How AI Tools Are Transforming Everyday Web Design Practices

Bob:
Hey, welcome to open channels FM and Channel 4, where we’re doing my summer series of open tabs. And today, joining me for the kickoff of this series is my good friend, my good friend, great host, all those things, Cami McNamara. Hey, Kami.

Cami McNamara:
Hey, Bob. It’s so nice to see you. It’s been a while.

Bob:
Yeah, it has. We keep delaying this or putting it off, and things happen. It’s like, okay, we’re getting on here and doing this.

Cami McNamara:
We are.

Bob:
So, essentially, to tell you why I call it open Tabs is, the idea came up when I was looking at all my open tabs on my browser, and I was thinking, you know, some of them are really stupid. Why didn’t I close them? Some of them. Them are good. And then I got to think, which I do often in a bizarre way, your brain is kind of like open tabs. You know, some things kind of stay at the forefront and you can easily revisit them. And then there’s other ones that you accidentally closed and you can’t remember what they are. So it kind of works how our brain is. So I thought, why don’t I call it open Tabs? And basically, I invite my guest or one of my co hosts to come in and I ask them, you know, what’s your open tab?

Cami McNamara:
Well, my open tab is how much AI is changing my workflow as a web designer. And I just am. I am noticing more and more that, well, first of all, it’s part of my everyday life now, which, you know, a couple years ago, it wasn’t every day. Now it’s just. It’s the tab that’s open all day, every day and getting used, but it’s also starting to appear with my clients. And that is where it’s become somewhat humorous sometimes. Other times, you know, you’re getting, like, a feedback that they clearly went to AI to generate on a design or something, and you’re having to talk them off the ledge because it isn’t exact. They haven’t approached it the right way. So, anyway, that is definitely the open tab in my life right now. And I’m curious if you. I mean, I know that you’re using it in production and everything else, and so it’s just become a normal way of life for us, right?

Bob:
Yeah. You know, in a way it has. And in a way, some things that I thought would work don’t work as well. I was talking to somebody, I was on another podcast just recently, I’ll be coming out, and we were talking about how some of these podcast software, you know, the platforms, you go in, you do all your production work, they have all these AI things like remove filler words if somebody’s saying a lot or different things like that, they have ways to reduce your pauses. So if somebody’s pausing a long ways, you can kind of put a parameter and have that automatically in one sweep. The problem is that most of the time you still have to go in and look at everything because if you remove every. That doesn’t always work because of the transition people are using. So it sounds very broken because that’s kind of that thought process. So I quit using that one totally. And I leave a lot of those filler words in. And also one of the ones I did for this to remove pauses went sideways on me just a couple days ago and started. Not only did it remove the pauses, but random words. And I wasn’t able to get those back. I had to do them one by one, restore them. So there’s good stuff and there’s some things that I use and I might talk about in a little bit, some of the, you know, share a couple of the tools I use and what I’m doing. But I’m really curious because it seems like that’s what everybody dreaded was, I mean, you got to deal with AI yourself and figure out how you do it. But then if your customers start coming in with, oh, I saw this and it was so cool, this YouTube video or something. And now I went in and did this. Do you think that will quite work like it should? Or maybe it didn’t work. And anyway, I can see that next step as a nightmare. So what’s your experience been like then?

Cami McNamara:
Well, so in most cases, you know, people are asking me questions before they start to make a big plan. But this particular client reached out and said, hey, you know, I have a friend who created a new website for me in cloud code, but I want you to still be my, you know, care plan person and my person and take care of it, and I want you to help me implement it. So I said, well, why don’t I just have an appointment with the friend? Let me. I need to know exactly how they’ve approached this. And the friend is not a designer at all and created a big HTML website design and cloud code and just wants to hand it to me and have me just put in like one HTML block into WordPress and thinks it’s just going to, boom, be their website.

Bob:
That’s interesting. I can’t even imagine that. I’m not even there.

Cami McNamara:
Yeah. And I’m like, well, it doesn’t exactly work like that. And the thing that I let them know is like, well, if you’re going to build the website and you should probably figure out how you’re going to launch the website and they have no idea the steps it takes to. I’m like, did you build it in apps or. I don’t know, I think I just have a big block of HTML. And I’m like, well, I stopped building static HTML websites around 2008. So, you know, I’m like, and then what’s the plan when you want to make an update? Like, you know, are you going to be the person that goes into Claude and, and does the updates and sends them to me? No. And so that is kind of how I’m approaching it with kind education on. It’s more than just having it give you something. You have to implement it and then you need to have a plan for how you’re going to maintain it. So then I told her, yes, I use AI when I’m stuck trying to generate a layout or something, but at this point I am taking that and then using my tool of choice to build it. Right. And that way it’s in WordPress in a way that I like to manage it. And you know, many of you know, we’ve got all the page builders coming out with AI features and stuff, but I don’t think the clients themselves are just turning to ChatGPT or Claude and they think they’re building a website when they haven’t thought about how they’re going to manage it. Yeah, that’s kind of the big sticking point that other than that, most of the clients, they come to me and say, I’ve rewritten all the text for my website. I’m like, great. And I take a look at it and it’s very much marketing text with no SEO thought process at all and stuff like that. And then so I have to send it back to them and say like, you know, this headline is really not going to help your website SEO. And they’re like, oh, I didn’t think about that. So because this keeps happening, in my last client newsletter I offered up what I’m calling Cami’s AI Summer Camp and I’m offering free 15 minute meetings. I made a great graphic in AI, you know, for that and I’m having them book appointments with me to ask me Questions and I’m trying to head off them wasting their time doing things that they think are going to be fruitful for their website that may not be and how to prompt and think about your local SEO when you’re rewriting your text and stuff like that.

Bob:
Yeah, yeah. And that makes sense because with my, the, the team that I have working on my site, I, I do some things by myself, I’ve done some basic stuff but if there’s just that tinge of ooh, what if I do this? And there’s a lot of custom post types in it. Cause I learned my lesson early on that, you know, I tried one change and because it was mixed in with a custom post type and all these things, it just kind of broke it. And I was like, oh no, no, no, no. I thought this would be so it’s, you know, I mean that’s a, was a lesson learned for me real quick is like I need to, you know, ask and be somewhat guided to what tools are best. And I’ve done the same thing. I’ve asked the team if, you know, should I use AI for this option or I did some research and I usually do quite a bit of research before I ask them because I don’t just want like somebody that just ooh, that would be cool if AI did it, you know, and just send it to them. So I’ll look a little bit up. Like is this really feasible or is this makes sense?

Cami McNamara:
Exactly. I recently started trying to like even in my own processes. So let’s say a client comes to me and they want to do something that I can’t figure out how to do with the tools I’m using. Well, I have started uploading the plugin that I know is responsible for that into, you know, I’ve got a coding chat that I keep on going in chat GPT and I’ll upload that plugin and I’ll explain like I’m using a custom post type and I want to pull in this custom field into a content grid and this is something that I would have to search for other people who have done it on Google to find the answer before because, and maybe you know, this particular way I’m using, it’s totally different when you upload the plugin and you explain what you need to do, it’ll write the PHP hook for you to put right into your functions file. And I am finding that to just be life changing. So when a client wants to do something like that they, that maybe they are thinking I want to pull, I Want to show this in this, they don’t even know how to prompt for it. And what they’re ending up doing is creating a new design that is nothing but a block of HTML and feeling super excited about it. But in the long run it just is going to be difficult for them to maintain or maybe not, but they’re not agentic yet with their AI and so it’s just a matter of educating them, I think. Plus for everybody who has a care plan like I do, you know, I manage 200 websites a month. People just assume that if they make a change to their website, I’m still going to be their person. Which isn’t, isn’t always true. Right. So if you’re going to go and, and build your website a certain way that I’m not as comfortable with, then I’m not the right person anymore to be your care plan person.

Bob:
Yeah. Because you never know these days. What?

Cami McNamara:
Yeah, well, it’s always been a challenge to take over a website that you didn’t build and like you said, you’re not aware of all the custom post type connections and what could happen. And so I think I’m just trying to get out in front of it and make them know, hey, I’ve been using this since it came out in November of 2022 in some way, shape or form. At first it was just writing, but one of the best things I’m using it for is just like a business coach kind of situation. We’re like, hey, I’m having trouble with this part of my workflow. Can you help me?

Bob:
So yeah, yeah, I use that a lot. I use it sometimes for when I’m thinking of a new show or a new channel or something or series.

Cami McNamara:
It’s great.

Bob:
And even, even the name. Yeah, I’ll, I’ll ask, you know, throw some names this way and as a back and forth it’s like, you know, it’s never like oh, this is perfect. And a lot of times I don’t prompt it right and I have to clarify it. And yeah, it’s something you just. Yeah, I’ve used it quite a bit and it’s interesting because I’ve said this on another podcast that I did, I think a shorter one with myself. Was that all the content? Basically I figure our episodes are all our original content. They’re God forbid there’s start being AI host, talking to each other or something. But that’s the end of the podcast. But with that content that creates. I used to, you know, and you probably remember back, I mean it’s like repurposing stuff. You know, how can you repurpose it? And I can drop it into this service I use that basically repurposes it into tons of stuff from blog posts to whatever. And I even will say, hey, you know, create a blog post, something specific that was in the episode and make a blog post about it. You know, something. Drill it down to something more than just a general one. And so I do that a lot. I create all this content. And what was interesting is that I, you know, got an email or something. I don’t know how I learned about it, but it says, oh, now you can use. It’s called Cast Magic. You can use Cast Magic with Claude. And I’m like, oh, I just, you know, thought, well, that’s kind of. It’s Castmagic, actually.IO I think.

Cami McNamara:
Yeah.

Bob:
And anyway, I. So I got thinking about it and I, I read all the things it could do and I thought, well, this actually sounds like I could set up Claude to. So what it does is you run like, I have like 20 prompts I run with. I upload the audio, creates a transcript, and then when I clean up the transcript, it’s 20 prompts that I have it run and I use, you know, about five or six of them I use all the time. And it’s basically copy and paste. You know, I go in there, I copy it, I do a little bit of editing. And then I realized with their connection to Claude, it was like, oh, could it actually, you know, create a new post for me and dump in specific parts of that? Like I could say, you know, these are the four prompts and just put it in as a post. And then of course I would go in and have to edit, you know, and pretty it up and make sure. But it would save me the time of just that copying.

Cami McNamara:
Paste the setup. Yeah.

Bob:
So I sent it to the team and I said, does this really look like this could do it or do I use Zapier? Cause I was getting into it deep and I was getting more and more confused used. And they said, you know, it really looks like it can do it. So they’re going to look at it and kind of help me, you know, give me the right steps to build it and then that will save me a ton of time. It’s one of those, you know, pieces of workflow that maybe will save me another 30 minutes or so.

Cami McNamara:
Still so much better than us. Starting from the very beginning, right? Yes.

BobCami:
Right. anything else that you’re kind of using it for or you’ve explored or is there anything you thought of using it for and you thought, oh man, I’m not going to do that again.

Cami McNamara:
Well, you know, I’m using it so much that I’ve had to inject time in my calendar to devote to figuring out how to use it right. So like now working on my business is really working on AI for my business. I’ve always wanted to have time that is built into my calendar. That’s at least two or three hours a week that is dedicated to working on my systems. What I’m finding now is I’m trying to figure out ways to have AI help me exactly in the method that you’re talking about, Bob, where it’s, it’s more than just generating something I cut and paste, it’s actually doing it. But I’m finding that I need training for that. So I’m, I’m online signing up for. I signed up for like a Friday AI lesson for creatives. I signed up for. And I’m doing that just to increase my own skills. I guess that’s turning into working on my business. Right. But I just find that the time that we used to use to come up with our blog post ideas and stuff like that have turned into now I know how to do it in AI is taking it the step further when it’s actually making the blog post for us. But there’s a lot of learning involved. And also the part about. There was early on an article that I read where somebody had connected their website to Claude or something and didn’t put limits on their tokens and got like a, you know, they had a very busy website. This may have involved Cloudflare too at some point. But basically what happened was they ended up with like a 10k bill from there, you know, and so that type of thing I find terrifying. So I’m just trying to educate myself before I do anything. And I am especially a little concerned about clients who might hop into their website and see the connector and go like, oh, this is great, I’m going to make this connection. And so I’ve tried to educate my clients about that too in my monthly newsletters. It’s almost to the point where it might not be a bad idea for web designers. You know, they’re running agencies, small agencies, or just start offering like webinars and stuff directly to their clients. I’ve never been somebody who does that because in my mind I’ve always been like, oh, I don’t really want all my clients getting together. They’re all, you know, like, I have clients that have been with me for 15 years that are, you know, and clients that have been with me a year and I don’t know, it’s just different experiences for them. So. But this is such a rapid change and the change is changing rapidly at the same time. So.

Bob:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that would probably, you know, make sense as far as doing video type stuff for your clients around that because they could visually really see what’s going on. And you could, you know, if you were doing on a test site, you could say, whoops, I shouldn’t have did that. Look what happened.

Cami McNamara:
Right? Or just show them like, you know, or just like show, showing them like, here’s how to utilize, you know, I did come up with like a writing document, like I put together a PDF for the clients with writing text for their website that I give them when we’re working on a project that includes prompts for them to consider using for writing their about text and you know, Like a prompt that tells them to ask whatever AI they’re using to ask them questions about their business so it outputs it properly for them versus just, you know, that kind of thing, telling it what they think it wants to know.

Bob:
Right?

Cami McNamara:
Yeah, so. So there’s huge opportunity. And I know a lot of web designers are not even calling themselves web designers anymore. The people I follow on YouTube, they’re, you know, becoming more of like a consultant slash AI specialist. And I was reading that one of the biggest growing markets out there for being a service provider in this arena is helping them with AI automations. Like somebody who really knows their stuff with AI automations could clean up in the B2B, you know, small business, website marketing type thing, right?

Bob:
Yeah, yeah, that’s a huge part. And I could see where that is coming up as a new pivot for people diving into that more and stuff. It was interesting because one of the things I did is I was updating my sponsor deck that I send out. My sponsor deck was always this document that just was really no more than a document that listed stuff. So I put it in the cloud and I said, can you, you know, here’s all the things I need in this and can you do something, you know, design this and make it look pretty before I can actually not send out this crappy thing I’ve been sending out all this time. And it did. It created a nice deck for me, you know, and I went back and forth, you know, on colors and, you know, replaces the things, a logo and the font is like, maybe I have some sponsors my age. It’s a bit small and they might want to be able to actually read it.

Cami McNamara:
Claude makes everything serif and makes everything like 14 tiny.

Bob:
Yeah, it was amazing. But then I got to a point where I don’t know how it transpired going back and forth, but it was like, okay, they have. They built it and then they put it in a folder on my desktop or on my computer somewhere, you know, and then it’s in there. So whenever I go back and say, you know, can you change this line? Or I need this part and it’s done real quick. So. And you know, for me, I mean, I. You know what I do now? I’m so just focused on the podcast. It was like, oh, I guess that’s kind of cool. It’s on my folder and they go and grab it and it’s like, that’s kind of weird. But, you know, and then I open it up, it says, yeah, or it’s open and it just you know, it’s like, oh, wow, that changes right there.

Cami McNamara:
And think about how much time it saves you, Bob. Like, yeah, that’s just 30 hours of tweaking and working on every little detail and moving things and it just is taking care of all of that for you. Yeah, I. So I, I just started paying for Claude too, because one of the tools I use only connects with Claude and I’m going to need to get my skills up there. I’ve been using ChatGPT since November 2022 and they have custom GPTs and so you can train and have your own. And you know, this is where people are like creating and you can share them or you can just create them for yourself. And so, like, for writing for my own blog, I uploaded probably 20 of my own blog posts that I wrote by myself before AI and trained it to help me create blog posts. That sounds like I wrote them that, you know, and that was something that I loved. And then you can save it and reuse it and it keeps all your instructions and, you know, you have AI help you write the instructions so you’re doing it correctly. And, you know, you can say no EM dashes and you know, don’t say Digital journey or all the things that it used to say or chaos to clarity. That’s another one. And you can just put all those in there and every time it does something for you, it has a reference point and it saves it, so it kind of solves that problem. So I’m looking forward to learning how to use Claude equally. I think as web designers now, we have to really have a handle on using all these because the clients that are going to come to us are just going to increase and they kind of see their web designer as their digital everything on their computer partner. So, like, you know, I went to a client’s house this week to help him set up his YouTube channel because he needed help with that. Right. It’s not really the website, but we need him to have that. So, you know.

Bob:
Yeah, yeah, that’s what’s nice about having local clients too.

Cami McNamara:
Yes. Yeah. Well, I went.

Bob:
I mean, nice in one way, but not maybe so nice.

Cami McNamara:
Yeah, no, it was. It’s nice to get out of the office every now and then. But I will tell you that I do not miss the days, Bob, where I was driving to the U district from West Seattle and it taking an hour and a half.

Bob:
Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yep.

Cami McNamara:
Just sitting in the car. So I don’t miss that at all.

Bob:
Yeah, so, yeah, it’s going to be interesting, to see how things evolve. And I’m, you know, like I said, I’m just trying different things. I, I’m not into a lot of the stuff it can do. I’m just, you know, I’m lucky to be able to do what I can do.

Cami McNamara:
Yeah. Well, as a designer, being a designer more than a developer, I have kind of always felt like that. Right. And even more so now. But at least you can use the tool to educate yourself. Right. If you don’t understand it, you can just say, hey, a friend told me all of this and I don’t get it. Can you help explain this to me? And so that’s helpful too. Right. Another thing I’ve been doing a lot is like generating an XML sitemap for like a new client that comes to me and before a meeting with them I can take the XML sitemap that I have generated on a website and put that in AI and ask it to evaluate what’s here and like give me the number of pages. Tell me, is there a membership section? Like I don’t have to use my eyes to evaluate it anymore. I can have it spit back like, you know, is this client a good fit for me? What are they going to want and have that before I even meet with them. That’s been something that I’ve really come to rely on because I’m not having to do so much pre work before potential client interview type thing.

Bob:
Right, Right. Yeah, I did. One weird thing I did is I uploaded probably over 700 text files of my transcripts and had them count how many words were in it.

Cami McNamara:
What was the answer?

Bob:
You know, let me look here because. And then when I asked them I said can you kind of estimate how many minutes? Because like if somebody just has a normal cadence with their voice and stuff and let me just look because I can never remember the numbers. I put them on here. Somewhere on the side, I think they’re under the about. So let’s see here. So there was over 3,900,000 words transcribed.

Cami McNamara:
Wow.

Bob:
29, 500 plus minutes of audio. So it kind of put things into perspective and it was kind of fun. But yeah, I’m glad, you know, we’ll start our monthly thing again here. Well, again, thank you. This was a blast. Always enjoy our time together. Yeah. And we’ll get back into it and we may just kind of keep, you know, coming up under this open tabs

Cami McNamara:
and oh, I love this, I love this concept because it just, it all of us have like, I don’t I can’t even count the tabs I have open right now. And I just started my computer, like, you know, an hour and a half ago. I turned it on. By the end of the day, there’ll be, like, 40, 50, 60 tabs open. So I love it. It.

Bob:
They’ll close down before you actually go to sleep.

Cami McNamara:
That’s right. I love the concept. Really good.

Bob:
All right, well, take care, and, yeah, we’ll be doing this again soon. And thank you, everyone, for listening. Bye, Cami.

Cami McNamara:
Yeah, thanks, Bob.