Edition 14: Your Website Just Got a New Job Description
Why AI isn't replacing your website, it's raising the bar on what it needs to do.
The Conversation We Keep Having
"Do I even need a website anymore? Can't AI just handle everything?"
It's a fair question. Between ChatGPT answering customer questions, AI booking tools scheduling appointments, and voice assistants placing orders, it can feel like the website is becoming irrelevant. Every tech headline reinforces the idea that AI is taking over. And your website is just sitting there, waiting to be replaced.
But here's what's actually happening: AI isn't replacing your website. It's relying on it. And that changes everything about what your site needs to be.
The Shift: From Billboard to Employee
For twenty years, most business websites operated like digital billboards. They existed to be seen. You put up your logo, your services, maybe a photo of the team, and you hoped the right people drove by. If the design looked professional enough, it was "working."
That era is over. AI tools, from search engines to voice assistants to the AI agents that are beginning to act on behalf of consumers, don't browse. They don't admire your design. They visit your site with a job to do: find an answer, complete a task, or make a decision. And they need your website to help them do it efficiently.
Think of it this way: your website used to be a brochure someone flipped through. Now it's becoming an employee that AI systems interact with to get things done on your customers' behalf. The question isn't whether your site looks good. It's whether your site can perform.
Here's what that looks like in practice. When someone asks an AI assistant "Find me a plumber in Erie who can come this week," that AI doesn't just search. It reads your site. It checks whether your booking system actually works. It looks for clear service descriptions, real availability, and structured data it can interpret. If your site delivers, you get the lead. If it doesn't, the AI moves to your competitor. Your potential customer never even knows you existed.
This isn't theoretical. Google has confirmed that AI is becoming the default search experience. The shift from "ranking" to "doing" is already underway. And the businesses that understand this distinction, that their website's job has fundamentally changed, are the ones pulling ahead.
What AI Actually Needs From Your Website
The good news is that what makes a website work for AI also makes it work better for humans. It's not about adding some mysterious "AI optimization" layer. It's about doing the fundamentals exceptionally well.
- Clarity over cleverness. AI can't interpret vague marketing language. If your homepage says "We deliver transformative solutions for forward-thinking organizations," an AI has no idea what you actually do. But if it says "We build custom websites for small businesses in Erie, PA," now both the AI and the human know exactly who you serve and how.
- Task completion, not just information. Your site shouldn't just tell people you offer appointments. It should let them book one. It shouldn't just list your phone number. It should make it one tap to call on mobile. Every core action a customer might want to take should be completable without confusion, without broken forms, and without needing to call your office for help.
- Structured data that machines can read. Schema markup, consistent business information, clean headers, logical page structure. These are the things that let AI systems understand your site the way they need to. Think of it as writing your website's resume for a robot hiring manager. It needs to be organized, specific, and verifiable.
- Speed and reliability. AI users are disproportionately mobile-first. If your site takes more than three seconds to load, or if your forms don't submit properly on a phone, you're invisible. Not penalized. Invisible. The AI simply won't recommend a site that can't deliver a smooth experience.
Before you start worrying about whether you need to rebuild your entire site, try this. It takes about 15 minutes and will tell you more about your AI-readiness than any audit tool.
Hand your phone to someone who's never visited your website. Ask them to complete the single most important action for your business: book an appointment, request a quote, buy your most popular product, find your hours and location. Don't help them. Just watch.
Then ask yourself three questions:
- Could they figure out what you do within 10 seconds? If a human can't tell immediately, an AI won't be able to either. Your homepage needs to state what you do, who you serve, and where you're located. Plainly and prominently.
- Could they complete the task in under two minutes? If they got confused, if they hit a dead end, if a form didn't work. That's your answer. Those friction points cost you real business today. They'll cost you even more tomorrow as AI filters them out automatically.
- Did they need to leave the site to complete the action? If completing your most important conversion requires a phone call, an email back-and-forth, or navigating to a third-party booking page that feels disconnected from your brand, you've got a gap that needs to be closed.
The encouraging news, and this is consistent with what we're seeing across our client base, is that most businesses don't need to start over. The majority of sites we audit need strategic tweaks: clearer messaging, working forms, structured data, faster load times. Not a complete rebuild. The gap between "this site needs work" and "this site performs for AI" is usually smaller than people expect.
The Bigger Picture
The conversation about AI and websites is going to get louder this year. You're going to hear vendors trying to sell you "AI-ready" packages and consultants warning you that your business is doomed without a complete digital transformation. Most of that is noise.
The signal is simpler: your website has a new job description. It's no longer just there to be seen. It's there to work: to answer questions clearly, complete tasks reliably, and communicate with the AI systems that are increasingly making decisions on behalf of your customers. The businesses that adapt to this aren't doing anything revolutionary. They're doing the basics exceptionally well, and they're starting now.
Your website doesn't need to be afraid of AI. It just needs to be ready to work with it.
