @mihaipostelnicu.

How do you know it looks like yours now?

Check the change with people who don't know your business yet.

1. Save screenshots first. Capture the homepage and one service page on desktop and phone before you change anything.
2. Cover the logo. Read the page with your logo hidden. If it could belong to a competitor, keep going. This is a quick personal check, not research.
3. Show it to three to five people who match your buyer. Friends and family know too much. Give each person five to ten seconds with the page, then hide it and ask what the business does and who it's for. Short first-impression tests are useful for the main message, not for judging a whole site.
4. Ask them to explain it in their own words. Nielsen Norman Group suggests this because people who understand can summarise, while people who don't tend to repeat the page back to you.
5. Repeat the same test after the change. Compare the answers, not your opinion of the colours.

A more specific page helps people understand who you are. It can't guarantee enquiries, so treat this as a check on the impression, not a sales forecast.

Frequently asked questions

These answers cover the choices around changing an AI-built site's design.

Is it bad to build a website with AI? No. The tool isn't the problem; the defaults are. Visitors judge what they see, so a site built with AI and filled with your own photos, words and design decisions can look as specific as any other.

Can Google tell my website was built with AI? It doesn't need to. Google's guidance says it rewards helpful content however it's produced. Pages mass-produced mainly to rank are a spam problem, but that's about the content, not the design.

Should I keep changing my AI-built site or start again? If new photos, fonts and words get you a site that looks like your business, keep it. If hierarchy, spacing and layout are off on every page, a rebuild with one proper design system usually takes less effort than fixing each section.

How much does a website redesign cost? At Aruno, a custom landing page is typically €1,000 to €1,500 and a company website of roughly 5 to 10 pages €2,000 to €4,000, excluding VAT. Our website cost guide explains what changes the price.

Your logo was never the problem. Replace the defaults one at a time, and the site starts to look like the business behind it.