Context
Pink Coconuts is a travel platform for LGBTQ+ travellers exploring the Caribbean. It had grown quickly, which is the good version of this problem, and the platform had not grown with it.
The problem
Navigation was slow, the interface had drifted out of consistency, forms were erroring, and several things you would consider basic infrastructure, SEO tags, onboarding, password reset, were either missing or broken.
The tempting diagnosis was that the platform was past saving and needed rebuilding. That diagnosis is nearly always wrong and always expensive.
What I decided
I audited the existing Bubble environment before proposing anything, looking specifically at where the structure, workflows and data connections were costing speed. The finding was that the foundation was sound and the accumulated mess was not.
So I repaired rather than replaced. Cleaner navigation and page hierarchy, homepage logic that shows or hides sections based on user state instead of rendering everything, standardised spacing and typography, form errors fixed, Airtable connections strengthened, and proper user accounts with login and password reset.
A rebuild would have been an easier sell. It sounds decisive, it produces something visibly new, and it is worth considerably more in fees. It also would have taken months, thrown away work that was fine, and delivered a platform with a different set of problems.
The cost of repairing is that you inherit the original decisions. Some of the structure is not what I would have chosen from scratch, and that will constrain what comes next. I said so at the time and delivered a roadmap alongside the work, so the next decision could be made deliberately rather than under pressure.
What shipped
A restructured navigation and header, a dynamic homepage responding to user state, consistent visual system across the platform, working forms with strengthened Airtable connections, user accounts with password reset, corrected SEO metadata and page titles, and a development and marketing roadmap.
The result
Faster and more intuitive navigation, working onboarding with real accounts, visual identity brought back in line with the brand, and a platform structured for CMS integration and content expansion rather than another round of patching.