Vibe Coding Our Website for GEO and Creativity.

I wanted to understand the cost and the barriers of vibe coding a website as someone who doesn’t know how to code. This is what I found.

By Amber Hickman·LinkedIn

Adapting my business with AI as a creative

I was not investing my time into using AI until July 2 2026.

As an artist who deeply believes creativity is a necessity in life. Someone who knows and believes water is life. Someone who practices using repurposed materials to create new art. Someone who thinks about how to reduce my carbon footprint in the world and increase sustainability and how to integrate technology in a way that supports life rather than destroys it. I was not investing my time into AI because I sat back to watch how it was being integrated. I formed an opinion that this is not something I could completely avoid as person that has a computer. This is an evolutionary time with how technology will continue to integrate into our world and shift our society. Good or Bad, or both.

On July 2nd, something shifted for me. I gathered enough information about all the water usage and the imbalance in the world. The things that kept me from knowing how to move forward with this technology. I took a real, honest look at what was happening and what role am I playing. I looked deeper into what my mission and visions are, personally and professionally. I looked at who I wanted to support, what voices I want to amplify as a brand designer and as a spiritual being. I looked at how I want to impact the world. I looked at my (and Jen’s) skill sets and what we envisioned the business could do and become. All of this swirled together and I decided that I was going to find out for myself, using our business as my experimentation ground, how could this help us get closer to our goals?

I wanted to understand more deeply about what is possible in my industry as an artist, as a designer, as a business owner. To make connections, grow your network, and provide your gifts to your community. This is the purpose of business as a vehicle to do what you were meant to do in the world. Obviously, we are trying to also adapt and be resourced as well. There is no doubt or shame in the game. One thing I will say is that using AI to do designs is absolutely NOT working for me. As a designer I am particular about what I think looks good and AI doesn’t have that kind of taste. BUT, my thought was that it could help me with my systems rather than the designs, so I started with a website.

As a creative, I am looking forward at how we adapt while keeping our mission and our vision in mind. This is what becomes the puzzle of building a brand. I can design a website, I’ve used all the 3rd party sites to design my clients sites. I’ve done some UI/UX in Figma and wireframed out client experience. I know what it takes to do this (from a designer perspective) and the time it takes. I wanted to see if I could vibe code my website. That is the “new thing” with AI and before I completely write it off, I needed to see for myself. If I’m going to vibe code the website, I wanted to make it interesting rather than a template we’ve already seen. I tend to like “parralax” designs, things that move and transition easily as you are scrolling through a page. I did pick out some templates as a place to start. The question being, how do I communicate effectively exactly what I want? I chose my fonts and made sure I had my brand foundation in place and I decided to go in and I finally paid for my first AI subscription. Claude.

The process I went through learning to Vibe Code

I had to learn the basic idea of Claude and some good advice from other AI creators on YouTube about how to engage and have the AI help strategize what to do first based on my goals. I started to tell Claude to build a website based on what I thought I needed in the back end. That led me to having a simple one-page html site. I paid for a subscription for a Vercel server ($20 monthly subscription - this is in place of the 3rd party website like Squarespace). I had to set up a GitHub (free version). I had Claude walk me through what I needed to make this happen and was able to use the lowest payment plan for Claude to do this in a couple of days. Taking breaks. I only hit the token limit on Claude once in that time which is due to building in context for the site and doing simple tasks doesn’t take much I guess.

I had Claude organize my “backend” so I had my site’s being built as a draft so I could view it in a “sandbox-preview” and build it out before it ever went live on my business domain. The first version was flat and didn’t have anything fancy on it. My approach was still too manual and I was forcing myself down a road that was anchored and slowed by my assumptions. I wanted a 3D immersive effect and was determined I would build it out myself which I took a week to try to do, that ended up not working so I had to shift my approach and give over to letting go of control in some areas. I was trying to control the “how” rather than keeping the vision and the goal in mind. So, I had to change my approach if I was going to really learn what this takes. I had to shift to the visionary seat rather than stay in the “builder” energy.

I started naming my goals and what I wanted and the shift changed the entire backend from html and css to something called JSON. Claude could explain this more. I started naming goals like being discovered by AI in order for my business to get seen by the people that I want to talk to. I want to be discoverable. I also want to build an interesting or creative client experience into my website. Something I know would take me forever. I wanted to test the capabilities and how to grow from where I am and see where it could take me.

Soon, I created the next iteration. A scrolling portal that takes you forward into the website rather than scrolling down the page. I want this to look more like a journey rather than a standard downward website. At least on entry. There is no hard rule about creative option, but it was the best move to start small and see what is a functional need, and what is a creative exploration and find some balance. … because I do have a real business to run!

This next edit was much better. Some scrolling features added, a link to an appointment scheduler. It was looking (still fairly simple in my mind), but it was functional and works smoothly for mobile devices and says what it needs to say. Honestly, very bare bones, but works as a first step.

My assessment and my audit score

I am fairly impressed by what I can now see is possible creatively. However one of my discoveries that will functionally help my business, is GEO discoverability. I had made this one of my top goals and wow, learning about what that takes was eye opening. Since then I’ve been able to help some of my clients adapt their current websites (within 3rd party building platforms) to be more discoverable with GEO. I know that will be helpful on the road to making sure the people I work with can be found, and proactive as we transition.

After some edits to my website copy and making sure it has the foundation laid, I wanted to know, “Am I discoverable by AI?” So, I worked with Claude to develop an Ecosystem Audit. This Audit helped me to audit myself and see where I land as a new business with having vibe coded my first website.

My score was 39 / 100.

Time and Cost

This took 3 weeks- on my off hours (approx 40 hours- could’ve been less without the learning curve)

• $20 monthly subscription to Vercel
• $20-$100 monthly (1 month) subscription to Claude depending on complexity and time. I can cancel once the site is up and currently could use any AI system to help me make edits.

Depending on the set up, I can now see how I could have set this up to not be reliant on Claude (or Gemini or Chat) to edit my information. I could have built it so I had more control over copy edits. … still a possibility.

Reliance: I would still require AI to help me edit the layout and functionality. If I had a good plan I wouldn’t change the layout that often. .. but since I am experimenting I will need it to keep growing the site.

I got a fairly low score from my internal audit. … but honestly it was pretty good for having been only 3 week old website and havn’t even launched my business! When I look at the audit for other squarespace websites or other clients I actually feel proud of what that took. I am tracking my progress. Since the first audit and some light changes I was able to increase my visibility score to 59! More on that on a later post.