Eight months on her own. Ten days to a website that’s actually hers.
Website in a Week
Project at a glance
With the chords between, Megan McHaney offers systemic team coaching and project management to justice and climate organizations. Her whole practice is about the relational layer: what happens between people, and how that makes or breaks the work.
She had the expertise and the results from past client work. What she didn’t have was a website that sounded or looked like her. Eight months of trying to get it “just right” with AI had produced a wall of text in an HTML file, not a website.
In two weeks, we turned that around: a clear, easy-to-manage one-page site with a case study portfolio, and a brand that expresses both her personality and what her business stands for.
Visit thechordsbetween.co.uk
What we focused on
- Clear copy that says the one thing that matters, instead of rambling
- An easy-to-manage one-page website Megan can run on her own
- A visual identity she can use across her social media and other channels
- Space to showcase her client case studies as proof
What Megan can be proud of
Whoohoo! I have a website! (finally)
After sitting on the copy for 8 months, working with a friend to help me navigate Squarespace, and then using AI to try and get it “just right,” I decided to get some professional help. HUGE HUGE thanks to Stefanie for working with me and creating this beautiful site and brand identity for me. I love it. (and I never thought I’d say that about a website.)
You want results like these?
Check out my Website in a Week package. It’s perfect to get your first website up and running so the right people take you seriously. Including:
Note: These numbers are what Megan likely would’ve gotten if she continued to build her website with Claude AI. They are the average results of 10 AI-built websites I audited earlier that year.
Before: Months of effort, nothing she’d publish
Megan wanted to grow beyond Scotland and her existing network. For that, she needed something to send people that wasn’t just her LinkedIn. But every attempt to build it had stalled.
She wasn’t starting from nothing. Using my Solopreneur Sales Page Blueprint, she’d written solid copy in her own words, put it into a Notion site, and validated it with real clients. Their verdict: the copy worked, but Notion felt unprofessional. She needed a real website.
So she tried to get there. Three times.
- Claude AI for the copy. She fed her draft into AI to take it further. When she showed clients both versions, they preferred her handwritten Notion copy, the one that sounded like her. Not the AI rewrites.
- Claude AI for the design. It offered to “design” the website too. The result drifted from a one-pager into a multi-page wall of text: a generic look that could belong to anyone, and not a single visual.
- Canva and a Squarespace friend for a real website. A Canva AI logo that looked fine big but was useless in small sizes, like on a website header or a business card. And a friend’s attempt at a Squarespace site that never looked right either.
None of it fit, and for Megan that stung more than most. Her work is about and with people. A website that reads and looks like it was assembled by a machine says the opposite of what she stands for.
AI can produce words. Friends can show you a tool. They can’t decide what matters, and they can’t make things sound and look like you. That’s the gap Megan kept hitting, until she stopped patching and reached out.
After: What two weeks with an expert made possible
Friends, tutorials, and AI are great to get started. Working with a professional is a different thing: someone who helps you decide what matters, shapes it into a system, and makes it look and sound like you. Here’s where that difference showed up in Megan’s website.
Copy: From a wall of text to a website that people want to read
Since Megan mentioned that people loved pieces of her earlier drafts, I asked her for both her handwritten Notion copy and the AI rewrites, along with exactly what her clients had praised.
Using her words together with my proven sales page framework, we had real website copy in 2 days. Megan had only minor edits and approved the first draft:
I love all this. Thanks so much, Stefanie!!!
The result is a one-page site that guides rather than overwhelms:
- A clear message instead of rambling. Every section does one job, in plain language, so a stretched-thin team leader gets it on the first read.
- Her voice instead of a machine’s. We kept the parts that sounded like her and landed with real people and pulled out some highlights that AI had buried in the body copy.
- Room to breathe instead of a wall of text. Clear sections and supporting visuals, with her client cases and testimonials woven in as proof, so people can orient at a glance.
The real test of clear copy is whether other people get it. When Megan shared the finished site with her peers, they did, right away:
Love how clear everything is – how to work with you, your process (in broad strokes), and all the experience and value you bring to the table. I’m bookmarking your website as inspiration for myself!
LOVE LOVE LOVE this! Especially the “I’m helping teams work with each other, not alongside each other” headline. I find you have done a wonderful job of articulating what you are helping people to do.
It looks really smart, so easy to navigate and know how to work with you.
Branding: What AI can’t grasp
Claude’s design used sharp rectangles everywhere, which makes a website and brand feel hard and technical. Megan and her line of work are the opposite: approachable and people-oriented. She also mentioned that she brings calm and structure to a team and wanted the branding to represent that.
So I proposed a visual identity built on rounded shapes: circular images, soft corners, blurred circular accents, nothing with a hard edge. I kept every element understated, so none of the visuals overpower the page or disturb the calm Megan wanted people to feel.
When I presented it, Megan said it felt exactly like how she sees herself and her brand. She even mentioned that an interior designer she’s working with had proposed the same move, round instead of rectangular, for a bathroom remodel.
That read on a person is the part AI will never grasp, and it’s what makes a human designer reach for the right shape.
Visuals: A happy accident, woven in
When Megan bought her domain, she’d spelled “chords” the musical way by accident, but her people loved it. We both loved the idea of playing on that musical theme but agreed to keep it subtle enough that most visitors wouldn’t consciously notice it.
Take a look at her website and see if you can spot it.
Here’s the reveal, along with the rest of the design decisions.
- The logomark is drawn from a chord. I simplified a musical chord to two overlapping notes, subtle and legible even when small. Their overlap is picked out in orange to draw the eye to the space between them, as Megan’s work happens in the space between people.
- A wavy divider tells a story. The line between sections starts frantic and settles into a steady rhythm, a picture of how Megan helps teams move from firefighting to a sustainable pace.
- Notes where attention matters. The note shape repeats across the page to draw attention to what counts, like the quotes that help readers recognize themselves, or the markers on Megan’s three-step process.
- Colors she already loved. The designer’s reflex is to make the palette their own. Megan liked the one from her Canva logo and the Claude site, so I kept it and only tweaked it to keep text easy to read on every background.
- Fonts with character and legibility. Claude had reached for the boring pairing you see everywhere: Playfair Display and DM Sans. Display fonts get hard to read at smaller sizes, so I swapped in Literata, a serif with more distinctive, upright italics, and paired it with Atkinson Hyperlegible Next for easy reading. The result carries character instead of looking like every other website.
This Brand Foundation Kit, which is part of Website in a Week, is documented and ready for Megan to use across other channels, not just her website.
Build: A site she owns, ready to grow
Before, building a website meant watching tutorials to get the hang of things and leaning on friends for help. This time, an expert walked her through it, with every step clearly laid out. In her words:
Working with Stefanie was a joy, so easy and everything was clearly laid out and I didn’t have my usual panic of “what if I click the wrong button and break the internet.”
And she isn’t dependent on me now. The training and resources to run her site come with the package, so Megan can make edits herself. Her one-page site is quick to adapt as her business shifts today, and the strong foundations underneath mean it can grow into more pages when she’s ready.
Why this website works: One page, one purpose
AI is very good at producing more. Start with a simple homepage, then it adds a service page. Then you think, the second offer needs one too, then an about page to hold it all together, and so on. Nobody in that loop ever asks whether the pages are earning their place.
For a solo business still finding its shape, I recommend a one-page website on purpose:
- It’s quick to change when the offer shifts.
- It forces one clear message instead of five vague ones.
- And it’s finishable, which matters more than anything else when you’re building it alongside actual client work.
The site can grow into more pages later, and most businesses need that eventually. The order is what matters: one page that works first, more pages when there’s something specific for them to do.
I didn’t fear paying too much money for something I don’t need, because Stefanie was able to advise and walk me through it all. So if anyone here is on the fence about needing some website help, highly recommend just reaching out to Stefanie. She’ll sort you out.
If you need a website to get your business off the ground but want to skip the detour of becoming a part-time copywriter and web designer, that’s exactly what the Website in a Week is for.
One focused week, a clear one-page site, and a brand that’s unmistakably yours.