The Future Purpose of Your Website

AI agents are changing how we discover everything, so what’s the future purpose of your website?

It’s not fading away; it’s becoming more critical, but its role is evolving dramatically to serve two distinct types of users, with very different interaction patterns and needs: AI and humans.

For AI Agents: From Pages to Access and Interaction

We’ve had schema markup for nearly 14 years, and we’ve moved beyond needing inline markup for everything.

The next step? For many, it could be less reliance on in-page markup altogether.

Imagine a future where:

• Most businesses publish public API specs (maybe even with API key generators)
• AI agents access your site’s data and functionality not just by scraping pages, but via a comprehensive data endpoint – perhaps even one URL to capture structured site data for the entire business.
• You effectively provide your own API interface, allowing diverse AI agents to perform rich, interactive functions with your services on demand, not just passively capture content. This moves beyond interacting with a few top front doors like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude into a broader ecosystem of agent interaction.

For Humans: Trust, Direct Connection, and Action

As AI handles more initial discovery and information retrieval, the reasons humans come directly to your website become more focused:

• Validation: It’s the ultimate source of truth to verify what they’ve learned through AI interfaces, to fact-check or confirm present-state reality.
• Action & Interaction: Crucially, it’s where people go to do something specific: engage directly with your business, perform complex tasks, or do something new or unique.
• Personal Connection: A direct interaction often signals a desire for a more personal touchpoint with your brand or team, something an AI intermediary can’t fully replicate.

Your website transforms from a passive information repository into a dynamic interface: a rich, structured API layer for AI agents, and a high-intent action and trust layer for humans.

How are you future-proofing your website for this dual role?

My two cents:

1) Start with your data. You need a truly comprehensive representation of your business – beyond what was ever required before – and that’s no small feat to extract from busy employees.

2) Start digitizing all touchpoints. The ability to book on your calendar, transact with the business, get advanced help from a human, and much more all need to be built into your site.

Am I on the right track? What am I missing, and what do you disagree with?

Originally posted on LinkedIn. Join the discussion and share your thoughts there.