Why so many sites suddenly look the same

AI website tools don’t design anything from scratch. They predict the most statistically common layout for whatever you typed into the prompt box. Ask for “a modern website for a coaching business” and dozens of other coaches asking the same tool land on variations of the same hero section, the same font pairing, the same rounded icon set.

Squarespace and Wix templates create the identical effect without any AI involved. When thousands of businesses start from the same dozen templates, distinctiveness was never really on the menu, it was traded away for speed and convenience the moment the template was picked.

The problem usually isn’t that your site used a template. It’s that a stranger can still see the template underneath it.

Why this actually costs you business

A generic-looking site doesn’t just look uninspired, it quietly signals something to every visitor who lands on it. People read design as a proxy for how seriously a business takes itself. When your site is visually interchangeable with ten competitors, you’ve made it harder to justify being the more expensive option, harder to be remembered after the tab closes, and harder to seem like a real, specific business rather than a template someone filled in over a weekend.

Five signs your site has the “templated look”

• Your hero section is a headline over a stock photo with one centered button and so is every competitor’s in your industry.
• Your color palette is whatever the template shipped with, not colors chosen because they mean something about your brand.
• Your section order matches the template’s default exactly: hero, about, services, testimonials, contact, in that order, every time.
• Nothing on the page could only belong to your business. Swap the logo and the copy, and it could pass for any other company in your industry.
• You picked the template because it “looked professional,” not because it reflected how your business actually works, sounds, or is different from the one down the street.

How to fix it without starting over

None of this means throwing out Squarespace or starting from a blank file. It means being deliberate about the handful of choices that actually signal someone made this on purpose: a typography pairing that isn’t the template default, one layout decision your competitors haven’t made, real photography or illustration instead of the same stock library everyone else is pulling from, and copy that sounds like a specific person rather than generic marketing language borrowed from a hundred other homepages.

This is the actual gap between a website that was assembled and one that was designed, and it’s the gap that determines whether a visitor remembers your business or forgets it the moment they close the tab.

A two-minute self-check

Open your site next to two direct competitors in separate tabs. Cover the logos with your hand. If you can’t tell which is which in five seconds, your design isn’t doing any of the work of building trust or standing out, it’s just occupying space where a real decision should be.

If that test is uncomfortable, book a free audit call and we’ll tell you honestly whether your site has this problem, and exactly what we’d change first.