Writing a prompt that gets what you want

The single biggest driver of output quality is the prompt. Here is what actually moves the needle.

Include these five things#

1. What the product is. "A booking tool for dog groomers" tells the AI what content belongs on the page. "A landing page" does not.
2. Which screens you want. Name them. "Landing, pricing, sign-up, and an empty dashboard state."
3. Who it is for. B2B enterprise and consumer mobile produce very different layouts.
4. The visual direction. A brand colour, a font feel, a reference: "warm, editorial, lots of whitespace, serif headings."
5. Anything non-negotiable. Legal text, a specific CTA, a required section, a hard constraint.

A prompt that works#

A B2B invoicing tool for freelancers called Ledgerly. Design a marketing landing page, a pricing page with three tiers, and a dashboard listing recent invoices. Audience is solo freelancers, not enterprises. Visual direction: calm and trustworthy, deep green as the primary colour, generous whitespace, sans-serif. The landing page must have a "Start free" CTA in the nav and a section on getting paid faster.

Phrasings that reliably disappoint#

• "Make it better." The AI has no idea which axis you mean. Say what is wrong: "the hero is too tall and the CTA is hard to find."
• "Make it pop." Give a concrete direction: more contrast, larger type, a bolder accent colour.
• "Like Stripe." Better: paste the URL and ask for a clone, or describe the specific quality you mean ("Stripe's density and gradient treatment").
• Ten changes in one message. They interact. Two or three at a time lands more reliably.

Be explicit when you mean it#

If you have a brand and you want it respected exactly, say so in strong terms: "Use exactly these colours: #0F3D2E and #F5F1E8. Do not introduce other colours." The AI will otherwise apply its own judgement about what looks good together.

The same applies to content: if the copy matters, provide it. Otherwise you will get plausible placeholder copy.

Iterating#

Chat keeps the project context, so follow-ups can be short: "make the nav sticky", "swap sections two and three", "the pricing cards need a most-popular badge". You do not need to restate the brief every time.

When the result is close but not right#

Do not regenerate — that spends credits and throws away the parts that were good. Instead:

• targeted chat edit for one section,
• edit mode for copy and images,
• theme change for anything colour or type related.