AI is changing the way we engage with the internet. Now, users are navigating to websites less and choosing to search in AI chatbots more, disrupting the online marketing model. This makes it important for brands and marketers to optimise their online presence to appear in AI search and to be picked up by AI agents. In this guest article, Rebecca Crook, CEO at MSQ digital agencies, MMT and 26 DX, explains the first steps marketers should be taking in preparation for the zero-click internet – where users will access content without having to click links to sites.
Websites today are built with people in mind. Every click, scroll, and layout designed for us – the human user. The logic has always been simple, make it as easy as possible for the customer to find what they want and hit that big, juicy ‘buy now’ button.
But what if your next customer never even sees your site?
AI agents, the smart and invisible digital assistants are poised to start shopping on our behalf. With Shopify integrating ChatGPT and more recently, Google’s launch of Project Mariner (a multi-tasking AI agent that can browse and buy), a future moving from search and click to ask and do isn’t far off.
And this shift changes everything for e-commerce. AI agents don’t care about ‘pretty’. They don’t care about your quirky graphics or your clever copywriting. They’re not influenced by storytelling or mesmerised by a seamless scrolling experience. They just want facts, clear structure and accessible data that they can find, understand and act on.
And in an AI future, this is where things start to fall apart for most brands.
Embracing accessibility
Websites are often built like digital showrooms, designed for attention rather than just action. Created for human behaviour, not machine logic. This means customer journeys will need to be as frictionless for AI agents as they are for humans. And that’s going to transform how brands consider creating and designing the websites of the future. Accessibility will be key to winning this new breed of customer.
Smart brands will already be conscious of a shift towards accessibility as a way to make their site a lot more accessible to new customers. Brands who sell to EU customers will already have a competitive advantage as they will be geared up and ready for the European Accessibility Act (EAA) set to launch on the 28th June this year. This will require websites and digital content to be usable by everyone, including those with visual, auditory, or physical impairments.
But what many brands haven’t realised is that those same accessibility improvements are also what make your site easier for AI agents to read, understand, and take action.
Embracing these accessibility principles early will provide a huge competitive advantage when it comes to winning over the newest customer, the AI agent. It’s easy to say “make your site more accessible”, but appealing to AI agents means rethinking how your site is built.
Getting Your Site ‘AI’ Ready
So, what can brands do to prepare? There are three key areas to focus on if you want to make your website usable, understandable and actionable for AI agents.
1) Ensure accessibility and mobile friendliness by following Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). These are guidelines created to explain how to make web content more accessible. This includes using ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) labels for interactive parts of the website. These labels give extra information to tools like screen readers and also help people who can’t see the screen understand what these parts do.
Good keyboard navigation, as recommended by WCAG, improves accessibility for those who can’t use a mouse and helps AI agents access content, understand site structure, and navigate interactive elements. This allows them to gather necessary information for tasks like browsing and purchasing on behalf of users. Poor keyboard navigation can limit AI access to a website’s full functionality.
Providing “alt text” (alternative text) for images is another important thing to consider from the WCAG guideline. These are written descriptions to images on your website which helps people who can’t see the image, as screen readers can read the alt text aloud, explaining what the image is and why it’s important. AI agents, like shopping assistants can also read this alt text as they don’t “see” images in the same way humans do. This gives them important information about the image’s content and purpose and helps agents understand the context of the page, identify products and gather necessary details.
Thinking about WCAG isn’t just the right thing to do to make your website become more accessible for human users, but they also directly benefit how AI agents interpret data.
2) Optimise for conversational AI and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). Think of APIs like special doors that allow two applications to talk to each other. Your website has information, and AI agents need to be able to access it to help people shop or find things. APIs are the way you open those ‘doors’ securely so the AI can get the information it needs without a human having to do it manually.
Brands will need machine-friendly ways for AI agents to interact with your content. That includes public or authenticated APIs for things like bookings, e-commerce and content feeds. Public APIs are accessible to anyone, while authenticated APIs require users to verify their identity before access is granted. Meanwhile, OpenAPI schemas are like the instructions for using those ‘doors’. They tell the AI agent exactly what information it can ask for and how to ask for it.
Making sure your website has good APIs and clear instructions is like making your store easy for everyone, including robots, to shop in. Having clear OpenAPI schemas will enable AI agents to schedule, order, or retrieve information directly from your site. If an AI agent can’t access what it needs, you’re off the shortlist.
3) Be smart with your language and prompts. Imagine Large Language Models (LLMs), the brains behind AI agents, as super smart students who have read a lot of books. LLM’s (Large Language Models) are trained to work with prompts and are trained on extensive amounts of text data. To get them to understand your website content and use it correctly, you need to speak their language.
This means using natural language and contextual phrasing like ‘how to…’ or ‘benefits of…’ to help AI agents understand and lift your content accurately. Avoid jargon or overly complicated sentences and get straight to the point.
By writing in a clear, straightforward manner, using natural language that reflects how users actually search for information, you are essentially making your content more AI-friendly. If your copy reads clearly, it will work harder and smarter.
The Future of Websites is Hybrid
There is no doubt that AI agents are transforming how we create, design, and interact with websites. And like everything in the technology space this shift will only accelerate change. Brands need to prepare for the shift from human visitors to AI visitors so these worlds can co-exist together and offer a seamless experience for both audiences. The future of websites isn’t just for humans; it’s for machines, too. And websites need to work for both.
