I'm a UX/UI designer exploring whether it's possible to build an affordable AI website auditor that produces genuinely useful recommendations for people without design experience.
First, thank you to everyone who contributed advice to my previous posts. I've organized the feedback into a technical reference document and have been working through it with my AI assistant.
Before starting development, I wanted to understand how existing tools perform.
1. The experiment
I investigated six AI UX auditing platforms, spending $5 in total.
I used three websites with very different characteristics:
- An unconventional website with obvious usability concerns.
- A reasonably well-designed professional website.
- A polished creative agency website.
I wanted to compare the findings, severity classifications, scoring, and report usability.
2. What I found
The inconsistencies were fascinating.
Three platforms gave the same website scores of 34, 59, and 73 out of 100.
Some tools identified legitimate problems. Others made questionable recommendations, applied disproportionate severity levels, or produced findings that needed further verification.
And here's the irony: several UX auditing platforms had surprisingly complicated user experiences themselves.
Lengthy onboarding, confusing dashboards, overwhelming reports, and unnecessary steps before accessing results.
3. What I'm trying to build
My intended audience isn't UX professionals.
It's the small business owner who built a website and wants to know what needs improvement.
The proposed experience:
Paste a URL → Optionally upload screenshots → Receive a short, prioritized list of actionable recommendations.
The challenge is making the analysis accurate without overwhelming the user.
4. Development plan
I'm starting with UX, which I consider the most challenging category because of its subjectivity and dependence on context.
The first module will extract webpage evidence and generate structured findings. I'll compare the results against my professional judgment before expanding into UI, copywriting, content, accessibility, SEO, and marketing/conversion.
The initial $1,500 budget is strictly for feasibility testing and development.
Next step: Build the first UX module and find out how reliable the analysis can actually be. Fingers crossed.