Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy

Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy


< Back to Episodes

Rethinking Your Website in the Age of AI (Episode 473)

November 06, 2025

With customers increasingly turning towards AI to get the answers they need for their business, you might be rethinking the value your website provides to those customers — and to your business. It’s absolutely worthwhile to ask the question. The answer, though, might surprise you.

In this episode of the podcast, Tim Peter looks at whether you still need a website in the age of AI, what its value is to your customers and your business, and, most importantly, how to make sure your website works for both in the longer term.

Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you.

Rethinking Your Website in the Age of AI (Episode 473) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links Buy the Book — Digital Reset: Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech

Tim Peter has written a new book called Digital Reset: Driving Marketing Beyond Big Tech. You can learn more about it here on the site. Or buy your copy on Amazon.com today.

Past Appearances

Rutgers Business School MSDM Speaker: Series: a Conversation with Tim Peter, Author of "Digital Reset"

Free Downloads

We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here:

Best of Thinks Out Loud

You can find our “Best of Thinks Out Loud” playlist on Spotify right here:

Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud

Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com

Past Insights from Tim Peter Thinks Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud

Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac.

Running time: 25m 06s

You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes, the Google Play Store, via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page.

Transcript: Rethinking Your Website in the Age of AI

Earlier this week, I spent time with a bunch of super smart folks, including chief digital officers and marketing professionals, having a spirited and healthy debate about the future of websites in the age of AI. Do we still want to invest in our websites the way we have? Hell, if customers are going to spend the bulk of their time interacting with AI answer engines and agents, do we even want to invest in our websites at all?

The big question I came away with is this. Is it time to rethink your website?

The answer is a resounding yes, but not in the way that you think.

In this episode of the podcast, I’m going to look at the current state and future of your website and talk about how you need to rethink your website in the age of AI.

I’m Tim Peter. This is episode 473 of The Big Show. Let’s dive in.

Okay, so this probably isn’t news to you, but we are experiencing a generational shift in customer behavior, much like we did with the web and mobile and social media. Moving too slowly when we think about how AI will impact our customers’ experiences with our brands online, obviously can put you in a terrible position, and could create all kinds of problems for you down the road. Moving too fast, on the other hand, can waste resources and budget. You could simply be there before your customers are ready.

Here’s the reality of AI: Customer adoption of artificial intelligence is progressing rapidly, sometimes even without the customers realizing it. If you think about Google Search or Google Ads, customers are experiencing AI all the time. Obviously, AI Overviews offers a similar reality. Those AI responses just appear and give folks the answer they’re looking for. The point is that the number of customers who are using AI is only going to increase whether they know it or not.

Now, when I think about that, obviously that creates the question of do we need a website? Do we need our website to do what it’s historically done if customers are already getting the answer?

The first point is that I don’t think this is an "either/or" situation. I think this is a "both/and" situation. You can’t choose between an AI strategy OR a website strategy. You have to have an "AI and website" strategy. That means you’re going to have to fund both. You’re going to have to pay for both. The real question is, or the key to it really, is how you allocate that funding.

Now, before I get into why your website will need this continued funding and the role that it plays in this integrated "AI + web" strategy, I want to talk a bit about the reasons against doing too much with your website. I’m not necessarily arguing for these. I am saying that we need to think about them.

So, what are the cons of funding a website in the age of AI?

The first that we must think about is, as you’ve heard me say for years, that your focus should be on "the painting, not the frame." That is, your focus should be on your content ("the painting") more so than the container that content sits in ("the frame"). And if customers can get to your content, whether it’s on your website or it’s through an AI agent or an AI answer engine, then who cares where it sits? Does it matter? That’s an important question and I think it does matter, but for reasons that I want to kind of hold off for a second.

The second problem is that most websites are fairly generic and don’t do as much as we might like them to to differentiate our brand. The reality is websites kind of have to be generic if they’re going to offer a quality user experience. Customers spend most of their time on websites that aren’t yours. So if they come to your website and it doesn’t work like all the other websites in the world, they’re likely going to leave because they can’t figure out how to use it or they can’t find the content and the information that matters to them. Customers are already used to what a website looks like and works like.

So by definition, having a good website means that you have one that kind of is commoditized, kind of looks and acts like all the other websites in the world. So that’s another argument against doing a lot of funding for your website, right?

The last, of course, is that gatekeepers need new roads, as I think of it. You know, we know that Google is the primary gatekeeper of content on the web. We know that Facebook is the primary gatekeeper of social information, whether it’s on the original Facebook platform, whether it’s on Instagram, things like that. They kind of own that space. And we know places like TikTok and YouTube are the people who own the video space.

But new gatekeepers like AI platforms, whether that’s Google Gemini, whether that’s ChatGPT, whether that’s Perplexity or Claude, or something we haven’t seen yet, they need to control this pipeline. They need to control the road so that they can install their own gates. We know this is coming.

This is nothing new. I’ve been talking about this for a little bit and I’ll link to some of these in the show notes. But there’s a reason why ChatGPT has introduced its own browser, Atlas. There’s a reason why Perplexity has introduced its own web browser, Comet. They want to be the place customers start.

One of the big questions I have is over time, AI going to be more like the internet, the platform on which everything sits, or is it going to be more like an app or more like a search engine where people go on the web? And I don’t know the answer to this one yet, but I know they’re acting a little bit more like they’re the search engine. They’re the place you start and they’re the gatekeeper who gets between your customer and your business.

We’re going to have to see how this plays out, but if you build your business on an AI platform and they turn out to be more like a search engine than the internet, if they’re not just a place where lots of businesses can show up, then they become the next gatekeeper and that’s a real struggle for you.

And that leads to one of the reasons why we need to think about your website as this enduring, non-negotiable place where your content will always live. Yes, it’s no longer the primary discovery channel, but it is a foundational asset and a point of control for your brand.

Ignoring the direct web channel is a fatally flawed approach long term. I’m going to say that one more time because that’s really important. Ignoring the direct web channel is a fatally flawed approach over the long term. Your website is, has to, remain the singular authoritative source of content, not just for people, but also for AI agents and AI answer engines.

AI agents need reliable content to cite if they’re going to maintain their own credibility. AI answer engines need to point to authoritative sources. If they’re going to maintain their own credibility, we are already seeing ChatGPT talk about a model similar to Google’s E-E-A-T—that is experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness—for determining what content to cite. That should be you. That should be your website. And some customers are going to come to you, probably some of the time. for a long time to come, right? We’ve got a long way to go before we see mass adoption of these tools. Then we need to make sure that when they come to our sites, we’re actually engaging them effectively in the longer term.

The second thing we need to remember is you don’t ever want to build your brand exclusively on rented land. If we’re simply trading an AI answer engine or an AI agent interface that we don’t control as a replacement for a social media app or Google, we’re simply giving away our brand. We’re letting the gatekeeper determine who wins in the long run.

Your website is the only way and the only place where you get to own the relationship and potentially put content and experiences outside the reach of a gatekeeper’s gate. The other thing that this is gonna matter here, we’re gonna talk about this in a second, is there a great way for you to get first party, real, interesting and useful data about your customers. We’re going to come back to that in a moment.

The third thing and I’m going to admit this one’s a little more philosophical than business. So you know feel free to go okay "I hear you but…”, but the open web is one of the greatest inventions that we have had for humanity and for businesses in, certainly in my lifetime. It is the place where customers can always go and go directly to the source. It is the place where you can put a message out and reach people without a gatekeeper necessarily getting between you and your intended audience. And if you look at what’s happening right now,

Lots of folks are trying to find ways to put those gates between you and the people you want to talk to. If we hand over that control to any AI without holding onto some component of it for ourselves, we’re basically conceding the point. The open web dies forever. And it’d be really, really, really hard—incredibly hard—to bring it back. So I wouldn’t necessarily concede that point too soon.

The last point about this is you’ve heard me say many times that the brand is the prompt. We want to invest in the equity of our brands. Our brands are the ultimate firewall against commoditization. They’re the key to surviving the shift to AI answer engines. It’s not just that the customer asks for a business like yours. They have to ask for you by name. It doesn’t matter if customers come to your website or not if they don’t ask for you by name because you may not show up in the consideration set. If they’re asking for you by name, you’ve got a chance to win regardless of where they do this.

You may have heard me say this before, but brand isn’t everything any longer. It’s the only thing. It has to be our core focus.

To that end, we need to start thinking about how we pay attention to customers’ interactions with our brand more than just their interaction with our website or their interaction with AI. It’s are they talking about us? And so there’s a couple of conversion rates I would think about.

One of these is something we refer to as prompt brand equity. It’s not just regular brand equity, but it’s brand equity within the context of an AI prompt. Are their prompts triggering brand mentions? Are customers actually asking for you by name? We need to start tracking how often your brand is cited by AI answers, both for branded discussions and also for non-branded high intent queries.

Do you have any contextual influence here? The frequency and context with which your brand is cited, sourced or mentioned within an AI generated answer is incredibly impactful for your business. Prompt brand equity helps you measure how often the AI deems your brand a relevant answer for a given customer need, a relevant point of interest for a customer need, and it helps obviously build equity in your brand with those customers going forward.

The cool thing is there’s a bunch of tools you can use right now to measure this. Tools like:

And there’s more coming.

Another great conversion point we need to think about is our data acquisition rate among first party data. Think about when people come to your website, when people engage with your brand, are they converting into emails or signups on your site? Are we gaining ownership of that data? Are they opting in to receive your email or SMS or direct mail marketing messages? Are they willing to provide you the personal information that allows you to continue that dialogue? We should be tracking that first party data acquisition rate today, because it really matters.

And then the last, and this one goes back to more traditional marketing, but is unaided brand recall. Are customers bypassing what the artificial intelligence tools are telling them and simply going straight to the brand name? Do they know you and do they ask for you by name? Or do they know enough to think to ask for you by name?

Now obviously, we can’t do that if we don’t give customers a reason to come to our sites and if we don’t give AI tools a reason to reference us in the first place. And so we have to think about the types of content that help us stand apart in this new universe.

We’ve got to invest in proprietary data, unique research or branded tools that the AI can’t easily pull into a generic answer. You kind of want to force the AI tool to link to you or credit you directly. Think about creating content as unique, proprietary intellectual property. This could be research. This could be named frameworks. This could be a unique data set that only you possess, and only you can share, that helps protect against more generic artificial intelligence generated answers. Think in terms of naming these items if you can. You want to build this distinct brand platform and a distinct brand portfolio of assets that potential customers associate with you and ask for by name.

I realize these all sound like good ideas and everything, but how do you action this? And I’m going to be honest, this is something that is a work in progress, but I think there is a fairly easy budget breakdown we want to talk about. And I think of it as a 70-30-10 approach.

Focus first on foundational investment. 30 % of your budget really needs to help make your content accessible and discoverable by the new AI platforms. Whether this is through GEO or AEO or AIO, whatever you want to call it, it has to be a big part of what you’re doing right now. So some percentage of your web budget, probably about 30%, needs to be focused on how do we do this better right now. You’ve got to invest in structured data.

We’re thinking in terms of structured data and making our content readable by machines in a way that they can access. It’s something that’s incredibly important to ensuring you show up in the first place and you need to work with your web development partners or use tools that provide these capabilities, make it easier for you to get your name out there in the first place.

One of the things that we know about GEO and AEO and AIO and all of those at the moment is that we can’t even decide on the name yet. It’s still a fairly immature space. That’s why I wouldn’t go much bigger than about 30% of your time or budget on this because this could shift really heavily. Don’t go all in. Don’t, in the words of one of these really smart people I talked to this week, don’t over-index in either direction yet, certainly not yet on AI answer engines. But make sure you’re allocating a meaningful chunk of your time, 30%, to showing up in those places.

70% needs to be focused on your website’s new capabilities. When we talk about, you’ve heard me talk about the hub and the spoke model many times. The hub are the things you control and the spokes are the places where your content can show up outside your website.

Well, the hub isn’t just your website. It’s also your CRM. It’s also the place where you can build those direct connections with customers and maintain a direct connection with customers, regardless of whether they start on an AI tool or not. Your CRM is a massive component of that hub and maybe will be the long-term hub even more than your website. Maybe.

So your site’s job is to ensure that it absolutely converts people to wanting to connect with you directly. Now some ways you need to do that are first, work the way the web is starting to work.

  • Make sure you’ve got great search capabilities on your website
  • Make sure you’ve got chat capabilities on your website that allow customers to interact with you in the way they expect to interact with every website.

Just as I was talking about before, this is one where we want to lean in to the way the web is beginning to work. Because if your site doesn’t do that, you’re going to get left behind here. The role your website has to play is to efficiently convert AI-driven interest into a direct customer relationship, into your CRM. Again, this is where we’re going to pay attention to first-party data acquisition. Are we acquiring that customer information? So that’s the 70%.

The final part is the 10% that we need to focus on brand equity, on building brand equity. That’s dedicated funding for the creative and proprietary and distinctive content that’s going to build unaided brand recall over time. It’s the ultimate investment in the brand as the prompt.

We may find over time that the 30% and the 10% flip as we start to get some of the foundational elements in place, as we start to get the infrastructure in place, as we start to provide the kinds of structured content that allow customers to find us and allow AI agents and AI answer engines cite us. Maybe we don’t have to put 30% there. Maybe that becomes the 10% and content shifts to 30%.

The point is, over time we need to be building that brand equity. We need to be investing in that for the long term.

Finally, we’ve got to move with some degree of urgency here. Now this is, this one gets a little complicated. There is a long-standing strategy called being a "fast follower" where we pay attention to what our competition does, we pay attention to what the market as a whole does and then we move fast to then duplicate that.

I’m a little concerned that if this is in fact a generational shift in customer behavior, moving too slowly could create problems. So you absolutely want to pay attention to your data. You absolutely want to pay attention to your market. But you also want to make sure you’re at least testing now.

If you’re not showing up, in GEO—in AI answer engines—right now, if AI agents in agentic browsers like Atlas or Comet can’t find you and aren’t citing you today, then you already have a problem. You’re already behind the eight ball here. You want to make sure you’re doing at least some investment right now to find out how much more investment you need to make, right? But it’s time to focus on that. The time to move fast is today.

Think about how you split your budget accordingly to do what works for you. Again, start with 70-30-10. You can obviously play with those. Maybe in your world it’s 50-40-10, maybe it’s 50-35-15, but start with a model that works for you so that you’re not over-indexing in any one channel, but instead you’re investing in your brand, in your structured data, and in your content, as well as website functionality to build that connection with your customer for the long run.

If you do that, I guarantee that your business is gonna be in great shape no matter how the web evolves and no matter what the truth of the future of the web is.

Show Wrap-Up and Credits

Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. I’m willing to bet that you might know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today. Are you thinking of someone? Why not send them a link to the episode and let them know what you think. Keep the conversation going.

You can also find the show notes for this episode, which is episode 473, as well as an archive of all past episodes by going to timpeter.com/podcast. Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast. And of course, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

If you’re looking for something new to read, I’d love to suggest

Download Arrow Download Episode
Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
By Tim Peter
New York Metro
Exploring Emerging Trends in E-commerce and Digital Strategy for Marketing and Business Leaders
External linkVisit Podcast Website
RSS notificationRSS Podcast Feed
Rss Symbol Subscribe
Share Symbol Share
Add Symbol Add to MyCast