The everyday problem
Pretty much every business owner I talk to has the same story. They need to change one thing on the website — a price, a phone number, a service area, an updated photo. They email their developer. They wait three days. They get an invoice. They pay $50–$200 to change something that should have taken them 30 seconds.
Multiply that by a few requests a month and a few years of running the business and the math is brutal. Worse, the friction trains owners to stop updating their site, which is exactly the wrong outcome. Your site is supposed to be a living thing.
Why most owners can’t do this themselves
It’s not because they’re not smart. It’s because the original setup was designed to keep them dependent. Three common reasons:
- The site is on a platform they don’t have a login for. The developer manages everything; the owner has no admin access. (Fix this by asking for admin access in writing — if you’re told no, that’s a red flag.)
- The site is on a platform they have login for, but it’s confusing. WordPress backends look like a cockpit. Most owners log in once, get overwhelmed, log out, and never go back.
- The site is custom code (HTML/CSS) and they were never shown how to edit it. Owning the code is great, but only if you know what to do with it.
The two paths forward
There are really only two viable answers for a small business owner who wants to stop calling a developer for every change. Pick the one that fits how you actually like to work.
Be on a visual platform where you can edit directly
Squarespace, Wix, GoDaddy Builder, or a properly-set-up WordPress with a visual editor like Elementor. You click on text, change it, click save. Fine for basic edits if the platform was set up cleanly.
Best for: owners who never want to see code, and don’t mind paying $20–$50/month forever. Worst for: owners who want fast, ranked, owned sites — these platforms have real limits on SEO, performance, and ownership.
Own your code and use AI to make the edits for you
Your site lives as plain HTML files you actually own. You use an AI editor — specifically Cursor — to make changes by typing what you want in plain English. “Change my phone number from 248-555-1234 to 248-555-9999 everywhere it appears.” Done. No code knowledge required.
Best for: owners who want fast-loading, well-ranked, fully-owned sites and don’t want a $50/month platform bill. Worst for: people who refuse to install any software on their computer (Cursor is a free desktop app).
What Option B actually looks like in practice
The framing matters here: AI is the tool. You’re doing the editing — you’re just describing the change instead of writing the code. Same way a calculator does the math but you’re the one running the numbers.
A real example. Imagine your services page has the line “Drain cleaning starting at $129.” You decide to raise it to $149. Here’s the workflow:
- Open Cursor (free download, works on Mac and Windows).
- Open your website folder.
- Type in the chat panel: “Change ‘Drain cleaning starting at $129’ to ‘Drain cleaning starting at $149’ everywhere it appears on the site.”
- Cursor makes the change. You review it (one click).
- You publish it (one click, if your site is connected to Netlify or similar).
Total time: about 30 seconds. Cost: $0. No phone call, no waiting, no invoice.
You can do the same thing for: changing phone numbers, swapping a photo, adding a new testimonial, updating hours, adding a new service to a list, fixing typos, changing a price across an entire pricing page, adding a holiday banner. The same workflow works for all of them.
What this means for retainer dependence
Most monthly “maintenance retainers” in the $100–$400/month range are billing you for exactly the kind of work Option B eliminates. Once you can make your own basic edits, the retainer becomes optional — you only pay for real strategic work (new pages, new features, redesigns), not for the routine maintenance that should have been free anyway.
That’s the core of what I sell at Cohoon Consulting: I build the site, hand it over, and teach you to make your own edits using Cursor. You walk away with the keys, the tool, and the knowledge to use it. No required monthly retainer to keep the site running.
How long it takes to learn
A 60-minute training session is enough for most owners to make confident basic edits on their own. The handoff session I do at the end of every project covers: how to open the project in Cursor, how to ask for a change, how to preview it, how to publish it, and how to undo if you mess up. After that, you’re running on your own.
You don’t need to learn HTML. You don’t need to learn how to deploy. You don’t need to read a tutorial. You just need to know how to describe what you want changed.
If you want to see how this works on your specific site — or if you want a site rebuilt from scratch with this workflow baked in — book a free conversation. You can also see the training I offer, including a workshop specifically for business owners who want to run their own site using AI tools.