The world is changing so quickly, it’s easy to fear you're falling behind and missing out. And with the rise of AI, you may even wonder, “Do I need a website anymore?” The answer is yes, a website that lets you control your own brand is more important than ever before! 

A beautiful, human optimized website is still an incredibly valuable asset for every small business. Even before AI, you probably weren’t leveraging even half of your website’s potential. But now AI threatens to either make your business irrelevant if you don’t update your strategy, or you have an incredible opportunity to multiply your own effort.

Evergreen Value of a Website

Just like old fashioned paper business cards that still have utility in the right context, a website has very important and irreplaceable functionality, with truly insignificant costs. At the most basic business-card-like level, even a simple one page digital billboard will function as a central identity for your business, open 24/7, reinforcing your branding and primary value propositions. With clear calls to action, it becomes a simple tool to collect and funnel all your leads visiting from every marketing channel and referral. 

But an intelligent business will leverage their website for so much more. As discussed in detail in my 2023 article “Is a Website Important in the Modern World of AI and Apps?” your website should not be costing you money, it should be a money making machine that helps your business:

• Control your Branding

• Live Communication

• Establish Credibility and Authority

• 24/7 Marketing Hub

• Reduce Administrative Costs

• Self-Service Features to Empower Happy Customers

• Tools, Information and Resources for New Customers

• Optimized Landing Pages for Audiences Specific Marketing Campaigns

Turning AI into Your Own Personal Team

But now, especially in the age of AI, your website has the ability to be so much more. AI answers are starting to replace traditional search engine workflow, instead of manually scanning multiple search results for a fraction of an answer, AI is summarizing all of human knowledge on every topic. Right or wrong, people trust the results. 

So what does AI know about your company? And how will it represent you to the world?

Your website is the authoritative source for all information about your business and your brand. So you must make sure that your website is a rich, organized, and compelling train course to help AI become a powerful sales agent and influencer on your behalf.

Your website has to help AI know how your company will respond to every question someone might have about your business. When someone asks a question about your industry, you want it to give your business’ perspective to shape the conversation. Your website needs to train AI to summarize your primary value proposition in a clear, concise, and compelling way. Your website should give clear answers about how you compare with competitors. 

Everything necessary to train a Sales agent and Customer Service agent, needs to be available on your website. So you don’t even need to pay to develop and maintain your own proprietary AI bot. If you invest in making sure your website has all the information needed by current and future customers, every major AI platform in the world will be paying to make their AI work for you.

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Schedule a call if you need help organizing your content strategy. Also come back to read my upcoming article Why Human Optimization Still Matters in the Age of SEO and AI to understand how implementing human centric content strategy and design is still a priority.