From WordPress frustration to static site freedom: Blueprint Finance’s CloudCannon journey
Timmy Brown
Head of Marketing
Blueprint Finance
10x
easier to edit
Increased
weekly customer leads
Zero
need for maintenance
Blueprint Finance, an Auckland financial advisory firm, had a challenge. As a growing company offering a comprehensive range of financial services and advice — from mortgage brokerage and KiwiSaver retirement funds to life insurance and business continuity — they needed a website that reflected their professional brand while being easy to maintain and update. Their solution? Moving from a template-based WordPress site to a custom-built static site on CloudCannon.
The need for speed and security: why static sites matter for financial services
For Blueprint Finance, finding the right website solution wasn’t just about aesthetics. Security and performance were non-negotiable requirements for a company handling sensitive financial information.
The main thing that I wanted was it to be super fast and static. That was the first criteria — I wanted it to be built that way by default. I didn’t want to have to add on speed.
Timmy Brown
Head of Marketing
Blueprint Finance
As a marketer focused on site performance and accompanying SEO gains, Timmy was keen to work with a Jamstack and static site generator approach, but needed a solution that wouldn't require extensive technical expertise. It was CloudCannon's user-friendly approach to static sites that helped seal the deal, allowing him to edit his site without needing advanced development knowledge.
The WordPress avoidance syndrome
Blueprint’s initial website was built on WordPress, but Timmy had strong reservations about it from the beginning, and knew it wasn’t the right long-term solution.
“WordPress was always going to be a placeholder site,” Timmy explains. “When I got involved with Blueprint, I didn’t want to touch it. I said, ‘We’ll just leave it and then we’ll launch a proper one.’”
His complete avoidance of the WordPress platform speaks volumes about his experience with it. When asked about the difference between updating content on WordPress versus CloudCannon, Timmy was blunt: “I just refused to update the WordPress site.” It’s striking just how much friction the platform created for his workflow: even though he hadn’t updated the site over six months, it still required three separate interventions for security and maintenance updates.
Security maintenance burden
Even with managed WordPress hosting solutions, security remained a constant concern:
”With WordPress, there are a lot more required updates — and even if we used WP Engine or something similar, I’d still have to do security updates,” Timmy notes. This maintenance burden consumed valuable time and created ongoing concerns.
“With WordPress, even if you’re comfortable maintaining it, there’s a niggling stress that isn’t there with CloudCannon,” he adds. This psychological overhead — the constant awareness that something might break or need updating — was eliminated with a static site approach.
Performance limitations
Speed was a primary concern for Blueprint’s site. Timmy was looking for a solution that delivered performance without requiring additional plugins or configurations.
WordPress sites typically require caching plugins, image optimization tools, and other add-ons to achieve competitive load times — adding more complexity and potential points of failure to the site.
By contrast, CloudCannon’s static sites are faster by default, and integrate with a wide range of image optimization tools and digital asset managers, among other tools.
Generic template feel
Despite customization options, WordPress sites often retain certain characteristics that make them feel similar:
“If you use WordPress or Elementor or another platform, there are so many default pathways that even with a lot of uniqueness, there’s that same feeling that kind of just creeps in,” Timmy notes. The boilerplate quality of many WordPress templates can undermine efforts to create a truly distinctive brand presence online — particularly problematic for Blueprint, which positions itself as different from typical financial advisory firms.
Working from Timmy's strategy and with designs from a newly graduated UX designer, CloudCannon's internal development team created the new highly customized site, eliminating the cookie-cutter sections that had previously characterized their web presence. "With the new CloudCannon site we didn't have to push past those generic elements," Timmy says.
Ecosystem lock-in
Timmy was wary of being trapped in a closed ecosystem where he’d be forced to use suboptimal solutions for different functions:
“I didn’t want to get stuck in an ecosystem. I prefer to aim for the best use case for each feature we need,” he explains. This philosophy led him to create a tech stack where CloudCannon handles the website, make.com processes forms into Airtable, and other specialized tools handle specific functions.
This flexibility wasn’t as readily available in the WordPress ecosystem, where plugins often work best with other plugins from the same developer or compatible systems.
The combination of these factors made WordPress unsustainable for Blueprint’s needs — especially given Timmy’s limited time allocation for website tasks like security updates, plugin compatibility issues, or navigating complex admin interfaces. WordPress had created too much overhead for too little return, leading to the search for a more efficient alternative.
A more flexible approach to content
Blueprint’s website strategy focuses on quality over quantity. Rather than constantly expanding the site with new pages, Timmy wanted a platform that made it easy to update and refine existing content.
“The way that we’ve designed this site is that it’s not supposed to expand,” he explains. “It’s just supposed to be updated. That's my marketing theory for the state of the world, the state of SEO. If we run 10 or 20 pages, they're going to perform worse than if we have three.” CloudCannon allows Blueprint to create their ideal focused site without the bloat that often comes with template-based systems.
What I’m really happy with is that I know the foundation is where everything is correct. Editing is easy, fast, and painless. We’re not redoing, or relaunching, we’re just rebuilding.
Focus matters: maximizing efficiency with limited time
Because Timmy has other professional commitments in his calendar, he needs to maximize efficiency where possible — and a background in operational marketing has made him particularly sensitive to time wastage.
“I am always busy, but I don’t like to waste time on unnecessary tasks,” he explains. His focus on efficiency drives many of his technology decisions, including the choice of CloudCannon as a CMS.
The simplicity and clarity of CloudCannon’s interface keeps his workflow streamlined: “It's easy to make any changes — I can always work from the same dashboard,” he says. This consistency also means he doesn’t have to waste time relearning different interfaces or hunting for specific features.
For someone juggling multiple roles with limited time allocation, the efficiency that CloudCannon can afford is invaluable. It allows Timmy to focus on what matters — creating quality content and driving business results — rather than wrestling with website maintenance.
With CloudCannon, Blueprint can keep their content fresh and responsive to market changes without requiring specialized technical knowledge, or worrying about breaking something in the process.
The results: better performance and higher business impact
Since launching the new site, Blueprint has seen significant improvements in both technical performance and business outcomes.
10x
easier to edit
Increased
weekly customer leads
Zero
need for maintenance
Core web vitals
Immediately after launching with CloudCannon, the website’s core web vitals improved across the board for both mobile and desktop users. For Blueprint, this performance improvement establishes the technical foundation for their local SEO campaign, which is already well underway, resulting in significantly higher ranking for their targeted keywords, and increased visitor numbers from organic search:
High-quality inquiries
Thanks to the help of CloudCannon’s Web Services team, Blueprint has a customized conditional form builder on their home page to let users choose precisely what they’d like to discuss. And while their site is still in the early stages, Blueprint is already seeing positive results. After establishing an early baseline, their first major content update on CloudCannon's stable and trusted platform has resulted in quick SEO growth.
We've moved from getting negligible leads to seeing high quality leads coming through the website each week. It’s definitely working to filter people to the right place, and keeping their information secure.
The site’s professional performance also creates a positive first impression with potential clients.
“The main thing is that the site has to prove that we deserve people’s trust. Many of our clients are looking for better structures to pay down debt faster, and remove stress, and we're asking for sensitive information to be able to prepare our meetings — people’s income, their investment goals,” Timmy explains. “The site has to reflect everything we bring to our clients: speed, security, interactivity, and the fluidity of our process.”
Achieving business goals
Beyond the technical improvements, the move to CloudCannon has enabled Blueprint to better achieve their core business objectives. Their site now properly reflects their professional yet relatable brand positioning — a crucial differentiator in New Zealand's casual financial services market.
“We especially wanted our website to reflect our professionalism,” says Timmy. “In New Zealand, there’s so much casual marketing speak. To be professional but still relatable is slightly different.”
The improved site performance and user experience have directly contributed to business growth through better qualified leads and increased client trust. And as Blueprint continues to grow, they're already planning future enhancements to their site, particularly around automation and form functionality.
For a financial services company looking to build trust through their digital presence while maintaining an efficient workflow, Blueprint’s experience with CloudCannon demonstrates the value of prioritizing performance, security, and ease of editing over template-based solutions.
As for Timmy, he's so happy with the new site — and the direction that Blueprint is taking because of it — that he's recommending CloudCannon to other businesses. The results speak for themselves: a faster, more secure site that both clients and team members can navigate with confidence.
Want to find out more?
Book a friendly demo call with us, and find out how CloudCannon can help your agency deploy and manage client sites more efficiently.
Tom Richardson
Solutions Architect
