Everyone knows that AI means brands must change their online experience. But far too often, the focus is on SEO and whether it is dead or lives on in a new form, such as GEO or AEO.

However, it is not that simple. Not that I am saying SEO is simple. But the reality is that being AI-ready means much more.

I’m talking about the fact that your brand, and specifically your CX, needs to adopt an AI-first approach. 

And fast.

Just as a few years ago, the priority shifted to being mobile-first; today, the imperative is to ensure that your organisation’s digital experiences are optimised for AI.

Sam Altman recently announced that ChatGPT had reached 800 million weekly active users. And ChatGPT isn’t the only LLM in town. And let's not forget Google (as if we could), which isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Instead, it's reshaping its experience with AI Overviews and AI Mode. 

All of which means the search landscape is radically different, and the only way brands can ensure consistency and visibility is to adapt. 

This means:

• Creating content that is engaging for human end users and also designed for AI agents and LLMs.
• Designing customer journey flows that work for the new trinity: human end users, AI agent end users, and LLMs. 
• Implementing technical adaptations and structures so that humans, LLMs and AI agents can best scan and use your site and app.

Obviously, there are so many ways AI can improve the physical CX, but for now, I’m going to focus on the digital. 

The 2 steps of AI-readiness

#1 Research

No surprise here, but before you do anything, you need to understand how people are using AI for your industry and niche. 

There will be differences, and this isn’t just about people entering prompts, and that’s it. 

No, this is getting to the heart of what users' needs, expectations, and contextual behaviours are when engaging with AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or voice assistants.

What should you consider when conducting this research?

• Your competitors and what they are doing, and how they are integrating AI into their user journeys and CX.
• Benchmarking your performance against industry best practices in your sector and niche.
• Mapping your entire ecosystem with a special focus on any platform that influences your customer’s consideration and conversion. 
• Analysing your social ecosystems and their current AI-readiness.

Here at All human part of our process is to conduct multiple 1:1s and gather qualitative evidence from which to start developing user behavioural traits and patterns.

#2  Site audit

Before you can improve on the AI experience, though, you first need to know what your current brand offering is and where the gaps- and there’ll be gaps for most brands- are.

Start, therefore, by completing a thorough review and analysis of your brand’s digital journey experience- whether that’s a site or an app across: 

• the buying journey 
• conversion points 
• content formats 
• data structure 
• schema markup 
• site architecture. 

Some areas to pay particular attention to include:

• Your foundational style guide - we look at colour schemes, accessibility and metadata-linked components.
• Your content structure - this covers everything from descriptors to your naming practices to make sure an AI agent can read and understand what you are saying. 
• Your page and content patterns - by this I mean the journey flow and making sure the UX layer (the visual journey for human users) is separate from the AX layer (the semantic task map for agents). 

For the technical part of your audit, you need to focus on:

• Semantics and structure - agents operate differently, so your site needs to be able to respond accordingly. The one similarity, though, is that while humans are fairly impatient and expect fast load times, AI is even more impatient, and both tools and users penalise slow, bloated pages.
• Verify machine-readable data - if the agent or AI can’t read it, it can’t cite it. And while this is a little simplistic, you get the gist. It is critical that AI platforms can read, ingest and understand your site/digital product. 
• Analytics and tracking - the more you know, the more you know. Set it up so that you know precisely how many of your users are people and how many are AI referrals.

This is just an overview of what to expect, and I strongly recommend seeking guidance when undertaking these audits. When we conduct them, we prepare a comprehensive report with recommendations and an outline of next steps, so our clients understand exactly what’s required and how to transition to an AI-first approach.

Why is it so important that you make these changes? 

The impact of AI isn't just that brands need to design for agents and LLMs; it’s also having a knock-on effect on how people search. 

Traditionally, people asked for recommendations or top lists. But with LLMs, the questions are much longer and more conversational. 

I found this recent McKinsey survey quite interesting in that it revealed the following about how consumers are using AI-powered search:

• 73% - to learn broadly about a category or about brands, products, or services
• 53% - to plan for a trip or special occasion
• 60% -to explain features or technical specifications
• 57% - to generate personalised recommendations
• 61%- to compare specific products and/or services
• 60% - to summarise reviews for specific products or features.

The new customer journey often starts with a recommendation question, then moves to making it more specific and personalised. 

Other research, this time from Capgemini, shows that:

• 68% of consumers have purchased based on GenAI recommendations 
• 58% have replaced search engines with GenAI tools for product recommendations 
• 68% want Gen AI tools to aggregate search results from online search engines, social media platforms, and retailers’ websites to provide a one-stop shop for highlighted purchase options
• 56% use voice search on an occasional basis.

In other words, the customer journey will never be the same again. AI commerce and native shopping are disrupting traditional consumer behaviours, and the brands that adapt will have a future. As John Mitchell, our CEO, likes to say, it’s no longer survival of the fittest but the fastest.