How Web Designer Pro members are using AI

🔗 View the newsletter with all links

Sponsored by:

SiteGround's new AI Studio

Other links mentioned:

Mark Syzmanski's free AI Crash Course video

AI SEO for Web Designers - ep 401 with Michelle Bourbonniere

Transcript

Welcome Back And Beach Reset

Josh Hall 0:00

Hello, my friend. It's swell. It's just swell to have you here. It's swell to be back. This is another little solo entry to the podcast here. Uh my family and I got back over the weekend, over Easter weekend, from our little spring break beach trip, and it was absolutely awesome. I don't think I realized how much I needed just a little time to hang out with the fam at the beach. And if you have little kiddos, you know that when you go to the beach, it's not relaxing per se, but it can be very fun. And we are at a very good season of life right now with our kiddos. Uh, actually, at the time of recording this, my daughter Bria just turned eight, which is absolutely crazy. And my daughter Annie is six, and little Drexton is three. So still wild, but they they travel so well. They do great. And yeah, it was awesome. So I am back in action and I wanted to share with you a little bit about the most recent newsletter that I just kicked out because it's a good one. It's a really important one, too, because it shares about how many of my community members in Web Designer Pro are using AI. And this was based off of a recent coaching call that we had in Pro. So if you don't know, in my community Web Designer Pro, we have weekly coaching calls that are currently exclusively for the coaching tier members because it's very interactive. We do coaching hot seats. We have a super active live chat. We've been doing it since day one. And recently, uh I started making some more shifts with the coaching calls to make them more themed and more topical. And a few weeks ago, we invited my good friend and colleague who is all about AI and web design, Mark Sismansky. He is somebody who I kind of lean on to be on the leading edge of AI and web design. And I invited him in to just kick us off and have a discussion about AI and about web design. Mark actually recently released a free crash course like 101 video on his YouTube about AI. And it is so good. It's something I really recommend that you check out. That will be linked below, along with the actual newsletter entry where this is pulled from, because I included a lot of links that I'm not going to link all in the description. So, what I'll do for you below, there's gonna be a few links. One is to the newsletter uh that you can view live from my MailChimp account. It is also repurposed inside of Web Designer Pro. So, pro members, you can find this under Josh's corner where all of my newsletters and blogs go that are inside of Pro for easy reference. So uh members of Pro, you can go in there to get that. It is also below in the description for this podcast. And I'll include Mark's 101 Crash Course video, which is really, really good because that kind of breaks down AI, the different tools, the models, et cetera. But we had this discussion live, and the live chat was so good. So many members were sharing how they are using Web Designer or how they're using AI as a member of Web Designer Pro for their businesses. So that's what I want to share with you here. This is purely based off of the live chat from our recent call with Mark Cismanske inside of Web Designer Pro for one of our week weekly coaching calls. Because I think surprising to the outside world, but not surprising to us as members of Web Designer Pro is we're not using AI much at all for design. In fact, um, I don't know too many people in Pro who are doing any sort of vibe coding or relying on AI to design for them or to build full websites. No, they're using it to help grow their businesses and very, very smartly so. Things like for copywriting, content help, things like planning and brainstorming, things like taking client call transcriptions and using that for website content and strategy, things like voice to text to save from typing. Things like website audits. Yes, you can do a variety of different website audits and technical research and data-driven stuff with a variety of AI tools. You can do technical development and troubleshooting as a web designer. Man, would that have been nice? I remember going through a CSS style sheet when I first got started, and I spent like all day going through what the heck was going on, and it ended up being a backslash that was out of place. Man, do I wish I would have had AI back then. So a lot of different ways you can use AI outside of just design. Because most of the outside world is like, AI gonna take over web designers. No. But if web designers are using AI in these very smart ways, you can get ahead, save a lot of time, and be on the forefront as a web designer to make a whole lot more money and hopefully enjoy what you do a little more as well. So you can focus on the stuff you like to do. So that's what we're gonna dive into. Real quick, I got to give a quick shout out to Siteground because they sponsored this piece of content here, both the newsletter and this podcast. If you know me, you know I love SiteGround. I've been using SiteGround since 2015 for hosting all of my client sites, my current joshhall.co and Web Designer Pro sites, and all of the subsequent development and testing and subdomains for those. And Siteground has just released a brand new AI studio. And it's pretty dang cool because you can essentially, it's kind of like an AI workspace uh workspace that brings all the different AI models together under one roof. So if you don't want to pay separately for Claude and ChatGPT and all these different models, wouldn't it be nice to have one place that has them all together that's actually reliable and not shady like some of the other ones I've seen? That's my personal insight on the AI studio. It is pretty dang nifty. So I'd recommend checking it out. The link will be below for that as well, which is gonna take you directly to the new Siteground AI studio. Give it a whirl. And again, if you want a place where you can have chats, create content, help with all the stuff that we're gonna go over here. You want to help generating images, uploads, workflows, everything you can do inside of the new Siteground AI studio. It is very, very cool. I'm just kind of taking a peek and getting familiar with it, and it's definitely something I'm considering to be able to just, yeah, instead of bouncing back and forth between a bunch of tools, just have it under SiteGround. I trust SiteGround anyway. I freaking love SiteGround. Why not have AI be a part of it, along with hosting and domains and other management stuff? So check it out. Link below to check out SiteGround's new AI studio today. And a extra big shout out to SiteGround for sponsoring our upcoming Pro Con 2026 event, which is happening next week. I cannot believe it. More on that below. But for right now, how Web Designer Pro members are using AI in their web businesses. Again, this is a very small sample size. This is based off of the live chat from folks that were on the recent call on pro. This is not even including some of the ways that me and my colleagues and then Mark are using uh AI as well. But here are a few buckets and common categories. Number one is copywriting and content. This is actually what most Web Designer Pro members were using a variety of LLMs and different AIs for because they're using AI to draft website copy to help write emails. My recommendation is not to use AI to write for you, but to help prompt you and to give you an outline. In fact, I used Claude to take the chat transcript and format this newsletter. I used it to pull out all the members who mentioned they were using AI and how they were using it, which is what I'm literally going over for you right now. So a way that I'm using AI is this. Instead of me combing through the chat myself, I use Claude to get in there and pull out what members mentioned they were using AI and how they're doing it, which helped give me the outline for this and save me a ton of time. So a lot of members are using it for that purpose. Any amount of content and copywriting. Um, we have a member, Jamie Cotton, who mentioned that he, or Cottom, excuse me, sorry, Jamie, uh, he mentioned that he uses it for writing copy and he's analyzing call transcripts, scanning sites for audits, and comparing tools. So outside of just content and copywriting, he's using it in a lot of the ways that we just covered. A lot of members are using it for workflow automation. So uh similarly, Sandy, uh one of our members, one of our founding members, Sandy Burns, records client kickoff calls with Zoom and then uses another AI to pull the content from the transcript directly into website drafts. Sandra does something similar. And again, these designers and Web Designer Pro are actually I linked to their website, so check it out below. Um, you can get a you can get the full newsletter and that will have all the links that I'm mentioning to the folks' websites. But she does something similar. She'll actually use AI to summarize called transcripts and to help use that to draft homepage content. And then she's also using it for automations like time tracking and workflows as well for her and her team. So it's a genius way to go about this. And I've seen a lot of Web Designer Pro members create custom GTPs and things like that to be able to help clients create their content. But another great way to get content and to help the ever problem that all web designers have, which is collecting content and getting content, especially if it's written, if you want to help with that, just record a call and then use AI to pull the data from that call. And yes, you can use because clients will often, if you give them like um, if you give them time to overthink content, it can be almost worse unless you have a harsh deadline on that. But they'll often give you such gold information on calls. And there's nothing worse, I remember this well, than being in meetings with clients and then them saying stuff. And then afterwards, you're like, shoot, I should have taken a note on that, or forget what they said, or like, man, they were so natural talking at a coffee shop. I wish they would have, you know, just put that into writing. So you can do that now. It's a wonderful area of AI that is, I think, still underutilized if you're not doing it, which is to record client calls, both discovery and trend or strategy calls, taking that transcript and then using any variety of AIs, whether it's Claude, whether it's Chat GPT or SiteGrounds AI Studio, and then summarizing those and using that into actual content and makes you more valuable too, if you're writing content for your clients based off of the words they already told you. So pretty cool stuff. Um, a lot of Web Designer Pro members are using AI, not for vibe coding full sites, but they are doing it in ways that are creating additional tools or plugins for them and their clients. For example, one of our most active engaged members, Mark Hyde, has used Claude to build a fully functional ROI calculator, which is linked below in the newsletter for his little side business for Christian school websites. And he's done a few other different tools that he's created with Claude primarily for tracking rankings, getting content behind payments. And then uh some members are also using AI for troubleshooting broken plugins. So very, very cool side note. This is also linked in the newsletter, but um, I didn't know that Mark released this. So, Mark, if you're listening to this, I just want to say, well done, my man. But Mark has a very, very nifty uh page on his site that is in his footer, specifically for AI and LLMs. So it's kind of a part of his AI SEO strategy. And this page is just a text page that just tells it's kind of like a fast track for all LLMs to see this page because it's dedicated to them. And it just has all his business information, what he does, who he serves, what tools he uses. Of course, this is all scattered among his site, which is what we all generally have. Most of our information is either on the home page or about page or our blog or whatever. But if you have a dedicated page that is uh directed to the LLMs and the robots who are scraping your site for results on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Grok, etc., it is a genius little way to fast track and have kind of a point of contact for his SEO AI strategy or AI SEO strategy, or as some may call AEO strategy. So check that out. That link is below. Well done, Mark, on that, and well done everyone so far who contributed to the chat on our recent call, um, who are using AI. One of our deaf members of Web Designer Pro, Harold, actually uses AI. Um, he used it to resolve a Google Search Console issue. And that helped him generate some meta tags. So he used it from an SEO perspective without relying on another tool. Um, one of our founding members, actually, our top leading leaderboard member of Web Designer Pro, Lisa Williams, used her AI agent Emma, to write schema markup for clients. And she's also using AI in a variety of ways, particularly Notion AI for all sorts of planning, project management, organizing her planning and ideas. Um, she said on that call that she will never again brainstorm alone. So definitely check that out as well. Her website is linked below as well. Um, some members are using voice to text for note-taking, and you can do this in a variety of different ways. This is something I'm considering, particularly with using uh whisper flow. I know um another founding member of Pro Keegan who was on the call talked about how he's using that to ditch typing altogether. And this is really helpful too, if you are somebody who, depending on what your life looks like, if you're like me and maybe you're driving and then you have a great idea, and then you get home and you're like, dadgone it, I didn't want to pull my phone out and drive, but I should have recorded you know something and somehow, instead of you know being on your phone and distracting yourself by typing something in, if you can use any sort of dictation, particularly Whisperflow, which is kind of like the hot new one as far as speaking into your computer. And man, Whisperflow is so different. If you've played around with it, if you haven't, I'd recommend checking it out because I'm starting to use it more now. It's so different than other voice-to-text dictation tools, like on Apple Messenger or anything else. Because it really like you can give it some sloppy, scrambly, waffly voice, and it will make a pretty well presented piece of whether it's an email, whether it's an outline, whether it's an idea, it's pretty freaking awesome. So check that out. That was definitely talked about as well. So whisper flow, give that a go. So those are some different ways that again on this very small sample size from our live chat from our recent Web Designer Pro Coaching call, uh, where how members are using AI in their web design business. Copywriting and content is a huge one. Automation and workflows, a big one is taking kickoff calls or discovery calls and using that transcript to actually help write content for websites, custom tools and plugins, um, SEO and technical help, content repurposing, voice to text for note-taking, planning, and brainstorming. A lot of the tools mentioned were Claude, Chat GPT, Notion AI, Jim and I, Open Web UI, which I haven't played around with. Merlin, haven't seen that one as well. Whisperflow, as I just mentioned, Zoom AI, I actually use the Zoom AI, is pretty freaking sweet. I've been using it. I'm we're we're in the tail end of our mastery sprint for Web Designer Pro, where I'm coaching some members on a deeper level. And with our one-on-one calls and some of our group calls, we use Zoom, and the AI kicks out some really nice summaries if you haven't used that yet. Claude code, cursor, and codex, just to name a few that were on there. Uh so there you go. Just some ideas, some AI inspo to help you in your web design business. There's some additional resources here for you that I recommend. As I mentioned, Mark Zismansky, who is my colleague, who I'm kind of keeping a close eye on because he's just on the pulse of AI in web design. Uh, he has a free 101 crash course video on his YouTube channel. I really, really recommend checking that out. Especially if you're like me and you feel like you just don't have time to keep up with all the AI stuff. It is a really good overview of how the models work. I'd highly recommend it. That will be linked below. Uh, I mentioned a few AI SEO strategies. We recently had my personal SEO copywriting and AI guru, Michelle Bourbonier, on the podcast. Back in episode 401, she was a guest host for the podcast where she talked about AI SEO specifically for web designers. If you have not listened to that episode, do not miss that episode. Michelle is a very data-driven and research-driven person. And in the AI realm, it's awesome because it's no theory, it's no just guessing what's working. No, she actually does the research and puts a lot of work and behind any piece of content she kicks out. And I was really happy to have her as a guest on the podcast recently, a guest host. So check that out. That was episode 401. That will link that'll be linked below as well. Side note, Michelle's actually speaking next week at our in-person pro con 2026 conference. So so excited about that. Uh, I'll mention that shortly. And then additionally, we have an AI podcast playlist. If you didn't know, all of the episodes here are grouped into categories for playlists for the podcast. So you can go to joshhall.co slash playlists, and there is one there for AI and a bunch of other topics. Uh, if you, you know, we're 400, well over 400 episodes into the podcast. So uh I realize it's not um super, you know, time efficient to just start from one and then work your way up. So to help you fast track, go to the playlist and check out the AI playlist if you would like to see all the AI discussions here on the podcast. So again, huge thanks to all the members and pro who jumped on that recent call. Guys, this is just yet another reason to jump into Web Designer Pro. We have these weekly coaching calls. Those of you who are on the coaching tier get live access to these calls where we do hot seats. I will dig deep into your business in DM privately if you choose to utilize my coaching via DM or and you can jump on of our weekly coaching calls where we have usually anywhere between 20 and 30 members live for these calls. A lot of them are um like this to where we're doing more topical discussions to kind of kick us off. So every week we're really going deep on this stuff. So it is a great time to join Web Designer Pro. And if you want to be on the forefront and the leading edge of how web designers are growing their business and staying fresh with all the tech, there is no better place than Web Designer Pro in a way that feels safe and comfortable. That is not a massive Facebook group where it's like, good luck. Um, I'm just absolutely loving what we have going on in Web Designer Pro. And I really want you to be a part of it. If you feel like you're lacking community and you feel like maybe you're getting behind or you're feeling fearful about all this stuff. This is some example. These are some examples here of Web Designer Pro members who are killing it and are excited about AI and not afraid of it and are actually using it. And I guarantee you took at least one idea from these different examples here to build on your business. So join us, friends. Go to webdesignerpro.com and I hope to see you in there. The coaching tier is open currently. So if you would like to get coaching with me directly, you can jump into the coaching tier to get 24 hours access to me via DM. I will help coach you in your business, answer any questions that you have, and you'll be able to join our weekly coaching calls just like we overviewed here. Uh, last thing before I go, again, I mentioned we are back from the beach. It's good to be back. Procon is next week. Absolutely crazy. I am so excited. Nearly 50 members of my community web designer pro, which includes some plus ones and sponsors, are gonna be there. Big thanks to Site Ground for being a sponsor again. A big thanks to Local SEO Academy, 17 Hats, WP Umbrella, Design Day Blueprint, and Termageddon, who are other sponsors for the event. Uh, links for all that below as well. But yeah, super excited about that. If you are super jelly and you couldn't make it for any reason this year as a Web Center Pro member, don't worry. I will be posting like crazy. I'm gonna try not to uh do get give you too much FOMO, but it's just a reason to make it because man, is it freaking awesome! I will be posting the replay once we're done with the event, and I think I'm gonna be repurposing a couple of the presentations that were live as well. So keep a lookout for that. All right, my friends, all links below. Thanks so much for listening. I'd so, so, so appreciate you being a listener of this podcast. We're coming up on a million downloads, so we'll have a little, we'll have a little Millie party. How's that sound? Maybe I'll do like a live QA and get your questions as a listener. If that sounds good, let me know. Hit me up on the socials. I'm active on Instagram, Facebook, and the LinkedIn at Josh Hall Co. Is my handle. I'd love to hear from you. As always, Web Designer Pro members DM me anytime. And uh I think that's it for now. I will see you next week. We got some other bangers coming up on the podcast, so good stuff ahead, friends. Have a great one.