I’ve been running The Wellness Insider since 2016, and over the years, there have been countless occasions when I’ve looked at my website and thought, “I wish I could change that easily.”

Sometimes, it was something relatively minor, such as the spacing between menu items or the way an image appeared on a page. Other times, I wanted to change an entire section of the website, improve how readers navigated between articles or introduce new features.

The problem wasn’t that I didn’t know what I wanted. It was that I didn’t know how to make it happen.

I’m a marketer and content creator, not a web developer. I understand website structure, user experience and what makes a digital platform effective. I can navigate WordPress, publish articles and make basic changes with my limited html knowledge. But when something requires editing code or troubleshooting a technical issue, that’s usually where my abilities end.

For years, that meant either living with the limitations of my website or paying someone to make the changes.

Then I started using AI to help me do something that was beyond my technical capabilities: revamp my own websites.

Knowing what you want is different from knowing how to build it

The Wellness Insider is a digital wellness publication, so the website isn’t merely a blog or an online magazine. It’s where readers discover articles, browse events and engage with our content. It’s also part of how we work with advertisers and partners.

As the publication evolved, I became increasingly dissatisfied with certain aspects of the website.

I wanted a more polished homepage that would give greater prominence to our latest stories. I wanted readers to be able to discover more articles without navigating through unnecessarily complicated menus. I also wanted to improve our events section, making it easier for people to find upcoming activities as we have seen how some of our event listings are very popular with our readers.

These weren’t particularly revolutionary ideas. They were improvements that many established websites already had.

But knowing that something should be improved and knowing which WordPress settings, CSS rules or template files to modify are two very different things.

I could explain exactly what I wanted a page to look like. I just couldn’t translate those ideas into code.

This is where AI changed things.

From describing a problem to actually fixing it

I began using ChatGPT to first analyse my website and give me the blunt truth about what works and what could be improved. After which, I looked through its suggestions and picked what I liked about them while also describing what I disliked about my site and what I wanted instead.

Rather than searching through countless tutorials, trying to figure out which instructions applied to my particular WordPress theme, I could explain the issue in ordinary language.

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For example, I wanted The Wellness Insider’s homepage to look more like a premium digital publication. We worked on giving the logo greater prominence, featuring a selection of articles more effectively and improving the layout of the newsletter section.

I also wanted to improve our events calendar. What started as a request to make events easier to discover developed into a more substantial redesign, combining a calendar view with event listings and a submission form.

There were smaller improvements too: correcting menu spacing, fixing sidebar behaviour, adjusting article layouts and dealing with elements that weren’t displaying as intended in the original theme template.

Individually, some of these changes might seem insignificant. But when you operate a content-heavy website, small frustrations accumulate. A poorly positioned element, a confusing navigation menu or a sidebar that behaves strangely can affect how people experience your content.

What I appreciated most was that I could approach these issues from the perspective of a website owner rather than a developer.

I didn’t need to know the technical solution before asking for help. I needed to understand the problem well enough to describe it.

Then I tried it on another business

Encouraged by the improvements to The Wellness Insider, I began working on the Proving Grounds website.

Proving Grounds operates in the gaming and esports space, so its website serves a different purpose. It needs to communicate with the gaming community while also presenting the business professionally to potential corporate clients and partners.

Our previous website wasn’t doing both particularly well (sorry hubs!).

I wanted a design that reflected the brand’s personality, with a darker visual identity, stronger typography and clearer navigation. I also wanted the site to distinguish between community activities and the services we offer organisations.

This project involved a bigger change because we were moving away from a website-builder setup towards a more flexible WordPress site.

AI helped me work through the structure, page layouts, design requirements and technical implementation.

I could specify the brand colours and fonts, explain how I wanted different sections organised and review the results. When something wasn’t right, I could ask for it to be changed quickly.

We also worked on functionality, including navigation, enquiry forms and a separate mascot-naming campaign with a voting form.

It was particularly satisfying to see ideas that had previously existed only in my head become functioning website features.

I still wasn’t writing the code myself. But I was no longer entirely dependent on someone else to interpret and implement my ideas.

Also Read: Employers are buying AI tools. Their managers are being left behind

Of course, AI didn’t get everything right

I don’t want to give the impression that I typed a few instructions, went for coffee and returned to two perfectly redesigned websites.

There were plenty of moments when something didn’t work as expected.

A layout might look fine in one area but create problems elsewhere. A change could require additional adjustments. Sometimes, an issue that appeared to have been resolved needed another round of troubleshooting.

And there were occasions when I had to repeat instructions or remind AI of decisions we’d already made.

This was frustrating, particularly when I thought we had finished working on a particular section.

It also taught me something important: using AI doesn’t remove the need to understand what you’re trying to achieve.

I might not know how to write CSS or PHP from scratch, but I still need to recognise when a website looks wrong, when a feature isn’t behaving properly or when a proposed change doesn’t make sense for the business.

AI can help with implementation. It cannot take responsibility for the final result.

I also learnt to be more specific with my instructions. Saying “make this look better” leaves considerable room for interpretation. Explaining what feels wrong, what should change and what needs to remain untouched generally produces more useful results.

In that sense, working with AI isn’t entirely different from briefing a human developer or designer.

The clearer the brief, the better the chances of getting something usable.

The biggest benefit wasn’t just saving money

As a solopreneur, I’m constantly balancing what needs to be done against the time and resources available.

Hiring a developer for every small website adjustment isn’t always practical. Even when the cost is manageable, there’s the additional process of explaining the problem, requesting quotations, coordinating changes and checking the completed work.

AI has helped reduce some of that friction.

I can experiment with an idea without immediately committing to a development budget. I can make incremental improvements instead of waiting until I’ve accumulated enough changes to justify hiring someone.

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But the benefit goes beyond cost savings.

Previously, I sometimes left things unchanged because I didn’t have the technical knowledge to tackle them. Now, I’m more inclined to ask whether something can be improved and explore how to do it.

That’s a significant shift in mindset.

It doesn’t mean I suddenly possess the skills of an experienced developer. Nor does it mean I would use AI alone for every technical project, particularly one involving complex security, payment systems or sensitive customer information.

What it means is that the threshold for attempting improvements has become much lower.

For a small business owner, that matters.

AI hasn’t made me a developer. It has made me less constrained by what I don’t know

One of the most interesting things about this experience is how it has changed my relationship with technology.

I’ve always been comfortable with digital marketing tools, content management systems and website analytics. But coding felt like a separate discipline, one that required knowledge I didn’t possess.

AI hasn’t eliminated that knowledge gap. I still don’t fully understand every line of code involved in the changes we’ve made.

What it has done is give me a way to work across that gap.

I can bring my understanding of branding, content, audience behaviour and user experience to a technical project, while AI helps translate those requirements into something that can be implemented.

That doesn’t make human expertise irrelevant. Experienced developers bring architectural judgement, security knowledge and technical understanding that an AI-generated solution still needs to be assessed against.

But not every website improvement requires rebuilding an entire system or engaging a development agency.

Sometimes, a business owner simply wants to fix an awkward layout, improve navigation or introduce a feature that makes the website more useful.

For me, AI has made those improvements more accessible.

And perhaps that’s what I appreciate most about using it.

It’s not that AI knows everything, or that it always gets things right. It certainly doesn’t.

It’s that I can finally do something about the parts of my websites that have been bothering me for years, instead of looking at them and thinking, “I wish I knew how to fix that.”

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