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These are mostly cosmetic level issues. But they are also costly ones.

Not only because they block agent conversions, which are set to steadily grow. But also because they deter humans.

So trigger an AI agent for every conversion task on your site and remove the friction.

AI hasn't change that ratio. It simply punishes anyone who still gets it wrong.

Your website will always be your digital home. But conversions happen at the shop.

And with AI intermediating the journey, the website is no longer the default store front.

Being the destination matters. But distribution matters more. It's irrelevant how polished the site is, if you ignore the battle for brand salience, which happens off-site.

Effective marketing strategies focus around 60% of effort on long term brand building and 40% on short term sales activation.

Your brand should spend most of its time away from home, working on its digital availability.

🟣 Networking on social
🟣 Building friendships with digital PR
🟣 Sharing insights on Discover & News aggregators
🟣 Being recommended on search surfaces

This is where brand growth happens.

So before you rush off to manufacture false consensus, think beyond immediate results to consider if you can deliver on the brand promises you’re making.

Manufacturing social proof isn’t new. But the potential backlash of that negative sentiment being included in generative AI is. And these complaints have permanence.

The real person who feels disappointed and deceived. Who will take to Reddit or other review platforms to rebuke the recommendation. A criticism that will then be picked up by LLMs.

When SEOs pollute trusted spaces to manipulate LLMs, they forget the human. The real person who reads the thread, buys the product and uses it expecting a higher level of quality because of the recommendation.

It is no coincidence agent bounce rates mirror human ones.

AI agents are exposing what users have endured for years.

Your UX sucks.

Treat every agent bounce as feedback. Fix the friction.

This isn’t about pleasing machines. It’s about finally meeting human expectations.

So I’ve started showing dev teams what their sites look like in Lynx.

It's the best way to encourage them consciously code to communicate as much relevant information as possible by leveraging semantic HTML.

A text-based browser that strips pages down to raw HTML and plain text links.

Glossy images? Gone.
Schema markup and Javascript enhancements? Ghosted.
Starting with 200 lines of header links. Groan-worthy.

It it on these bare bones they decide whether to continue to conversion.

And while this isn't a significant slice of sales yet, you need to be prepared for when AI agents become a key conversion driver.

If CloudFlare, CloudFront, Datadome, or your own security stack allows crawling, but blocks conversion, update it now.

Unless the human has specifically requested your brand, if the AI agent can’t get to you, they’ll go to a competitor. Costing you not only that conversion, but future conversions as the agent's memory builds a preference for your competition.

🚪 Accessibility: Offer an API. Else, craft deep links for tasks you want agents to complete.

🔐 Authentication: Agents often need to log in. Friction at this handoff kills conversion. Grow your logged in audience, use OAuth or enable guest checkouts.

Think beyond answers. Enable agents to act.