2025 Recap: Simplifying, Supporting & Shifting (Big Cat Creative Style)
I wanted to do a bit of a 2025 recap for Big Cat Creative and walk you through what actually happened in the business this year – the good, the challenging, the experiments, and what we’re taking with us into 2026.
Going into 2025, our goals were actually pretty simple (in theory 😅):
Simplify – fewer moving parts, less complicated tech, and a business that feels lighter (and more fun honestly) to run.
Have more impact – actually talk to our customers more, understand where they’re stuck, and make our products and support genuinely more helpful.
Stay connected to the big vision – not just doing stuff because “we’ve always done it this way,” but zooming out and asking: Does this still make sense? Are we actually enjoying this? Is it serving a bigger purpose?
Build a solid, happy team – I really wanted Big Cat Creative to feel like a fun, creative place to work, with people owning their areas and working together like a very well-oiled machine. I even had ideas of doing a little team retreat this year (that did not happen 😂), but the spirit of that goal was there: strong (however remote) culture, all on board with vision, and everyone owning their roles but also working together.
Here's our goals post from instagram in early 2025:
So, how did we do? What did we actually achieve?
Templates (and more templates)
A brand new template: Nyx 💕
Mid-way through the year we finally launched a new template, which feels wild to say because we actually hadn’t released a brand new one in ages. For the last couple of years we’ve been much more focused on:
Updating / revamping existing templates
Improving our back-end systems
Doing a lot of marketing and operations stuff
…which is all important, but honestly, we kind of lost sight of what we really love to do: design beautiful, strategic websites for our people 😩
I designed this new template myself, and it completely reminded me how much I love the design side of the business. The feedback has been so positive and it’s already become a really popular template.
Designing new templates is always a bit of educated guesswork – trying to:
Capture newer design trends and features
Still make something genuinely useful and practical
Design for what people actually need from their site
So it’s been really validating to see this one land so well.
I did want to launch more templates this year, but the year definitely got away on us. We only got this one out the door, but we do have a few more templates in progress that will be ready to go in 2026, which I’m really excited about.
Add-on pages for every template
Another huge product project this year was launching our add-on pages as their own little ecosystem.
We’ve always had sales pages available in different ways over the years, but in 2025 we really committed to:
Making certain highly requested pages available as optional extras
Designing them to perfectly match each of our existing templates
We didn’t want to just bundle these into every template because not everyone needs every page. But a lot of people were asking for things like:
Instagram Links pages
Freebie / opt-in pages
Podcast pages
Shop pages
We actually started working on this in 2024, but our first add-on page launched in Jan 2025.
Throughout the year, for each of our ~15 templates, we created 1 matching Instagram Links page, Freebie page, Podcast page, and Shop page.
Which equals a lot of design hours (between me & Emily!). It was a big effort, both creatively and structurally, because on the back end we also had to completely sort out how these were set up, sold, and delivered.
The response has been really good. It turns out… people really did want these 😅 And the big win is that because the pages are designed to match each specific template, you don’t have to spend time trying to adapt a generic design. You just plug it in and go.
This is something that other shops aren't offering. We wanted to make these add-ons actually helpful for people, as helpful as possible, and that took way more up-front effort on our part. But we think it was totally worth it!
We’ll continue creating more add-ons and matching elements next year so people can build more fully fleshed-out, on-brand sites using our template systems.
👉 Want to check out our add-on pages? Head to the template shop, pick your fav design then navigate to the add-ons section using the skip bar in the bottom left.
Including installs as part of the template purchase
The other big product/support experiment this year was around installs.
Previously, we charged separately for our template install service. This year, in the spirit of “how can we make this easier for people?” we decided to include installs as an option when you buy a template, without having to purchase an extra service package.
So now, when you buy a template, you can choose:
Install – we set it up for you in your existing Squarespace site
Delivery only – you DIY it from scratch on a new Squarespace site
We sat down, crunched the numbers, and decided that including installs was something we could afford to “take on the chin” if it made a big difference to our customers’ experience. So far:
It’s a manual process, so this did mean hiring a new team member to help handle installs and deliveries (shout out to Evelin, more on that under the Team section!)
It’s very in line with our goal of making website building as easy as possible.
It has already made the process smoother for a lot of people, especially because switching Squarespace sites and starting fresh can be annoying and confusing.
This is still a test run and we’re keeping an eye on the numbers to make sure it’s sustainable long-term. But right now, it’s looking promising and it just feels really aligned with our “help more people build great websites easily” goal.
👉 Learn all about how our Squarespace Templates work here
Resources updates
Last, and finally NOT least, is we did a major overhaul of our template tutorials + resources.
Between a full reset of our back-end resources hosting platform (more on that below) and looking through the lens of "how do we make this easier and faster for people", we made a lot of resources updates throughout the year.
Updating outdated videos – lots of this, because Squarespace had a lot of great updates this year
Restructuring and simplifying a bunch of lessons
Launching new Ai Guides for copywriting!
Simplifying graphics and assets within the templates – because there was so many great Squarespace and Canva updates this year, it made a lot of how we had things set up (while necessary in the past) now redundant and overcomplicated. So we were able to streamline a lot of assets and graphics 🎉
This is one of the best feelings, making our products even more simple AND effective!
1:1 Services (oh my!)
For years I said I would never go back to services again (can you see where this is going).
When I moved into templates, I was pretty firm on that boundary: I didn’t want to be tied to client work, I didn’t want my time to be booked out months in advance, and I liked the freedom of products.
But in really listening to our customers over the last couple of years, it became very clear that there was a whole group of people who:
Were past the template DIY stage, or
Just didn’t want to DIY at all, and
Still really wanted to use our designs, but with a designer doing the heavy lifting.
I’d been kind of ignoring these people because in my head, “services = me doing services again.”
But that’s just not true anymore, because I now have:
A genuinely awesome, capable team that would be excited to take this on
Skills to set up systems and boundaries that I didn’t have earlier in my business
So we decided to bring services back – but in a very BCC way.
Template Full Style (2-day service)
Our main service is now Template Full Style – a 2-day intensive where you get:
A refined brand identity (brand design)
A full customisation of one of our templates in your new brand
Everything wrapped up within two focused days
Template Quick Style (1-day service)
We also introduced Template Quick Style – a 1-day express restyle:
You come with your existing brand ready to go
We fully customise your template in a single day
It’s still a big transformation, just without the full brand design piece
Obviously, getting a full website project done in 1–2 days is a lot, even with templates. To make this work without chaos, we needed very strong systems and boundaries, so I spent a solid couple of months:
Designing a really clear, streamlined process
Creating all the homework, forms, and prep for clients
Building internal checklists and timelines for the team
Automating as much as I possibly could
The idea is:
The client signs on
They complete all of their homework and provide everything we need
All of that is passed to Shelby (project manager) and Alex (designer)
They work really hard over 1–2 days and get the project done
So far, it’s been… honestly, really good 🥹
We’ve done quite a few projects now, the systems are actually working, clients have had a great experience, the websites that we have created are GORGEOUS, and Alex and Shelby are loving the work! Win win win etc.
I went into this willing to shut it down if it was too much of a drain on our time or resources, but instead it’s actually:
Brought back my love for working more closely with people
Reinforced how powerful good systems and boundaries can be
Shown me that services don’t have to mean I am doing all the services
We're really excited to keep offering these into 2026! Here are just some of the gorgeous designs that came out of it:
Back-end / Tech Overhaul (warning: only interesting to people who like streamlined systems and tech stacks)
Now for the spicy part of the year: the tech stack overhaul. Again. 😂
A few years ago, we moved almost everything into Kartra (mainly email marketing and courses/resources). And honestly… we kind of regretted that decision ever since.
Kartra did a lot of things (a classic case of an "all-in-one" but does all of the things below average):
It was clunky and slow on the back end
It never really looked or felt “on brand” and had limited design customization
Customers regularly had issues logging in, finding their courses/resources, etc.
And because everything was crammed into Kartra, we were also juggling multiple integration tools just to keep things talking to each other (Some seriously complicated flows built into Make and Pabbly connect). It was a lot to manage.
In 2025, in line with our “simplify and make things easier” goal, we finally decided to move off Kartra and rebuild our stack.
Courses & template resources → Squarespace Courses
We moved all of our courses and resources from Kartra into Squarespace.
Is Squarespace the most advanced course platform in the world? No, I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. But it's perfect for what we need right now.
The pros for us:
Everything is now on our website, in one place
It all looks on-brand, which makes me unreasonably happier 🧑🏻🎨
It’s much easier and more intuitive for our customers to navigate
It's SO much faster to update and manage! Please I just can't handle things lagging.
For our specific needs, Squarespace Courses was a really good choice and I’m happy with how this turned out.
Email marketing → Kit (an old friend)
We also moved all of our email marketing away from Kartra and into Kit (formerly ConvertKit).
We actually used ConvertKit way back in the day, and it’s always been strong on the email logic side (automations, tagging, etc.). Though I found the design options were a bit limited, but:
They’ve improved their design capabilities over the last few years
It now has more than enough design flexibility for what we need
It still keeps things fairly simple, which I like
The other big advantage is that Kit has a really nice Squarespace e-commerce integration, which automatically triggers certain things when we sell templates through Squarespace.
This alone made things feel much less hacky than our old setup.
Integrations → Zapier only
Previously, to keep Kartra connected with everything, we were using:
Pabbly Connect
Make (Formerly Integromat)
Zapier
…and various other bits and pieces
If you’ve ever run multiple integration tools at once, you know how messy and fragile that can get.
As part of the overhaul, we decided to:
Move everything over to Zapier only
Zapier is definitely more expensive than other options, but:
It connects beautifully with our new core tools (Squarespace + Kit and all of the other little things not mentioned here)
It now has really good AI features built in
It massively reduces the amount of tech babysitting we have to do
So while we’re paying more per month, I’m confident we’re saving that money in time, headspace, reduced complexity and maintenance (Zapier - brought to you by inner peace 🧘♀️)
The downside of this whole overhaul was that it was a massive project:
Migrating all of our email marketing
Rebuilding funnels
Re-creating automations and workflows
Overhauling our courses/resources
But we tackled it at the very beginning of the year, and Emily helped me a ton with getting everything across. We just ripped the band-aid off, got it done, and now:
Our stack is simpler, our team is happier, our customers have a smoother experience.
I actually feel like a big weight was lifted off my shoulders. So overall, very worth it.
Marketing 🙂🙃
Now onto marketing, which was also a big focus area this year – but with a slightly different lens.
At the end of last year, we started working with Ally, a high-level marketing analyst. She set up a lot of our tracking so that this year, we could actually see:
What’s working
What’s not
Where our time and money are best spent
Because we spend so much energy on marketing, it was really important to make sure we weren’t just creating content for the sake of it.
This year felt like a balance of:
Experimenting and trying new things for funsies ✨, and
Having data and boundaries, thanks to Ally, so we didn’t just throw spaghetti at the wall 🍝
Here’s what changed (and what didn’t) across each channel.
YouTube
We actually didn’t do anything super wild on YouTube this year. We mostly:
Kept consistently uploading valuable tutorials – Squarespace, web design, and general design content
Focused on making sure what we did put up was actually useful and evergreen
This is still performing pretty steadily for us, so we’ll likely keep this going.
Closer to the end of the year, we experimented with something new: “Design With Me” videos:
These are longer form videos where you basically sit down with me, watch me design / restyle websites, and get a more casual behind-the-scenes look at our templates and design process
They’re not heavily promotional; they’re more about giving people a feel for how our templates work and showing design thinking in real time. So far:
I’ve only done three of them lol
They’re fun to create, but they do take quite a bit of work
We’re still in “TBD” mode on whether we’ll keep these going
If you see more of these in 2026, it’ll be because they performed well and felt worth the effort. If they quietly disappear… well 😅
Blog
Our blog has always been one of our biggest traffic drivers. But 2024–2025 were big years of change with SEO and search in general, especially with:
Google rolling out AI summaries
More people getting answers from tools like ChatGPT instead of clicking through to tutorials
We definitely saw that shift this year!
👉 Is SEO Dead? A Candid Conversation on AI, Blogging & Squarespace with Henry from SEOSpace
At the beginning of 2025, we focused on:
Beefing up existing posts
Making sure they were well-optimised and still ranking
Continuing to create new SEO-friendly content where it made sense
The interesting thing was, our rankings were improving but overall traffic from search was still slowly declining.
Which probably means our SEO efforts are technically working, but people are clicking on tutorial content less because they’re getting answers directly from AI or Google’s summaries.
Right now our blog focus is:
Keeping content up to date – we have a lot of posts at this point
Going back through and making sure everything is:
Accurate
Not outdated
Actually helpful
Thinking about how SEO/AI optimisation is evolving and adapting as we go
We’ve also started seeing a small but growing amount of traffic from AI search – for example, when ChatGPT or other AI tools suggest one of our blog posts as a deeper resource. So even though traditional search traffic is down, people are still finding their way to us through content.
Either way, the blog is not going anywhere. It’s still a big part of how we show up and help people – we’re just adjusting how we think about optimisation.
👉 How to Start a Blog with Squarespace
Pinterest made a bit of a comeback for us this year!
Last year we hired Lindsay, who did an awesome job jump-starting our Pinterest again after a few pretty dormant years. She left the team part-way through 2025 (more on that below), but she set us up with a really solid foundation.
We then hired Evelin to help keep Pinterest moving, and she’s also been helping with installs and deliveries.
This year, Pinterest looked like:
Posting much more consistently again
Putting a lot of design time into creating pins (even with templates, it still adds up)
Really giving it a proper run so we can assess its actual ROI
Pinterest often gets framed as an “easy” marketing channel, but I think people underestimate how much time and design effort it actually takes, especially at the level we like to design at (it's gotta be cute 🥰)
Right now, Pinterest is still in TBD mode – we haven’t fully sat down to evaluate whether the return matches the effort.
We plan to do a deeper review soon to see if the results justify the amount of time and design work going into it. So Pinterest has definitely ramped up again this year, but we’re still deciding what it looks like for us long-term.
Ads
A big new thing for 2025: we started running IG and FB paid ads (managed by Ally!).
We only started them a few months ago, so we’re still very much in testing and refining mode, but:
The performance is looking promising
We are seeing profit
We’re hoping with more refinement we’ll be able to scale them more in 2026
One of the cool side effects is that Ads have also helped grow our organic Instagram following, which had been pretty stagnant for a few years.
So even aside from direct sales, they’re:
Growing our audience (particularly IG)
Getting more eyes on our brand
Warming people up for everything else we do
We’re definitely planning on continuing ads next year and seeing how far we can take them.
All the rest
Instagram, email marketing, our affiliate program, and other bits and bobs, we've mostly been doing what we’ve always done:
Focused on staying consistent and delivering value
Didn’t have many big changes on these platforms year, mostly because we were already juggling so much elsewhere, we can only do so much 😅
The lovely BCC Team
If you saw last year’s recap, you’ll know 2024 was a big team-overhaul year for us. Lots of changes, stress, and learning.
Going into 2025, I was really hoping for a calmer team year. Of course, we still had changes (because that’s just business), but:
This year’s changes were much more positive, always for the better, there was no wasted time or issues, and everyone contributed a lot while they were on the team.
Who left (and who joined)
You might remember the two big hires from 2024 were Lindsay and Cassidy.
Lindsay left about halfway through 2025 to spend more time on her own agency. Because of the way her role was structured, it wasn’t too disruptive and we were able to rearrange the existing team to cover most of what she was doing 💪
Cassidy is in the process of leaving 😢 and will be gone by the end of the year to focus on her full-time job. This one was a bit more of a loss simply because she’d been with us longer and was responsible for quite a bit.
The pros of team changes: Re-assessing roles & structure
Even though Cassidy leaving is a bummer, her departure gave me a reason to:
Talk to everyone on the team about how they’re feeling in their roles
Ask if anyone wanted to shift responsibilities or hours
Get clear on what we actually need for 2026 in terms of roles and capacity
Do a big tidy-up of systems, processes, and SOPs so we were ready for a new team member to come in! Feels like a bit of a systems spring-clean.
We’ve already hired a new person and are in the middle of onboarding, so keep an eye out – we’ll introduce them properly soon, probably over on social! 🎉
I’m really excited about who we’ve brought on and confident that they will build on the great work Cassidy has done, and take things even further in their own way.
So, who's with us for 2026?
Emily – our customer support and product/resources superstar. If you’ve ever emailed us, you’ve almost certainly talked to Emily. She also helps a lot with product management and resource updates. And design. She's a bit of a unicorn, really! She’s been with us for a long time now and I’m so grateful for her 🦄
Alex – our longest-standing team member and an incredible Squarespace designer. She’s now deeply involved in our Template Full Style and Template Quick Style services and will likely continue to support with some template work too 💪
Shelby – started with us doing video tutorials and blog writing, and this year stepped into a project manager role for services. She’s doing amazing and is a huge part of why the services side is working so well 🥹
Ally – our marketing brain and analyst, who helps us stay on track strategically, review what’s actually working, and decide where to put our effort. And as of 2025 our amazing ads manager 👩🏼💻
Evelin – who joined this year to support with Pinterest, and has also taken on installs and deliveries, and other misc admin I throw her way. She's killing it! ✨
KJ – Who runs our extra support service, for when you just need that little bit extra on-top of your template 💕
Plus our new mystery team member, who I’m genuinely excited about introducing properly once they’re fully settled in 🕵
Recap & Looking Ahead to 2026
When I sit down to do these recaps, I’m always surprised by how much we actually pack into a year. Day-to-day it just feels like “doing the work,” but when you zoom out it’s a lot.
This year, we:
Launched a new template and remembered how much we love design
Built a whole ecosystem of matching add-on pages
Experimented with including installs with template purchases
Did a ton of template + resources updates
Brought back services in a way that feels sustainable and actually fun
Completely overhauled our tech stack to be simpler and more customer-friendly
Started running ads and dug into marketing with more data and intention
Re-ignited Pinterest (even if the long-term plan is still TBD)
Navigated more team changes, but in a much calmer, more positive way
Underneath all of that, we stayed pretty aligned to our original goals:
Supporting people better
Not just doing things the way we’ve always done them
Trying new things, then actually measuring whether they’re working
Investing in team structure and happiness
Honestly in 2026 I think we're going to just continue to work on those same goals. They still feel aligned with what we want to continue to achieve. They really feel like our north star. And underneath those guidelines there's a million little things to do.
I’m especially excited to:
Design and launch more templates in 2026
Continue our services and working 1:1 in a way that feels good for everyone
Keep experimenting with marketing, making it fun AND data driven
Take our team to new heights, productivity, flow and fun 🌈
And honestly, I’m feeling really good about it!
If my team is happy and our customers are supported (and the business is making money lol) I’m happy. And that’s the energy I want to carry into 2026. 💛
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