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What your website needs from you: the facts an AI can't invent

Before anything builds your website, eight kinds of facts have to come from you. What to gather, what can wait, and how to stop an AI guessing in the gaps.

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Matte ceramic still life: an ivory open cube cradling a tall tangerine pyramid, with a small black hemisphere waiting on the surface outside

The short answer

Only the owner can supply eight kinds of facts about a business: what you actually do, who it’s for, where and when you work, what you charge or how pricing works, proof you can stand behind, how to reach you, the promise you make to customers, and the things you don’t have yet. Wording, layout, images, and page structure can be drafted for you. Those eight cannot, because an AI has no way to know them and will write something ordinary-looking in the gap if you leave one. Gathering them is an evening of writing down facts, not a project. Where you don’t have an answer yet, mark it as a disclosed placeholder such as “Call for pricing” so that nothing on your website is a guess.

A dog groomer asks an AI for a website for her shop. A minute later there’s a real-looking page: her name at the top, a friendly line about gentle handling, and hours. Monday through Friday, 9 to 5. She’s closed Mondays, and Saturday is her busiest day of the week. Nobody typed those hours. The page needed hours, so hours appeared.

Nothing about that is the AI being careless. A model fills the shape of a page. Where a fact belongs and no fact was given, it writes the most ordinary-looking version of that fact, and an invented hour looks exactly like a true one on the screen. Wrong details don’t announce themselves. That’s the whole problem, and it has a simple fix: decide in advance which facts you’re going to supply.

A wrong fact costs more than a blank one

A missing price makes someone call and ask. A wrong price makes someone book expecting $40 and stand at your counter at $75. Hours work the same way, except the damage lands on your doorstep: an invented Monday 9 to 5 sends a customer to a locked door, and it’s your name on that door, not the AI’s.

Your website is also quoted by other things now. Search results, maps listings, and assistants answering “is this place open today” all read from it. A fact you never checked can travel a long way before anyone tells you about it. The stakes go up sharply for anything a customer could treat as a promise: a license number, proof of insurance, a turnaround time, a guarantee.

The eight facts only you have

Wording, layout, images, and page structure can all be drafted for you. These eight cannot, because there is no honest way to find them:

  1. What you actually do. The specific version, plus what you don’t do. Not “massage therapy” but “prenatal and sports massage, 60 and 90 minutes, no couples room.”
  2. Who it’s for. Who you want more of, and who you turn away. “Dogs under 40 pounds” saves you the phone calls you were going to decline anyway.
  3. Where and when. Your real hours including the day you’re closed, whether you take walk-ins, how far you travel for a job, and the address as customers should actually find it.
  4. Prices, or the shape of them. Exact numbers if you have them. Otherwise the shape: starting at, hourly, per project after a site visit, deposit required. Shape is a real answer.
  5. Proof you can stand behind. Reviews you can point to, credentials with their real numbers, photos of your own work. Review counts and star ratings are facts, not decoration, and they should never be estimated.
  6. How to reach you. The number you actually answer, the inbox you actually read, and which one gets a faster reply. Plenty of small businesses publish a phone line nobody picks up.
  7. The promise you make. Turnaround time, cancellation window, deposit terms, warranty, satisfaction guarantee. A customer reads these as a contract, so they have to be yours.
  8. What you don’t have yet. The gaps. This is the one owners skip, and it’s the one that keeps everything else honest.
The eight facts only you have01What you dothe specific version02Who it is forand who you turn away03Where and whenreal hours, service area04Prices, or their shapestarting at, hourly, per project05Proofreviews, credentials, your photos06How to reach youthe number you answer07The promiseturnaround, guarantee, terms08What you do not have yetmark gaps as placeholders

Mark the gap. Don’t let anything fill it

You will not have all eight ready, and that’s normal. New businesses don’t have reviews. Contractors often can’t quote a price without seeing the job. Half the photos on your phone aren’t good enough yet. None of that has to hold up a website.

The move is to say the gap out loud on the page instead of leaving an empty slot for something to fill. “Call for pricing” is honest and customers understand it. So is “Photos of recent work coming soon” and “Opening in March.” A disclosed placeholder costs you nothing. A confident guess costs you a customer.

Then ask for the list. When the draft is done, have your AI tell you every placeholder it used and the exact words each one shows. That one request turns a vague worry into a short checklist you can work through as real answers arrive. (AgentBuild builds this into its rules for the AI: ask for a fact, leave it out, or mark it as a disclosed placeholder, never invent it. You can ask for the same behavior in any chat.)

An evening, not a project

Open a notes app. Walk the eight in order and write down facts, not sentences. Fragments are fine: “Tue-Sat 8-6, closed Sun-Mon. $65 basic groom, $95 with hand-scissoring. Certified by NDGAA 2019. Text is faster than phone.” Nobody sees this file but you and whatever you paste it into. It also becomes the raw material for your brief when you’re ready to build.

Say the numbers out loud as you write them, especially prices, hours, years in business, and anything with a certificate behind it. Reading a wrong number back to yourself is how you catch it. Where you get stuck, write “don’t have this yet” and keep moving. The stuck items are item eight, and they’re just as useful as the answers.

Keep the file when you’re done. Hours change, prices go up, you add a service, you get the photos taken. Every one of those is a small edit to a list you already have rather than an hour of remembering what your website claims about you.

Common questions

Can't the AI just look up my business details online?
It can find whatever is already published about you: a maps listing, a directory entry, an old website. Those are frequently out of date, and some of them were never right. Treat anything it finds as a draft to confirm, not as a source, and correct it out loud so the correction sticks for the rest of the conversation.
Is AI-generated website content accurate?
The writing usually is. The facts are only as accurate as what you supplied, because a model produces whatever fits the shape of the page when a detail is missing, and a guess reads with exactly the same confidence as a real answer. Check every number, date, name, and credential before anything goes public.
What if I don't know my prices yet?
Give the shape instead of the number: starting at, hourly, per project after a walkthrough, deposit required. If you can't give even that, 'Call for pricing' is a line customers read every day and understand. A blank invites a phone call, while a wrong number invites an argument at the counter.
How much of this do I need before I can start?
What you do, who it's for, where and when, and how to reach you are enough for a first draft. Pricing, proof, and the promise you make can arrive as disclosed placeholders and get filled in later. Waiting until all eight are perfect is how a website stays unbuilt.
If my website says something wrong, whose problem is it?
In a customer's eyes, the business does. Someone who drove across town on a day you were closed isn't going to take it up with a chatbot, and neither is anyone who reads a license or coverage claim that turns out not to hold. That's why the no-guessing rule matters more than any wording choice on the page.