Why brands need to optimize their mobile apps and websites for AI

As AI assistants like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot increasingly mediate the customer experience, brands will need to rebuild their mobile apps and websites to support their use, experts told CX Dive.

Tobias Dengel, president of Telus Digital Solutions, said, “In a year or two, if not three years, the concept of an app where you tap and swipe and type things will completely disappear.” “You just want to use your voice.”

This technology is rapidly reshaping the customer journey, forcing brands to rethink their digital strategies. According to Semrush research, AI assistants are the fastest growing distribution channel, with AI search visitors expected to surpass traditional search by 2028. According to Ahrefs research, nearly two-thirds of websites received AI traffic as of February.

This trend is accelerating as technology companies add AI assistants to almost everything, including mobile apps, web browsers, and operating systems, and brands like Expedia, Spotify, and Zillow start building apps within ChatGPT.

As a result, brands need to make their mobile apps and websites discoverable and usable by AI systems. This is a process called agent engine optimization, response engine optimization, or production engine optimization. It’s similar to search engine optimization and marketing, but requires additional measures and more attention to detail.

This change is similar to other technological developments that companies have had to adapt to.

“Companies had to think about the walled garden of AOL, then search engines, then Google’s dominance,” Dengel said. “We are currently in an early fragmentation stage and brands need to experiment with different platforms.”

AI workarounds

Brands are building mobile apps and websites for the internet based on Google’s search algorithms rather than AI, and many are focused on digital assets they own and control. But as consumer behavior changes, so too must it change.

“The biggest mistake I see is people wearing blinders,” Jason Maynard, CTO of North America and Asia/Pacific at Zendesk, told CX Dive. “Increasingly, you’re going to have to think about the ecosystem around your digital experiences, and increasingly that’s going to happen on platforms that you don’t control.”

Today’s mobile apps and websites are primarily found through traditional search and are designed for human use. But as more people rely on AI assistants to find information and take actions on their behalf, brands will need to make their digital assets more machine-readable. For example, a consumer can ask ChatGPT to book a flight.

AI agents currently use resource-intensive methods to navigate websites built for humans, such as taking screenshots and determining X and Y coordinates. It can be time-consuming, incomplete, error-prone, and result in a poor customer experience.

Additionally, just as your website would be invisible if it didn’t appear on the first page of traditional Google search results, brands could suffer if they can’t make their website more discoverable to AI.

“If you are not in the top 3 on Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT, you may see a significant decline [in traffic]. So the stakes are going to be very high,” Dengel said.

Make your brand discoverable

However, AI optimization is more complex than SEO. This is because the output of this technology is less predictable and keyword-independent than traditional search.

For many brands, the initial goal is to figure out how to use AI-mediated search to drive customers to their own “proprietary channels” such as mobile apps or websites, said Unnati Narang, assistant professor of business administration at the University of Illinois at Gies College of Business.

In addition to making it easier for AI systems to discover your brand, agent optimization improves brand consistency across platforms.

“It will reinforce the value that brands already create, regardless of where they serve,” Narang says.

However, the degree to which brands want to integrate third-party AI assistants into their digital customer experiences will depend on their needs and capabilities.

“Smart brands will fight on both sides,” Dengel said. “They’ll say, ‘We need to be very involved in where searches are happening, but if possible, we’d like consumers to come directly to me.'”

Companies need to start investing in “digital hygiene” to make their websites easier for AI agents to crawl, Maynard said. This may include:

• Structure your website to help AI agents understand your website’s hierarchy and content, including headings, paragraphs, images, links, and forms.
• Verify that the HTML tags are correct.
• Provide high-quality metadata such as clear labels and descriptive alt text.
• Vectorize your images to ensure they display correctly across platforms.

Brands must also create plain text files that control how AI models and agents interact with web content. These AI.txt files are similar to Robots.txt files that businesses use to tell search engines which pages or sections they can access.

Additionally, Semantic HTML helps brands provide AI systems with detailed information about the content on their websites. Websites with open application programming interfaces (APIs) take things a step further because the APIs are fully machine-readable and don’t get in the way of man-machine interfaces like traditional websites.

“You can take data and information and let the AI ​​draw the conclusions you want within your website,” Dengel says.

Brands don’t have to sit idly by while AI assistants change consumer behavior. There are things you can do to maximize your chances of success in the post-search world.

“But at the end of the day, consumer preferences are going to drive this situation,” Maynard said. “We’re probably going to be in a state of disarray for a long time because we don’t have the infrastructure. We just use all these human interfaces.”