The Challenge
BAF Training is our own personal training practice in the Austin, Texas area. The business had a website, but it wasn't working — built on a template platform with limited customization, no pricing transparency, no client testimonials, and no connection to the owner's values-first approach to business.
The deeper challenge was philosophical. The owner operates from a "giving vs. selling" framework — the belief that genuine helpfulness precedes transactions, that free resources build trust, and that pricing should be accessible rather than hidden behind a "contact us" wall. Translating that philosophy into a functional business website raised questions that couldn't be answered by intuition alone.
This wasn't a single project. It became an ongoing effort spanning research, design, infrastructure migration, evidence-based program development, and continuous operational improvement — a complete demonstration of what AI-directed business transformation looks like in practice.
The Project Arc
What started as a website redesign evolved into a multi-phase effort. Each phase was grounded in research before execution, with decisions documented and traceable.
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Phase 1: Research-Grounded StrategyPricing model research (NYOP/PWYW viability, pricing visibility studies), competitive analysis, and values-aligned business design — all before writing a single line of code.
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Phase 2: Website Build & LaunchFull site build with pricing transparency, testimonial integration, SEO implementation, legal pages, and revenue infrastructure (contact forms, automated inquiry routing).
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Phase 3: Domain MigrationComplete platform migration from Wix to Cloudflare Pages — domain transfer, DNS configuration, custom domain setup, SSL provisioning, and a multi-point post-migration verification protocol.
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Phase 4: Evidence-Based Program DevelopmentResearch-grounded corrective exercise program: 9,292 data points from 22 research sources, including peer-reviewed journals, covering shoulder corrective programming, kinetic chain mechanics, and scapular dyskinesis. Delivered as an interactive client-facing tool.
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Phase 5: Operational HardeningEmail authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), navigation restructuring, content optimization, and ongoing monitoring. The site is a living system, not a one-time deliverable.
The Research
Pricing Model Research
The owner's values suggested exploring "pay what you can" pricing. Rather than implementing based on intuition, we researched NYOP/PWYW models across industries — from restaurant experiments to therapy practices to SaaS platforms — and discovered that pure PWYW underperforms for high-touch, 1:1 services with real marginal cost per session.
The evidence led to an unexpected finding: mental health practitioners face the same structural challenge as personal trainers — high-touch services where each session has real cost — and many have built sustainable flexible pricing through a "guided sliding scale" approach. Clear published rates with private, relationship-based flexibility. This evidence-backed model replaced the original PWYW instinct.
Pricing Visibility Research
Research inverted a common assumption. Fitness industry practitioners and B2B SaaS data pointed the same way: publishing prices after demonstrating value brought higher-quality leads than hiding them. Transparent pricing filters for committed clients who already know they can afford the service.
| Research Question | Finding | Business Decision |
|---|---|---|
| Should we use PWYW pricing? | Underperforms for 1:1 services with real marginal cost | Guided sliding scale with published base rates |
| Should prices be visible? | Transparent pricing brings higher-quality leads and better-fit clients | Full pricing on website after value demonstration |
| What about testimonials? | Fitness practitioner guidance recommends showing social proof or testimonials | Dedicated testimonial integration throughout site |
Program Development Research
When the business needed a client onboarding program, we didn't build from the trainer's experience alone. We compiled 9,292 structured data points from 22 research sources, including peer-reviewed journals, covering shoulder corrective protocols, kinetic chain assessment frameworks, and scapular dyskinesis — then synthesized that evidence into a 4-week corrective exercise program structured across 3 training days, integrated movement quality tracking, and three-layer citations linking its evidence claims to their research basis.
The Build
Infrastructure Migration
The original site was hosted on Wix — a platform that worked for initial launch but limited customization, performance, and cost control. We executed a full migration to Cloudflare Pages: domain transfer with EPP code extraction, DNS record migration, custom domain configuration, and SSL certificate provisioning.
The migration wasn't just a technical move — it was an operational discipline exercise. Every step was documented, every DNS record verified, and the post-migration validation followed a multi-point verification protocol including form submission testing and email delivery verification.
Why this matters: DNS misconfigurations, lost email, broken forms, and SEO penalties are common. The multi-point verification protocol was designed to protect against downtime and functionality loss — the kind of operational rigor that's invisible when it works and devastating when it doesn't.
Revenue Infrastructure
The site isn't just a brochure — it's a revenue system. Contact forms route inquiries through verified channels with spam filtering. Email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) helps outbound messages from the business domain land in inboxes, not spam folders. Every component of the inquiry-to-client pipeline was configured, tested, and verified.
The Outcome
The result is not a website — it's a continuously maintained digital business system. Its key decisions trace to documented research. The pricing model is evidence-based. The exercise programming is research-grounded. The infrastructure was checked after migration. And the system continues to evolve as the business grows.
This project demonstrates what "AI-directed" means in practice: not automated code generation, but structured research, evidence-grounded decision-making, disciplined execution, and ongoing verification applied across a real business. The AI directs the methodology; the human directs the business.
Technical Details
This work spans five distinct project phases executed over multiple months. Each phase follows a research-first methodology: questions are formulated, evidence is gathered, findings are synthesized, and only then is implementation planned and executed.
The pricing research drew on sources spanning behavioral economics experiments, fitness industry practitioner reports, mental health practice models, and B2B SaaS conversion studies. The exercise programming research compiled 9,292 data points from 22 research sources, including peer-reviewed journals, through a multi-stage processing pipeline that extracts, normalizes, and indexes text at the sentence level for precise citation.
The infrastructure migration used a systematic, multi-point verification protocol covering DNS propagation, SSL certificate provisioning, email authentication (SPF record validation), and form submission routing — all documented and verified.
The ongoing enhancement model means this isn't a project with an end date — it's a maintained system. Navigation restructuring, content optimization, email deliverability monitoring, and new capability development (like the exercise program) are integrated as the business evolves.
Research-Grounded Business Development
Whether you need a website that's built on evidence rather than assumptions, infrastructure that's verified, or ongoing AI-directed enhancement — we build business systems that document their own reasoning.
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