1 00:00:01,120 --> 00:00:04,480 We need to talk about vibecoding, because for 2 00:00:04,720 --> 00:00:08,160 2025, this was the word of the year. 3 00:00:08,400 --> 00:00:11,120 And I have to tell you, I'm not here for it. 4 00:00:16,480 --> 00:00:19,600 Hey, I'm Holly Christie. I am the host of this 5 00:00:19,680 --> 00:00:23,400 podcast, Websites Made Simple. I'm a website designer. 6 00:00:23,400 --> 00:00:27,000 I am a website designer and developer's mentor as well. 7 00:00:27,000 --> 00:00:30,760 And I am here to help you to have a career that 8 00:00:30,760 --> 00:00:34,210 you actually absolutely love without being run into the ground. 9 00:00:35,170 --> 00:00:36,850 So let's get started. 10 00:00:41,810 --> 00:00:45,610 I was at a conference the other day and I was sitting next 11 00:00:45,610 --> 00:00:49,170 to someone and it wasn't a web designers conference because they don't really exist, 12 00:00:49,170 --> 00:00:52,690 do they? We can change that one day. So I was at this conference and 13 00:00:52,690 --> 00:00:56,290 the person next to me was talking to the person next to her and 14 00:00:56,290 --> 00:01:00,070 she said, oh, well, this is no problem, I can vibe code it. 15 00:01:00,150 --> 00:01:03,870 Now, this person is no way any form of website designer 16 00:01:03,870 --> 00:01:07,430 or developer or anything like that. And the person next to her said, 17 00:01:07,750 --> 00:01:11,350 what's vibe coding? It's just AI code. You can throw into 18 00:01:11,350 --> 00:01:13,590 Gemini or Claude and it'll build you a website. 19 00:01:16,150 --> 00:01:19,990 And after I'd been a little bit sick in my mouth because this just 20 00:01:20,630 --> 00:01:24,350 so shouldn't be a thing, the person next to her didn't look impressed 21 00:01:24,350 --> 00:01:28,150 either. But I thought this conference full of other business people is 22 00:01:28,150 --> 00:01:31,510 not placed to address this. But lucky for you, this 23 00:01:31,510 --> 00:01:35,350 podcast is, as I've said, vibe coding, where we get AI 24 00:01:35,350 --> 00:01:38,950 to code the website. And there are a lot of 25 00:01:38,950 --> 00:01:42,790 vibe coded websites out there this year because there are 26 00:01:42,790 --> 00:01:46,230 a lot of people who are thinking, we don't want to 27 00:01:46,390 --> 00:01:50,150 pay for a website, we don't value the website design. I 28 00:01:50,150 --> 00:01:53,750 don't think that people actually think I don't value using a website 29 00:01:53,830 --> 00:01:57,260 designer. But it can be a little bit like the 30 00:01:57,260 --> 00:02:01,100 difference between when you use a decorator to decorate your 31 00:02:01,100 --> 00:02:04,820 house or you choose to paint it yourself, you never going to do as 32 00:02:04,820 --> 00:02:08,620 good job as the decorator does. And vibe coding 33 00:02:08,620 --> 00:02:12,420 is just like that. And I don't know 34 00:02:12,420 --> 00:02:15,740 whether you've come across many Vibe coded 35 00:02:15,740 --> 00:02:19,420 websites or even parts of websites. I 36 00:02:19,420 --> 00:02:23,100 will have clients come to me in a little bit of a panic and say, 37 00:02:23,100 --> 00:02:26,740 I had wanted something to work 38 00:02:26,740 --> 00:02:29,660 in a blog post or on a page I'm doing. So I took it to 39 00:02:29,660 --> 00:02:33,220 AI to get the code for it and I put that code in there and 40 00:02:33,220 --> 00:02:36,780 it's not working. There are so 41 00:02:36,780 --> 00:02:40,540 many kind of good examples where you can take this to ChatGPT and you 42 00:02:40,540 --> 00:02:44,100 can say, could you code this thing for me? And chat says, yeah, of Course 43 00:02:44,100 --> 00:02:46,820 I can. Here you go, here's the code. And you put it in and it 44 00:02:46,820 --> 00:02:50,460 doesn't work. And you say to chat, yeah, that code didn't work. And then 45 00:02:50,460 --> 00:02:54,020 chat's like, yes, of course it didn't work, it's missing this. And so you say, 46 00:02:54,020 --> 00:02:56,680 okay, can you code it again? And let's do it again and you can go 47 00:02:56,680 --> 00:02:59,400 back forth, back forth, back forth. And all you're going to end up doing is 48 00:02:59,400 --> 00:03:03,200 just wasting everybody's time. There are times when 49 00:03:03,280 --> 00:03:06,840 we. I suppose I wouldn't really think of it as vibe coding, but there are 50 00:03:06,840 --> 00:03:10,600 times where we will use AI within websites. And you'll see lots of 51 00:03:10,600 --> 00:03:14,200 the website builders now do have AI built into them 52 00:03:14,200 --> 00:03:17,960 or AI options. And these can be great tools 53 00:03:17,960 --> 00:03:21,800 for making something very, very quick. So I'm old school, I 54 00:03:21,800 --> 00:03:24,960 will still look if something's gone wrong with the website, I will be sit there 55 00:03:24,960 --> 00:03:28,620 looking at the code, I will be looking for the anomalies, I'll be 56 00:03:28,620 --> 00:03:32,060 turning off plugins, I'll be testing this, I'll be testing that. And 57 00:03:32,140 --> 00:03:35,940 sometimes it's much easier to say to chat or Claude or 58 00:03:35,940 --> 00:03:39,100 Gemini or whatever you're using. Can you debug this for me? 59 00:03:39,660 --> 00:03:43,259 This is a great way of speeding up stuff when it 60 00:03:43,259 --> 00:03:46,860 comes to websites. We're not using it for the build, we're not 61 00:03:46,860 --> 00:03:50,580 asking it to generate reams and reams and reams of code. We're just saying, can 62 00:03:50,580 --> 00:03:53,600 you look at what's already there and tell me what's not working? 63 00:03:54,240 --> 00:03:57,600 Sometimes it's going to be able to do it, sometimes it's not. And I think 64 00:03:57,600 --> 00:04:01,280 when it comes to using AI in web design, it's about 65 00:04:01,280 --> 00:04:04,240 using it for the times where it's going to be really effective 66 00:04:04,960 --> 00:04:07,440 and not using it 67 00:04:08,160 --> 00:04:11,800 necessarily for the front line of stuff, because that's 68 00:04:11,800 --> 00:04:15,600 really where the role of the designer or 69 00:04:15,600 --> 00:04:19,280 the developer comes in. Because even though these 70 00:04:19,780 --> 00:04:22,980 AI models are built on so much research 71 00:04:23,380 --> 00:04:26,660 and so much understanding and they're coming from 72 00:04:26,740 --> 00:04:30,220 tools like, you know, Gemini is owned by Google, and Google are the ones who 73 00:04:30,220 --> 00:04:33,940 tells us really what they want the user journeys of websites to look like 74 00:04:34,180 --> 00:04:38,020 and all that sort of thing, Vibe coding just doesn't 75 00:04:38,020 --> 00:04:41,780 take into account user journeys. So it might say, like, make this look 76 00:04:41,780 --> 00:04:45,580 really cool or make this happen or whatever else, but it doesn't 77 00:04:45,580 --> 00:04:48,980 do that role of guiding the user through the website 78 00:04:49,510 --> 00:04:52,950 in the way that I'm gonna say still needs a human touch. 79 00:04:53,590 --> 00:04:57,310 Again, it's like if you get one of the chatgpts 80 00:04:57,310 --> 00:05:01,110 or you know, whatever it is to write the website copy, it's 81 00:05:01,110 --> 00:05:04,950 gonna be well structured. Although if you've been working 82 00:05:05,029 --> 00:05:08,830 with AI generated copy, you'll generally see that it 83 00:05:08,830 --> 00:05:12,150 is not structured into SEO 84 00:05:12,150 --> 00:05:15,710 friendly structure, which I just always find crazy. It just says 85 00:05:15,710 --> 00:05:18,840 like, here's the heading for this and here's the heading for that. But it's not 86 00:05:18,840 --> 00:05:22,160 actually saying, use this as a heading one, use this as a heading two, put 87 00:05:22,160 --> 00:05:25,960 your call to action in there. It still takes that experience. 88 00:05:26,760 --> 00:05:29,880 And this is why I 89 00:05:30,360 --> 00:05:34,080 really want to reassure you that I don't think that you should be 90 00:05:34,080 --> 00:05:37,880 worried about vibe coding. Whether it's the word of 91 00:05:37,880 --> 00:05:41,080 the year or not. I just don't think you need to worry about it because 92 00:05:41,320 --> 00:05:44,970 the people who value their website 93 00:05:45,290 --> 00:05:48,970 and the journey that it's going to take their users on and the 94 00:05:49,290 --> 00:05:52,570 experience they're going to have, which is going to take them all the way through 95 00:05:52,570 --> 00:05:56,090 to buying the products, the service engaging with you 96 00:05:56,250 --> 00:06:00,010 is the stuff that's still really going to come through from human design, 97 00:06:00,169 --> 00:06:03,930 human written content. And you know, don't get me wrong, I do get AI 98 00:06:03,930 --> 00:06:07,690 to help me with writing my content. Naturally, if you are 99 00:06:07,690 --> 00:06:11,490 signed up to my newsletters, then you will probably have 100 00:06:11,490 --> 00:06:15,080 experienced some of that because I will kind of format the story 101 00:06:15,080 --> 00:06:17,880 of what I want to say in the newsletter and I'll take it to ChatGPT, 102 00:06:17,960 --> 00:06:21,040 who knows me quite well these days and say, you know, can we make this 103 00:06:21,040 --> 00:06:24,800 really palatable? And I want it to have this vibe and it's really 104 00:06:24,800 --> 00:06:25,720 good at doing that. 105 00:06:31,240 --> 00:06:34,920 I like to keep AI on the more kind of periphery 106 00:06:35,080 --> 00:06:38,880 parts of my business. I feel like the websites are the products that 107 00:06:38,880 --> 00:06:42,690 I am handing over to people and I want 108 00:06:42,690 --> 00:06:46,050 those to be robust. I want them to be fully 109 00:06:46,050 --> 00:06:49,730 tested. I also like using page builders for websites 110 00:06:49,970 --> 00:06:53,610 because I want the website to be something that the client 111 00:06:53,610 --> 00:06:57,290 can use once I've handed it over. I've talked before about 112 00:06:57,290 --> 00:07:01,050 having really good website practices and it is not 113 00:07:01,050 --> 00:07:04,690 good practice to not give your clients an admin login, to 114 00:07:05,010 --> 00:07:08,290 not give them the site without them being able to handle it. 115 00:07:08,750 --> 00:07:12,590 And page builders, yeah, which have been around forever now, like people 116 00:07:12,590 --> 00:07:16,190 can be real purists about them and say, oh well, I only Recommend Using 117 00:07:16,750 --> 00:07:19,950 a WordPress framework with ACF or something like that, 118 00:07:20,430 --> 00:07:23,710 which is fine. But I do think in this day and age, especially 119 00:07:23,950 --> 00:07:27,470 when business can be quite hard won anyway, 120 00:07:27,790 --> 00:07:31,350 it's quite important that owners of their websites can use their 121 00:07:31,350 --> 00:07:35,080 sites and if the site has been vibe coded, then they can't do 122 00:07:35,080 --> 00:07:38,880 that. The other thing that I've seen quite a lot of this 123 00:07:38,880 --> 00:07:42,360 year, and I even had happen this morning, is 124 00:07:42,440 --> 00:07:45,960 web designers who get in touch with me for mentoring and say 125 00:07:46,200 --> 00:07:49,800 they've just published a website, or they're just about to publish the website 126 00:07:50,600 --> 00:07:53,960 and the client has a crisis of confidence. 127 00:07:55,080 --> 00:07:58,720 If you have had this or you're going through this, 128 00:07:58,720 --> 00:08:02,080 feel free to get in touch with me because I know how much it can 129 00:08:02,080 --> 00:08:05,580 knock your confidence to have someone say, I'm not sure that this is the best 130 00:08:05,580 --> 00:08:09,340 it can be, or we've now published the site. I've 131 00:08:09,340 --> 00:08:13,180 had other people look at it and this is their feedback. It's really 132 00:08:13,180 --> 00:08:16,780 hard because people can absolutely tear people apart and 133 00:08:16,780 --> 00:08:20,500 tear the websites apart, whether they mean to 134 00:08:20,500 --> 00:08:23,620 do it or whether they're doing it to try and get new business or whatever 135 00:08:23,620 --> 00:08:27,340 else, it can just chip away at your confidence. If you 136 00:08:27,340 --> 00:08:31,020 have done the website and built it by human 137 00:08:31,020 --> 00:08:34,620 design, let's call it that, you've done it yourself, then 138 00:08:34,780 --> 00:08:38,620 we can look at that website together and say, right, how can we strengthen 139 00:08:38,620 --> 00:08:42,380 this to help the client feel really secure within it? When you're 140 00:08:42,380 --> 00:08:46,220 vibe coding it, you can't do that because you're just taking AI's idea 141 00:08:46,220 --> 00:08:49,820 of what a website should look like and you're just chucking that 142 00:08:49,820 --> 00:08:53,340 into the databases. Just, it's not going to be 143 00:08:53,420 --> 00:08:56,940 a thing. The main thing I would say is don't feel 144 00:08:56,940 --> 00:09:00,540 threatened. Keep being absolutely brilliant 145 00:09:00,540 --> 00:09:04,180 at what you do best, which hopefully, if you're listening to this podcast, is 146 00:09:04,180 --> 00:09:07,900 websites. I'm not saying that vibe coding is going 147 00:09:07,900 --> 00:09:11,500 to pass, but I do think that people who are using 148 00:09:11,980 --> 00:09:15,700 vibe coding to build websites may end up coming in 149 00:09:15,700 --> 00:09:19,100 for, you know, I have my website clinic appointments where 150 00:09:19,260 --> 00:09:22,860 we work on website design together. Or they might look at doing 151 00:09:22,940 --> 00:09:26,710 a more extensive website course and 152 00:09:26,870 --> 00:09:30,550 they would definitely want to look at doing an SEO course there as 153 00:09:30,550 --> 00:09:34,350 well. So don't feel threatened, just keep being 154 00:09:34,350 --> 00:09:38,190 brilliant at what you're doing. If you have a vibe coding story, 155 00:09:38,190 --> 00:09:41,790 I would absolutely love to hear it and to 156 00:09:41,790 --> 00:09:44,390 get in touch and let me know. You can find me at 157 00:09:44,550 --> 00:09:48,150 helloebsitesmadesimple.co.uk, you can find 158 00:09:48,230 --> 00:09:51,960 me on LinkedIn as Hollysim. See Christie and 159 00:09:52,040 --> 00:09:55,760 on the website, the hello at Websites 160 00:09:55,760 --> 00:09:59,320 Made Simple. If you'd rather leave a voice note, I love a good voice note, 161 00:09:59,320 --> 00:10:02,440 visit the podcast page. You will see that there is a form there. 162 00:10:02,920 --> 00:10:06,640 Right, until next time, happy designing and see 163 00:10:06,640 --> 00:10:07,080 you again.