Insights on strategy, websites, UX, and digital growth

The moment everything changed

I was looking for a blazer recently. Not just any blazer.

Something I could wear for podcasts and speaking. A tricky combination of smart, but not too smart. Something somewhat out of the ordinary, with little details that made it stand out, but without be overtly ostentatious. And it needed to be a good fit for my build. And all of that in price range that I was happy with.

Normally, I would have browsed for weeks. A tab here, a saved item there, gradually narrowing it down.

Instead, I described exactly what I wanted into ChatGPT.

It gave me an answer.

Not ten options. Not a category page. An answer. Exactly what I wanted. Ready to buy.

So I bought it. I didn’t even check the reviews or the delivery information (it came the next day).

That’s a fundamental shift.

Decision-making is collapsing

What used to take time, comparison and a bit of patience is now collapsing into a single moment. A singularity of time where the right option is presented, trusted, and chosen.

That behaviour isn’t limited to blazers. And it isn’t limited to B2C.

It’s already happening in B2B.

Business owners and procurement teams are time poor. They don’t want more options. They want the right option. Something that fits their situation, solves their problem or pain properly, and feels like a safe decision.

As Search Engine Land recently discussed, decision journeys are compressing. What used to be a journey and process is becoming a moment. The question is no longer just “how do we get found?” but “are we the answer when the question is asked?”

That’s a different challenge. And most businesses are not set up for it.

The instinctive response is to do more.

• More content!
• More SEO!
• More campaigns!
• More tools!

More is always better! Right?

More doesn’t always create clarity

But if the underlying thinking is unclear, all you are doing is increasing the volume of noise, not signal.

AI doesn’t ignore that. It averages it.

And when it does, you end up looking like everything else. Safe. General. Interchangeable.

Present, but with no reason to be chosen.

Before visibility, you need clarity

Before you worry about visibility in an AI-shaped search journey, you need to be clear about what you want to be visible for.

That means answering questions many teams skip, don’t know to ask, or answer too loosely to be useful.

Questions like:

• Who are we actually trying to reach?
• Which of those audiences matter most commercially, not just historically?
• What problem are they trying to solve at the point they start looking?
• What would make them choose us over the alternatives they’re considering?
• What do they need to see, understand and believe before they’re comfortable making an enquiry?

If you can’t answer those clearly, no amount of optimisation will position you as the right answer.

Where website projects go wrong

The site becomes the place where unresolved thinking gets published…

Different services aimed at different audiences, all competing for attention. Messaging that tries to appeal to everyone and ends up convincing no one. Content that reflects what the business used to do, not what it needs to do next. A stream of meandering consciousness, representing different periods in the organisation’s history and thinking.

It might look right. And it might even perform, to a degree…

But it won’t consistently bring in the work you actually want and you will be leaving money, be that good quality enquiries or transactions, on the table.

Discovery: making good decisions upfront

We realised this over 10 years ago, long before the rise of AI. And so we developed a framework we call Discovery to address that.

This framework isn’t simply to gather information. We use it to make decisions…

• Defining the audiences that matter, including the ones you want to grow into, not just the ones you already have.
• Determining what drives those audiences to act. The pressures, the risks, the triggers that move them from thinking to doing.
• Examining competitors to understand where you can credibly stand apart, not where you can blend in.
• Mapping how those people find and evaluate options, so your website and your marketing meet them at the right point, with the right message.
• Ensuring every stakeholder in the business is aligned.

And then we structure everything around that.

Structure follows decisions

The site architecture. The content. The user journeys. The marketing activity that feeds into it.

All aligned to a clear commercial outcome.