We broke our own rules so you don't have to.
We rebuilt our website with Claude Code, then I pushed it live before the team had a chance to check it. We'd never do that with a client's site, which is exactly why we did it with ours.
Before we recommend a new way of doing things, someone has to find the edges. I'd rather it was us, on our own site, with our own reputation on the line.
Why we went first
I'm part of a HubSpot Partner User Group, aka PUG. David Ward runs the sessions, and if there's an official title for that, I don't know it. So in my head he's the "PUG Master", and he's going to have to live with that.
At a recent session, David walked us through moving his own website off HubSpot CMS and rebuilding it with Claude Code. I sat with that for about four days and then gave up pretending I wasn't going to try it.
We'd wanted more design freedom than HubSpot CMS made easy, and our own site had patiently waited its turn because client work always comes first. But the real reason was simpler. If we're going to offer clients a modern front end with HubSpot behind it, I wanted to live with it first. Reading about it wasn't enough.
We're still Team HubSpot
Let's get this out of the way before someone stages an intervention. We're a HubSpot Gold Partner, and HubSpot still runs our CRM, marketing, forms and reporting. The only thing that moved was the website.
Then I went rogue
We briefed the build on 3 September and had a first draft the next day. The plan was sensible: show the team, get our Brand Steward's eyes on it, and decide together whether to take it further.
You'll notice "launch it without telling anyone" wasn't on that list.
On 10 September I looked at the new site, and it felt more like us than anything we'd had in months. So I hit publish and emailed the team.
Subject line: "She's gone rogue."
I can laugh about it now. I also know our Brand Steward's review was no less valuable just because I'd scheduled it for after the site was public. The work that made the site everything BLOOM belonged to the team. The impulsiveness was mine.
It's my business and my brand, so I'll claim the occasional hooligan allowance. Your website gets our full sign-off process, every time. The hooligan allowance stays with me.
What happened next
Short version: our AI visibility held through the switch, and our visibility in the US grew. Page speed isn't where we want it yet, so we're working on that and will report back. The numbers, and the before and after, are all in the case study.
Case study: How we rebuilt our website on Next.js in a week. The results, the before and after, and what we changed along the way. Read the case study →
What I'd tell another business owner
Opening Claude is the easy part. Anyone can ask it to help build a website, and you can get far enough to start wondering how hard the rest could really be. That's usually where the rabbit hole starts.
So here's what I'd tell you before you try it.
01 Bring in someone who knows what they're doing
We brought in an experienced developer rather than pretending AI had turned us into engineers overnight. I've since hired him as part of the BLOOM team, which tells you how useful that turned out to be.
02 Benchmark before you switch
David Ward did. We didn't. Learn from him on this one.
03 Sort your content before the code
A couple of our pages needed writing tweaks after we went live.
04 Keep your team's review
I skipped ours. It was a test I ran for myself, and it confirmed why the review exists.
05 Treat launch day as the start
Measuring, fixing and improving is where the real gains come from. Our Brand Steward shares more about that in an upcoming story.
Try it before you have every answer
We keep telling businesses that early adopters will win. We mean us, too. What excited me most was how quickly an idea became a page we could click through, test and change. That gives you room to ask "what if we tried this?" and actually find out.
If your website has been sitting on the "one day" list, let's talk. You can have the new site without the hooligan launch.
Love,
Lucy (aka The Hooligan)