Is Your Website the Same as Your Competitors?

Out of maybe 75 or 80 calls, most of those company websites are all built with AI, and you can already tell. It smells like Claude.

Guys, welcome back. It's Episode 3 today. You already know what it is. Mike Santiago here with Arising Co.

Today we're going to be talking about the chosen aspect. If you're new here, welcome. Found, Trusted and Chosen is all about helping businesses be found online, whether it's through Google, Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or anywhere else. Wherever your name can be found, the goal of this podcast is to help you get found.

But not just get found, because there are many companies out there that get found, but then they don't get chosen. Their competitors get chosen, right? And to get chosen, you have to build trust.

So how do you earn trust in today's economy, in the digital space? That's things like having a Google Business Profile, garnering reviews, garnering your reviews on Trustpilot or any other kind of citation, review or reputation management provider that serves your company or your industry best. If you're a contractor in the outdoor living space or a home builder, Houzz is a really great place for you to be able to get awards, and to be able to show that and declare that on your website for someone wanting those kinds of services. So that's the trusted piece.

But today we're going to be talking about the chosen piece. Because you can be found, you can be trusted, but to be chosen means that your website has to have some form of experience that differs far greater than your competitor's.

And a curious thing this week in particular. I've been analyzing this. Again, we build websites for a living, and all the marketing systems that come in between, and so on. But the curiosity that I've been noticing is that in my calls to outdoor living companies or luxury home builders, man, guys, out of maybe 75 or 80 calls, most of those company websites are all built with AI, and you can already tell. It smells like Claude, because it all looks the same.

And sometimes the crazy part is that the font sizes are so small that they would never, ever pass ADA compliance. If you don't know what that is, there are lawyers out there that purposefully go and look for websites that are not compliant with ADA protocol. That means if someone has a disability and they can't engage with your website, because maybe the fonts are too small or a certain color, they can go after you for that. We get clients all the time asking, "Hey, are you going to make sure that it's going to be ADA compliant?" So we obviously have to take great care of that. But jeez, the amount of stuff that's out there.

And that may be you. I hope it's not you, but if you're listening, now is a good time to check. If you used AI to build your website, or you hired someone that used AI to build your website, now is the time to run through a checklist and make sure that everything is great.

And this is not me knocking AI, because AI websites can look great. It all depends on the prompting. If you give it a terrible prompt and then don't follow up with that and practice good design principles, you're relying on the AI agent and the AI platform to decide the design for you, as opposed to you guiding it.

But we see it in the space all the time now. A lot of people, maybe choosing not to go to college, or who just got out of college, or are in college, or even high schoolers, are following YouTube gurus on "Hey, this is how you can make $10,000 or $20,000 with a prompt for a Three.js website." So now they go and take this thing and start pitching it wherever it may fall.

Sometimes it falls in a good place for them, financially. But then it falls in a really bad place for the company. Because now the company has hired someone that's not competent, nowhere near experienced in the field, to be able to maintain that. Their reliance is only on AI. And if AI can't do a certain thing that the company is wanting to do and fulfill, now that company is left out to dry.

That may be some of you, and if it is, give us a call. Give us a contact. Give us a DM. Go to www.thearising.co. We can definitely help you out.

But I wanted to really hone in on this chosen piece, because I'm literally seeing these luxury outdoor builders, outdoor living spaces, with great photos of genuine work. It can be quite easy to tell whether a photo is stock or whether a photo is AI built, but these photos are quite genuine. So the websites that I was looking at had really valid projects and things like that.

The only issue is that you couldn't tell one website brand from the other. There was no consistency in the design pattern.

So when a prospect begins to encounter your website, and they're fielding a recommended list of other competitors, let's pretend that I'm Sally. Sally just went on ChatGPT or Claude, and Sally asked for a list of 10 near her location, because she wants to build a custom home. So now there are 10 companies listed right near her area, maybe in a 5, 10 or 15 mile radius.

Regardless, here's a list of 10. Now Sally's job is to go through the 10. And maybe she already pre-qualified them by asking AI, "Hey, make sure that you only bring me websites that have at least 20 reviews, and the reviews have to be 4.5 stars and up. Nothing lower." If you ask these qualifiers, AI is going to do its best to make sure that it can give you an answer.

So you ask these qualifiers, and Sally now has this list of 10. Sally could go in separately on Google, Houzz, Trustpilot, whatever, to check the reviews for these companies. But more than likely, because she expected and delegated that to AI, her primary goal is: what does the website experience tell me? What are the images? What's the quality of their work? So she's going to look through the 10. And there are going to be other factors. Is there financing? What's the typical budget? All these kinds of factors play in.

But let's say you relied on AI, or a company that only uses AI with a quick prompt. They're not actual web developers or designers, and they build something that looks the same as everything else. That's going to catch on.

So just imagine with me that from this list of 10, six of the websites all look the same. Maybe they were generated from Claude. All of them look the same. They still show the individual work of those companies. But because each one is the same as the other six, those four that did not use AI in that way, or maybe they did use AI, but it has a much more cohesive design and you can tell it really looks different from the others, those four may immediately be far above the other six. Because they've truly separated themselves from the flock in order to be considered, to be chosen.

And that's really what I'm finding as a web developer, designer and marketing expert. Companies are choosing the quick way out, because with AI it's far cheaper than having to invest in brand, invest in design, and invest in more of the web development pieces. And this proliferation is only going to make it more difficult for brands and businesses that rely on AI to build these, I would say, crappy websites.

They look nice compared to old websites. There are companies out there that mainly get their business from referrals and their network, and it's very premium. They have high margins, so their website may not have been updated since 2013 or 2015. They may be operating on some old platform like Joomla. I'm just kidding, maybe not Joomla. But you get the point. These websites are really old. So compared to that, what Claude can produce with a standard prompt is much better.

But when that better becomes the de facto standard for many... And I'm using the example of luxury home builders and custom home builders, which is quite ironic, because they build custom things, and yet their AI website is not so custom as to set them apart from their competitors who are also using the same tool. That's another story. But in the day and age we live in, if that becomes the standard, then those that are going to be chosen are going to be the ones that are actually set apart.

So let's take a quick break on that. What are some quick application steps that you, the listener, can take? And if you're driving, obviously don't take these notes. Come back to the podcast, or I'll put the questions in the description.

First, go to ChatGPT or Claude, or all three platforms, and ask a very generic question about your business and the service that you provide. Ask ChatGPT to give a list, like I did in the example with Sally. "Hey, give me a list of 10 companies that serve in this space within these particular cities or states," whatever cities and states you provide business for. I'd limit it to one city, and then have different prompts that focus on other cities.

So do that first, and then add any other qualifiers you feel should be there. Again, I added the qualifier of 4.5 stars and at least 20 or 30 reviews. Do that and check the response. If your company shows up, that's great, you're found. If it doesn't, let's have a talk. We have a pre-audit, and we can at least show you what you need in order to get there.

But let's say you are found in this case. You're on that list of 10. That's a great start. Go through each of those websites and see what your experience is, putting yourself in the shoes of your customer. Which you ought to, especially if you're running a business that serves those customers. You ought to know your customer the best.

So if you're living in the shoes of your customer, check out their web experiences, and then check out your web experience. Is there anything you see where your website is lacking compared to your competitors'?

Or maybe you're the person I'm talking to. Maybe you're one of those people that used AI with a terrible prompt, not knowing it was a terrible prompt. You just like the way it looks, because maybe your old website didn't look anywhere near as cute and as nice as what Claude was able to generate for you. And that's you. And now you see that there are other competitors that also look like you. But now you need to be set apart.

Make a note of that. Actually jot that down. The reason I say this is because you want to start to focus on what can set you apart.

And things like fonts. What typography are you using? Is it big, blocky, bold words? Or is it smaller? Or is it more cursive? Don't overuse cursive. But those are the kinds of things that can already make a difference.

When you look at your actual design, Claude tends to group a lot of things in squares or rectangles, and it puts your sentence in one typeface and then ends with one italic word in a different font. It looks nice, but over time it just keeps looking the same. Claude tends to favor a specific type of font. So if you notice that your font looks a lot like everyone else's, and it has nothing to do with your brand, and your logo doesn't use that font, use a different one. That's something quick and easy that you can accomplish to already start setting yourself apart from your competitor.

Alternatively, you can look at the structure of your website. What does the structure look like from section to section? Maybe your hero section, which is the first section a person sees when they go to the home page of your website, looks a lot like everyone else's. What if that had a different type of design?

Maybe instead of everything being on the left side... I'm doing it on my right, but you'll see it as the left, I think, when you watch this video. Maybe the left side has the headline, the description and the call to action buttons, and the right side has an image or a video. If a lot of other companies are doing that too, then maybe go for a centered look, where the headline and all of that is centered.

Maybe a video background. But be very careful with that, because you want to make sure it's properly optimized. If video backgrounds are overly large, they can actually harm your search engine optimization and your AI SEO. Slower load speeds mean people are going to struggle to load the page, and you want faster load speeds in order to get recommended more and rank higher. So be careful with that. But maybe you can have a play button that pops the video open in an overlay, and people can see your video through that overlay.

These are just some quick things you can do. Or maybe pull up a website that you really love, and start prompting AI using that as a guide for how you like it. That's if you're using AI. And if you're not using AI, or maybe you are and you need help with it, again, contact us and we've got you.

But this is just one of those quick things that I see that could be an immediate step toward fixing looking the same as the rest, and helping you be more set apart, and thus more chosen.

Now you may ask, "Michael, where do you get the data? How do you know that this is actually what's happening?"

The thing that we do with CRO, conversion rate optimization, essentially revolves around how we get more people to stay longerly. Longerly? That's a great word. How do we keep them on your website for a longer duration, which is longer engagement time? And maybe on a certain marketing funnel page, how do we make sure this page gets more clicks than we've had before in our previous ad campaigns?

Because we deal with that, there are certain analytical tools, like heat maps and whatnot, that help you discern, "Hey, this is how people are using my website. This is where they're mainly clicking. This is how long they're on this section." That's what those tools do.

And the cool part is that there are also tools like Ahrefs. It's a paid tool, but they recently started rolling out some cool updates where it gives you an estimate of the visitors coming to a website. They do that through their algorithms, pulling in from Google's API and all that stuff, but it's really cool. It gives you a picture of how websites built with AI that look the same as everyone else compare with the ones that are not. The ones that were given more thought actually have longer engagement time and a lower bounce rate.

Bounce rate just means someone goes to your website and then leaves. They don't do anything at all with your website. That's not what you want. You want to keep your bounce percentage really low.

And if you don't know your metrics, you need analytics. Whether it's Google Analytics, Plausible, Zoho Analytics or Ahrefs analytics, there are all kinds of analytics everywhere. If you need help, again, check in with us. But these are the numbers you're going to want to know, so that you can tell whether the things you're doing to your website are actually making a difference.

Because you may be the type that relies on referrals, or maybe some inbound, or you may have some advertising out there. But we see time and time again that people invest in their ads or their marketing, but they're not invested in the analytical part that should guide their marketing efforts. Because if you have no data, how are you going to improve upon your marketing? And if you have data, are you actually using it to improve your marketing, or sharing it with your marketing team so they can do something worthwhile with it that gets you more leads?

This conversation could be much longer, but I wanted to keep it short and direct.

In summary: too many websites look the same nowadays, especially with the proliferation of AI tools like Manus AI or Lovable. These are great tools, but it all depends on your goals. And if your goal is to be found, trusted and chosen, it's going to require more than just that.

I hope you enjoyed Episode 3. Like and subscribe if you liked this. It's going out on YouTube, Spotify and Apple. Share it with a friend if you found it insightful. We'd love your support.

If you need help, whether you're B2B or B2C, we've got you. We've been in the game now for six years. Longer experience than just six years, but six years since our company was formed. And right now this is where our company gathers, here in downtown Orlando. You can go to www.thearising.co, not .com but .co, to see all the things that we do, all the services, how we work. We serve globally, so if you're not in the US, we can still serve you. If you're on an island far away in the middle of nowhere, so long as you have internet, we can serve you.

We do offer a free audit, a free SEO audit. I think that's one of the biggest things people find gives them great free value. Most of them do end up coming under us, so we can protect them, help them, and keep them from all the big bad wolves out there by serving them with their marketing or their website.

So if that's you, and you want to know exactly where you currently stand in terms of the website traffic you're getting, and even your bounce rates and all that stuff, or you're thinking, "Michael, I don't understand any of this jargon, help me," we can do that. Go to thearising.co/free-seo-audit, or click the link in the description. You fill out your name, your email, your number and your website, and we'll give you an assessment of how you're currently ranking on Google and AI search, and the steps you need to take on your website to improve that, attract higher quality visitors, and get more customers than your competitor, at least in the website space.

That's what we do. This is all about strengthening your online presence. So thank you again for joining us on the Found, Trusted and Chosen podcast by Arising Co. This is Michael Santiago, your host. Until then, do the homework I assigned in this podcast, and drop a DM, drop a comment, drop a review. See you on the next one.