Exploring GoDaddy’s Airo™ Site Designer

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is growing within the WordPress ecosystem. We’re seeing various implementations for generating content, performing tasks, and providing front-facing customer support.

The technology is also being leveraged to create websites from scratch. The idea is simple enough: tell AI what kind of website you want, and the app generates one for you. The hope is that AI can solve common pain points when getting started with WordPress. However, increased efficiency can benefit new and experienced users.

GoDaddy’s Airo Site Designer is a new entrant in the website generation space. It enables customers to create a personalized WordPress website within a few minutes.

Let’s dig in and see the pros and cons of building a WordPress website with AI.

Editor’s Note: GoDaddy is a pillar sponsor of The WP Minute. However, The WP Minute retains editorial control over the content of this review. The following is our unbiased opinion of GoDaddy’s Airo Site Designer.

Building a WordPress Website With Airo Site Designer

How to access Airo Site Designer: Airo Site Designer is available for all GoDaddy Managed Hosting for WordPress customers. So, you’ll need an account to use it.

The onboarding process is simple. Create a new WordPress website in your account, and you’ll be presented with an option to use the Airo Site Designer.

Within a few seconds of choosing Airo Site Designer, we were taken to the app’s configuration screen. It features an AI chat panel where you can describe your website project.

We provided a few details about our fictitious bakery, Candy’s Cupcake Creations. Airo Site Designer asked a few simple follow-up questions regarding our desired color scheme and fonts. You can add as much (or as little) detail as you like.

Perhaps the most important question was the goals for our website. In this case, we wanted to increase foot traffic to our store and allow event booking inquiries.

We provided the details, and Airo Site Designer created a text summary of our site. It provided a basic description, the writing style used, and the included pages. Next, it was time for the app to build a preview of our website.

The preview generation process took about two and a half minutes. The result was a clean and simple website. All of the pages were there, with the ability to view them. Airo Site Designer generated text content and placed some relevant stock photos for us.

The app also allowed us to customize the preview site. There were options for changing colors and fonts, tweaking the header and footer layouts, and adding custom logos and images. The AI chat window was also available in case we had any questions.

We made a few edits and were ready to move forward. Airo Site Designer asked us to pick a username for our site, then proceeded to build it for us.

The website was built within 90 seconds. Once finished, we were redirected to the site’s WordPress dashboard. It was that quick.

Exploring the back end of the website, the pages were in place, and there were no radical customizations to WordPress. We found a Quick Start Guide widget (included in all GoDaddy Managed Hosting for WordPress plans) on the lower right of the screen to walk us through the next steps.

Note that our website hasn’t launched yet. GoDaddy Managed Hosting for WordPress provides an opportunity to make edits, and you can launch whenever you’re ready. That gives us plenty of time to make it our own.

In all, we went from concept to semi-finished product in about 15 minutes.

Quick Facts, Figures, & Observations

Now that you know more about the site-generating process, here are a few facts, figures, and observations on using Airo Site Designer:

• Airo Site Designer uses a block theme: We were pleasantly surprised to see that Airo Site Designer used the default Twenty Twenty-Four block theme. To create layouts, the app selects from 50+ predefined block patterns. So, everything can be tweaked in the Site and Block editors. This keeps the website light and performant. Initial testing also showed that the site was accessible.
• Minimal plugins: Only four, count ‘em, four plugins were installed on our test site. One of them was GoDaddy’s CoBlocks suite, which adds additional blocks to the editor. Yoast SEO is there to help with search engine indexing, while Akismet is used to block spam. Finally, TrustedSite is installed to help improve user confidence. Note that you can add plugins at any time.
• A few missed details: Airo Site Designer’s AI chatbot asked for our preferred colors, then ignored our answer when building the preview. Fortunately, we had an opportunity to change colors later.
• Plenty of images: GoDaddy’s image library is 200,000+ strong, providing a solid starting point. They can be swapped with your custom images via the Block Editor.
• Contact form included: Our Contact page came complete with a working form, courtesy of CoBlocks.
• Airo Site Designer keeps design simple: Too often, site builders try to wow users with animations or fancy functionality. Airo Site Designer eschews that approach by focusing on plain old text and images. The layouts are clean and the typography is easy to read. The result isn’t jaw-dropping, but it doesn’t need to be.

Who Is Airo Site Designer For?

It’s no secret that WordPress has a learning curve. It can be difficult for complete newbies to know where to go and what to do next. That makes it frustrating for DIY users or small business owners when trying to build their website.

Tools like Airo Site Designer have an opportunity to alleviate those woes. They allow users to skip ahead to the “good parts”, such as editing content and adding personal touches. Airo Site Designer fulfills this mission quite nicely and shouldn’t overwhelm even the most tech-averse users.

Users should keep reasonable expectations, however. An AI-generated website is a start to your journey – it’s not a finished product. The content and images will still need to be reviewed and tweaked as needed. You’ll also need to add any additional plugins you want to use. Airo Site Designer exists to give you a nice head start.

What about web professionals? Airo Site Designer might be helpful in scenarios where you want to create the basic structure of a project. It does the dirty work of creating pages for you without an overly opinionated design. In addition, you aren’t saddled with bloated plugins or themes you don’t want. It’s a shortcut to a WordPress installation that you can customize later.

Final Thoughts

AI site generators are popping up everywhere. They take different approaches to solving the same problem – making WordPress easier to use. Some will inevitably do a better job than others.

Airo Site Designer’s simplicity is what makes it a good choice. It doesn’t try to be a “website rockstar” that promises bells and whistles. It instead focuses on building a website that relies on core WordPress features. That’s a refreshing change from the bloatware we’ve become accustomed to.

The app ushers you through the initial site-building process, then allows you to decide what comes next. GoDaddy’s Quick Start Guide is there to help you inside WordPress, should you need it. However, the WordPress dashboard remains usable and familiar. Airo Site Designer makes WordPress a little easier, but doesn’t try to replace it.

Airo Site Designer’s usefulness will depend on your workflow. If you like to build websites from scratch, it probably won’t appeal to you. But if you (or someone you know) needs a little hand-holding, it’s a tool worth checking out.