EP 45: AI + No-code: The Future of Web Design

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Will all of the web be AI generated pretty soon? That's one of the things that we're going to be talking about today on Everyday AI. This is a daily livestream podcast and a free newsletter to help everyday people like you and me not just understand what's going on in the ever changing world of AI, but how we can actually make sense of it and use it. So before I bring on our guest for today, Tony Lewis, to talk about low code, no code and AI in all things web design, let's first talk real quick about what's happening in the news. And as a reminder, if you are listening to this on the live stream, please drop a question for myself or Tony. If you're listening to this later on the podcast on Spotify, Apple, whatever else you may use, make sure to join us live. We do this every weekday morning, 7:30am Central Standard Time. So let's talk about what's happening in AI news. So the first story for today is Mark Zuckerberger. Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman are apparently cheering on the new AI Privacy act in the eu. So, you know, Europe, the EU passed this last week. It's going through the next stages and apparently they're cheering it on. I'm not sure why. I think, you know, these kind of big CEOs, they have to show support for regulation, but in the end I don't think they want it or they like it. Second, big news stories of the day is so more people are going blind, which is a bad thing. But, but some new AI technology is helping people spot these different eye diseases sooner than ever before. So we're going to have more about this in the newsletter. But I think that this is a really big breakthrough to help people keep their site longer. Third, last but not least news story of the day, Amazon is investing $100 million, that's right, $100 million in a generative AI center. So, so this is going to be interesting when big companies are going to be continually announcing how much money that they're investing in things like an AI generative AI center just to keep up with cloud computing. And it really is a race with all these big tech companies and they're almost just saying like, okay, you invested 10 million in this, we're going to invest 100 million in this. So if you want more information on those things, make sure to go to your everydayai. Com. Sign up for the daily newsletter. We're going to have more of those stories and a lot more. But right now, very excited to bring in a special guest and I'll tell you why. But we have live now to the show, we have Tony Lewis, who is a marketing specialist at Thrive Themes. Tony, thank you for joining us.

It is a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me, Jordan.

All right, so Tony, Tony's joining us from Spain, right?

Yeah, I'm currently in Spain. Been stuck here ever since COVID Yeah, stuck.

There's worse places to be stuck, I'd say, Tony.

That's true.

All right, cool. So we already have a couple comments coming in. Daeshun. Thank you, yaddy. Thank you, Dr. Harvey. Going to be on later in the week. Cool. Thank you for your comments. If you have something that you want to ask Tony about web design, AI. No code. Low code. Let's do it.

So.

So why Tony is a very special guest is he was actually one of the first people that we hired at Accelerant Agency for four years ago. So Tony's a good friend. Been working kind of alongside Accelerant here and there. So got that out of the way. But Tony, let's talk about just AI and web design. Where do you see it now?

I think we are starting to see, you know, big platforms getting their feet wet in terms of, you know, what are the capabilities of AI, what are we going to be able to do? I have a very positive sentiment around it. I think it's going to really help reduce the big learning curve that we're seeing still, even though with all of these great no code solutions, there's still a very big learning curve for a lot of people to tap into web design, web development, web application development. I mean, there's some really great platforms out there where you can build all sorts of really cool things without actually programming. But the learning curve is still pretty big. I mean, I'll even throw us in there, right? Take Thrive Themes, for example. We build conversion focused plugins for WordPress with Thrive Sweep. You get your own page builder, you get your own quiz builder, you can build quizzes, you can build your entire website, right? But there's still a learning curve to using our tools. Even though you don't have to program, but you still need to get familiarized with the Interface, with what WordPress is, with what hosting is, there's still a learning curve that most people like. If I were to ask my grandma, hey, Karma, go build yourself a website. She's going to have no clue about where to get started with. So I think AI is just going to keep on making no code, just easier and easier and more accessible. You're probably going to ask me this question. Is it going to take our jobs away? Probably not yet. It's just going to make our lives easier, especially in the web design and development process of things.

For sure. Yeah. And I do think, you know, so Tony mentioned Thrive Themes. That's actually what we use. So if you go to your everyday AI.com that was obviously built with Thrive themes. So you have, you know, WordPress is, is really big obviously in the web design space. Then you have other companies like webflow, Squarespace, wix. So these companies, Tony, or companies related to them like Thrive Themes. So Thrive Themes creates themes and plugins and templates for WordPress. How long do you think until some of these bigger companies actually put out AI products that are worthwhile? Because I think it is a lot harder to create new technology for an existing product. Do you see that happening first or do you see, you know, a third party platform that's strictly AI catching on? Maybe before that?

No, I think that we're going to see existing platforms developing really good AI solutions. In fact, I've already played with some of them myself. I've, I just last week I was playing with Framers new AI solution and it's looking pretty promising. I mean it's still, like I said, very basic. It's, it's still in its infant baby steps. But I think that what we're going to see is a lot of the current existing technology. Like for example, the way we use Thrive Architects user interface to build out a landing page, get that process streamlined with the, with the help of AI. Could it be the case that we're going to see, you know, new third party platforms that exclusively rely on AI? It could be. I just don't see how that would be an efficient solution. I mean whether you're using Thrive or you're using webflow or Framer, if you're not happy with the output that the AI is providing you, you're going to be kind of stuck to whatever the AI actually gives you. Whereas if you use Framer's AI solution, if you're not happy with it, you still have Framer's page building experience to tweak and modify whatever the AI provided you with. So I think, I think that's the more efficient long term solution.

Yeah. And you know, speaking of Framer, there's a lot of other kind of like AI first Or AI exclusive web design web development platforms. So another one kind of here for those of you watching live. Sharing it on the screen is durable. Actually, make sure you check the newsletter today. I have a quick five minute rundown of this platform, but I think Tony and I'd love to get your take on this. Maybe what this AI kind of this new AI boom of tools for web design, maybe this is helping people who aren't very technical to create something that's, you know, it looks okay in seconds or minutes. Do you just maybe see a new use case for websites because of this technology that maybe we didn't see before? You know, my thought was like, oh, if there, if you have an important presentation instead of making, you know, a PowerPoint, maybe you make a website or a super important email, maybe you make it a website. I mean, what are your thoughts on that?

I mean it could be very well, I mean that could very well be the case. I think it's going to go more along the lines where you mentioned this may be the introduction for people that don't know anything about web design to actually start tapping into web design. So if they start playing with AI and they start to see that it's, it's now it's very easy and accessible to start building websites, that could be the very first step towards actually tapping into page building experiences. So for example, in my case I started building websites with what used to be called Thrive Content Builder back in probably like 2014. And I started getting, getting really good at it, but I didn't really like the results, the design which, and that led me to learning how to use CSS HTML. I learned Python in school and that, you know, no code was the reason why I started tapping into web design. I feel like AI is going to be the main reason for a lot of people that don't know anything about web design or building online businesses to start learning more about no code. And maybe down, you know, maybe down the road code, I think that's what the journey is going to look like for a lot of people.

Sure. And just, just if you aren't 100%, you know, in tune with the terminology, you know, me and Tony are probably dorking around a little bit. So no code is essentially, you know, using kind of like drag and drop, you know. So think of like if you were playing in Canva and that becomes a website, that would be an example of no code. So if you can build a website or an application without typing in lines of manual code, that's kind of what no code or low code is when you're, you know, kind of doing that drag and drop and maybe you kind of put in a little code there. So we have a question or two that I'd like to get to. So May, Brit has a question. I'll let you take this. Tony, obviously, do you have favorite no code or AI tools for web design that you enjoy experimenting with?

I haven't tried an AI powered solution yet that has blown my mind away in terms of, okay, this is totally the future. I think it's going to be very promising. Don't take me wrong, but I haven't really found one yet. Again, we're in the very early stages of AI web design, web generation, all of that. In terms of favorite tools, I mean, I'm going to be a little bit biased. I mean, of course, thrive themes and WordPress. I mean, take this for a second. 40. I think it's like 43% of the Internet today is built on WordPress. And that's for a good reason. I mean, you can build all sorts of fun things on WordPress. And I've been using Thrive Architect for a long time. I know Jarten has been using Thrive Architect for a long time. So I. That's the page builder that I use to pretty much build all of my landing pages, all of my websites. I build my WordPress themes with Thrive theme builder. So that's my go to tech stack in terms of web design and development. Again, there are a lot of really good ones though if we go outside of the workforce space. I'm not scared of saying it. I really love webflow. I built some really good applications with no code using Bubble as well. There are some really great platforms out there depending on what you're trying to do. For example, Thrive Architect is very easy to learn compared to webflow. Webflow is pretty much the closest thing to CSS building without actually writing css. So kudos to them. Webflow is an amazing product. It's not for everyone. Because if the learning curve for Thrive Architect is already steep, the one for webflow is like climbing Mount Everest. But if you have the time and you like web design, by all means, I would recommend a lot of people to check that out.

Yeah, you know, May, Brit, I'll. I'll kind of follow up with what Tony said. I think there's not like one platform that is the best for web design or development in terms of, you know, kind of AI. But something that a lot of people aren't talking about is using kind of figma Because Figma does have capabilities to use like a prompt. So you can use a prompt in this example I'm showing here on the screen. Design an E Commerce homepage and you get a Figma design that, you know, looks pretty good. And then there is a, you know, Figma to Webflow plugin that can. So it's like, is there one tool? Not really. But can you get something good by kind of integrating, you know, two separate tools? Sure. A couple other comments coming in. Jack Adams, happy to be here this morning. Excited to learn. Definitely. Check Jack out. He's doing some cool things with AI at Walmart, so very cool to see that. We have another question here. Let's go to Harvey. So you kind of mentioned Tony Python, right? So that's kind of the language, especially a lot of AI tools now are using Python. So Harvey's saying, do you recommend learning the basics of Python in order to better understand programming?

Well, if we're talking about programming like applications, then yeah, we're talking about web design and development. And depending on what you're trying to build, if you're trying to build a simple basic website, there's absolutely no need for you to learn python in 2023. I mean, you can just learn how to use a drag and drop editor like Thrive Architect or Webflow or even Bubble without needing to learn or dig deep into Python, which is going to, I mean, and it also depends on whether you like programming. And a lot of people actually enjoy the process. I hate programming, I hate writing code. I'm a computer scientist minor. I don't even know why I finished that degree. I mean, I just don't like writing code. I'm a, I'm a visual person that actually likes, you know, I enjoy the process of software and building websites, but if I can do it in a fun way like using Thrive or using Bubble, I'll take that path before having to sit down behind a screen and typing out Python code. That's just not my thing. But if you're into that, then by all means, I mean, the more you know, the better.

Yeah, I would say Harvey, to tag on to Tony's comment, if you, if you want to learn, you know, a programming language, 100% Python, because that is so much of what's being used now in AI tools and AI development is written in Python. But you know, like Tony said, there's so many great no code or very low code solutions if you're just talking about basic web design or web development. Arturo with a question. So I'll let You take this one, Tony. How do you determine if an advertised or recommended AI tool is worth using or learning? What should I look for? That's, that's a very, that's broad. So maybe, maybe I'll, I'll sharpen it a little more. So, Tony, maybe just if we're talking like web design, like how do you go, you know, even on Twitter you always see these long lists. Check out all these tools. How can you figure out if it's good or not?

You got to try them. I mean, there's no other way other than trying them. Try them for yourself. See if the AI fits well into your system in place of building things. If it does, then that could be a very good add on to your, to your workflow. There's no magic way of knowing if it's going to be great or not other than trying it. There's no magical want that you can use.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's, that's a good point. And Arturo, I think a lot of people listening can probably feel that, right? Because technology has made software so much easier to use for the everyday person. You don't have to be like, you know, kind of like dorks like me and Tony, you know, web design developers to use so many of these tools because they're easy now. So, yeah, I, I think the best thing to do is just, yeah, go in there and, and try it out. So Tony, I, I actually have a question. So for maybe people who are looking to get into the web design web development career, or maybe they're just trying to round out their skill sets, there is no shortage of tools, right? We mentioned so many, we mentioned thrive, we mentioned webflow bubble. Where, where would you recommend that people start if they want to, you know, kind of get better at web design web development, especially with all these, you know, AI powered tools.

Now that's a great question, to be honest. I mean, I can tell you how I did it in my head when I was learning how to, you know, just do basic web design. What I would do just for fun is replicate websites that a lot of big brands were putting out the. Right. So for example, I'm a huge fan of pretty much every website that Apple has ever. Every website. Well, every update that Apple has ever done to their website. Right. So every now and then I will just replicate their website or their homepage, for example, just for fun, just to see if I could, if I could crack it. And I would do that with the New York Times, which I'm actually going to be doing in a Couple of weeks, I'm going to be rebuilding it. The New York Times with Thrive. So that's going to be fun. And I just, I built things for fun and that's a good way of, of starting. Just pick an editor that you're comfortable with, pick a platform that you're comfortable with. Again, doesn't matter if it's Thrive, webflow, anything out there that you're comfortable with and just build things for fun and then start helping out others. You know, charge for your services, but don't overcharge or anything like that. Just put yourself out there and get familiarized with building all sorts of things that you can possibly build because that's, you know, that's pretty much how you're going to learn. There are great courses out there and most platforms. For example, here at Thrive we have something called Thrive University will offer great free courses for you to really get professional at build using their, their editors, their software, their products. So there's a lot of great resources.

Yeah. And if you do, don't be alarmed. If you do YouTube a tutorial especially for Thrive, you are going to get Tony's face teaching you. So Tony, Tony is out there now, you know, teaching literally probably millions of people how to build better websites in WordPress. Obviously he's, he's mentioned a couple of different tools. I'm gonna, I'm gonna leave with, with one more question, Tony.

If.

Obviously things like chat GPT, you know, mid journey, there's so many now text to blank generative AI tools. How if we zoom out from just web design and you know, web development, how do you see chat GPT and some of these image tools, video tools, how are they going to shake up or change kind of the marketing and advertising industry?

Well, I just hope they make things easier and accessible for everyone. For example, I'll give you a real life scenario. I hate running ads. I just don't. I hate fighting against Facebook's algorithm goals. Algorithm, that's just not my thing. If I need to run ads, I'll typically just hire someone that knows what they're doing because I just can't crack it myself. I've never been able to crack it. So it'd be very nice for me to be able to talk to whether it's ChatGPT or some sort of AI and tell them, hey, I want to reach this specific type of target audience and this is my budget and you know, I need a graphic that conveys this sort, this sort of emotion and let the AI do this for me without actually having to incur, incur a cost of hiring someone that would make my life a whole lot easier. So I just hope that we can extrapolate that process to other areas of online marketing. Just make things easier and more accessible.

Yeah, I think that's a great takeaway. So whether you are talking about web design and development and some of these no code tools or just marketing advertising in general, because I think everyone in the end, whether you're a small business owner or a marketer, you are just trying to create value and sell that value to someone else. So I think, Tony, that's great advice. You kind of ran through from top to bottom. So thank you so much for joining the Everyday AI show to talk all things low code, no code AI and web design. Thank you, Tony.

Thank you. Pleasure.

All right. All right. So as a reminder, go to your everydayai.com A lot of the things that Tony shared about. Don't worry if you didn't get down all the notes. We'll be linking them in our free daily newsletter so make sure to go sign up for that. And I am going to give this a plug as well. We are starting and officially launching our next giveaway. So we did give away two free years, years of ChatGPT plus. So we're going to be launching our next giveaway this week. So thank you for tuning in and we hope to see you back tomorrow and every day with Everyday AI. Thank you.

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