You can build a full business website in 4 days, new report says

If you've built a website in 2026, there's a good chance artificial intelligence did at least some of the work. AI tools can compress the time it takes to go from idea to live site without replacing human creativity. But which aspects of website creation are people using AI for, exactly? And how do people make websites so quickly?

In its latest State of Websites report, based on data from 310 million users, Wix, an AI website builder, examined how long it takes to build websites today (ones that are live, functional and built on stable, secure website infrastructure); which details people prefer to make by hand, even when AI is an easy option; and when they typically tap AI for an assist. Here’s what the report found. 

People are publishing websites faster than ever 

In the last year, the average time to publish a website dropped by 50%, from eight days to four. Importantly, this isn’t only referring to landing pages or single-page websites. Some of these sites have e-commerce capabilities, scheduling software and other features that help run full-on businesses, not just websites.

According to the report, every industry is moving faster. Restaurants are publishing websites in seven days, down from 13 days, while e-commerce businesses went from 14 days to seven. Beauty and wellness businesses cut their build time by 55%, from 20 days down to nine.

But people still want control over sensitive brand details 

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Speed actually makes the human element more important, data from the report suggests.

Even when using AI, 91% of users rewrite their own copy, while 69% swap out images for their own photos, according to Wix data. Incorporating the human element ensures sites still feel personal.

Most users tap an AI agent for help at some point in the process

Not everyone starts with AI, but most end up using it anyway. More than 8 in 10 (84%) of non-AI published premium sites on Wix use its AI website-building agent. Users who built their sites manually still sent an average of nine messages to the AI agent per session. Ninety-three percent used it for design-related tasks, 40% turned to it for technical assistance and 16% tapped it for copywriting help. 

They’re using MCP to connect external AI tools directly to their site 

According to the report, nearly 32,000 people used Model Context Protocol (MCP) in 2025 to connect external AI tools, like Claude, directly to their Wix sites to manage content and debug issues through plain conversation, with total MCP sessions hitting 102 million.

Coupled with the 84% adoption rate of an AI agent, that’s a lot of people using artificial intelligence as a collaborative partner, which is the core takeaway: AI speeds up the process by a lot (50%), but people still want the final say on how their brand looks and sounds. 

This story was produced by Wix and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.