We Built a Website Creator Inside ChatGPT. Here’s Why It Matters.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what actually gets in the way of people building a business, about what really stands in the way of people building a presence online. For a long time, we’ve assumed the main barriers were technical — that people didn’t know how to build a website, couldn’t set up payments, or were intimidated by digital tools. But that explanation feels outdated. The technology has matured. The tools are more accessible than ever. In many ways, the mechanics of getting online are no longer the hard part.

The real friction is more subtle and more human. It’s the moment someone feels they have to switch into “website mode.”

Most of the people Jimdo serves — photographers, personal trainers, consultants, yoga instructors — are not lacking ambition or ideas. They are already building something. Their days are filled with client work, scheduling sessions, answering messages, improving their craft, and managing the practical realities of running a small business. Their energy is focused on delivering value in the real world. When they think about growing, they think about better service, more clients, stronger relationships — not typography and layout grids.

And yet, when they decide it’s time to establish an online presence, the process often pulls them out of that drive. Suddenly, they’re asked to think like designers and digital strategists. They’re comparing templates, adjusting sections, debating what should appear above the fold, trying to translate what they do into a format that fits predefined blocks. It’s not that these tasks are impossible. It’s that they require a complete shift in mindset.

The insight that changed everything

Here’s something the data kept telling us: a huge portion of our customers are already using ChatGPT in their daily workflows. A Jimdo survey of 100+ small business owners found that 56% used AI regularly — mostly ChatGPT-style tools. And that’s not an outlier: a German SME report by IW Köln found that roughly 22 % of all SMEs are already using generative AI tools like ChatGPT. The solopreneur space skews even higher. The photographer editing session notes. The personal trainer planning their content calendar. The consultant drafting a proposal. They’re already in the chat. They’re already having conversations there.

So when we asked ourselves “Where do we meet our customers?” — the answer was obvious. Not on another tab. Not in another tool. Right where they already are.

The broader internet is evolving as well. Increasingly, people expect to accomplish things through conversation rather than navigation. Conversation feels more natural, more direct, more human. If you want to know the highest mountain in Germany, you don’t open a reference site and browse categories — you ask ChatGPT. That shift raises an obvious question: if we can retrieve knowledge through conversation, why shouldn’t we be able to create through conversation too? Why shouldn’t building a website start by simply asking?

That question had been floating around Jimdo for a while. We’d been thinking about “conversation as an interface” for our customers for some time. But it stayed theoretical until OpenAI launched the ChatGPT App Store last December. That’s when it became something we could actually build and ship.

The beauty of it: there’s no new habit to form. The solopreneur doesn’t have to take an extra step and open Jimdo, no need to find the right moment to “deal with the website.” They’re already in ChatGPT. Now the website just starts from there.

What it looked like before — and what it looks like now

Before, building a website meant choosing one of two paths. You either hired a developer (expensive, slow, and often missing your voice), or you went through a website builder and worked through a long sequence of decisions: pick a template, fill out forms, adjust the layout, figure out colors. Even with good tools, those early steps could feel overwhelming. Decision  paralysis is real.

Now, with the Jimdo App inside ChatGPT, you just have a natural conversation. Tell us who you are, what you do, what you want your site to achieve — in plain language, like talking to a friend. The app listens, extracts what matters, and builds a fully personalized, professionally designed website. No templates to browse, no forms to fill out.

Then it hands you off to Jimdo’s full editor, where you can keep refining, set up your booking system or online store, activate your legal compliance tools, and start getting found on Google. Or you can just hit publish and go.

Building it: three days, one team, zero hesitation

We had planned to start this project after the holidays. Then OpenAI launched the ChatGPT App Store on December 18th. We chose not to wait.

What followed was one of the most energizing sprints I’ve been part of. Product, engineering, design, marketing, legal — people across different time zones, aligned on a single goal: make something genuinely useful for solopreneurs, as fast as possible. Not feature-complete, not perfect. Useful.

The speed came from clear priorities, tight ownership, and a team that trusted each other. We shipped in days.

I’m relatively new at Jimdo, and I’ll be honest — that kind of care for customers, combined with the urgency to actually act on it, is something I haven’t seen before. It’s refreshing. It’s one of the things that makes this place different.

What comes next

Version 1 gets the core right: conversation → personalized site → handoff to Jimdo. That’s the foundation.

But the part I’m most excited about is what comes after. For Version 2, we want users to stay inside the conversational flow even longer. Imagine editing a headline, swapping a photo, tweaking your color scheme — all without leaving the chat. Live previews, lightweight editing, all inside ChatGPT. Then, when you’re ready for the deeper stuff — store setup, SEO, legal texts — you transition smoothly into Jimdo’s full editor.

The goal is to make the journey from “I have a business idea” to “I have a functioning online presence” feel completely natural. Not like a task you have to psych yourself up for. Just a conversation you were already having.

That’s really the whole idea. Remove the friction between the person and their goal. Get out of the way.

The Jimdo App is available now in ChatGPT’s app directory.

Try it! Tell a friend. Tell us what you think.

We’re just getting started.