3 ms·

Because you’re a business? Why do you have a website in the first place?

by CPLX 6mo ago

Mordisquitos 6mo ago
Businesses are generally in the business of serving human customers, not AI agents. Furthermore, if AI agents are so smart, surely they can figure it out for themselves.
- burntpineapple 6mo ago
  gotta be a bit naive to think this way, no? "if x is so smart, why can't it just do y automatically?"
  - PenguinCoder 6mo ago
    Isn't that the promise of AI??
  - Mordisquitos 6mo ago
    As a user, why would I trust an AI agent that cannot consistently use non-AI-tailored websites? If it cannot even do that, who knows what other failure modes it may hit me with.
    - ac29 6mo ago
      I agree, but do the potential customers of my business? We need to meet the customer where they are and that means making our site more accessible to search engines, mobile devices, LLMs, or whatever comes next.
  - themafia 6mo ago
    "It says x on the side of the tin. Why would you expect to find x when you open it?"
- CPLX 6mo ago
  Not really, business websites are generally in the business or serving user-agents like browsers that then convey the information to users. If I tell Claude to go search the web and find me a bunch of links to the websites of restaurants in my neighborhood because I want to try something new do you think the restaurant wants to be on that list?
  - Mordisquitos 6mo ago
    I would say that the restaurant would be wasting its time and resources by catering their website to hypothetical customers who are choosing to use inferior and overly engineered methods to find information about their physical surroundings out of technological fetishism. But that's just me.
    - CPLX 6mo ago
      Yes I think it's just you. These AI tools are taking over as the main search/discovery vector for websites. Engaging with it is just basic SEO. This isn't really that complicated. For content or media sites it's a different story. But most websites direct people to commercial transactions, and that's the group I'm referring to.

Because you’re a business? Why do you have a website in the first place?

by CPLX 6mo ago

Because you’re a business? Why do you have a website in the first place?

Businesses are generally in the business of serving human customers, not AI agents. Furthermore, if AI agents are so smart, surely they can figure it out for themselves.

burntpineapple 6mo ago
gotta be a bit naive to think this way, no? "if x is so smart, why can't it just do y automatically?"
- PenguinCoder 6mo ago
  Isn't that the promise of AI??
- Mordisquitos 6mo ago
  As a user, why would I trust an AI agent that cannot consistently use non-AI-tailored websites? If it cannot even do that, who knows what other failure modes it may hit me with.
  - ac29 6mo ago
    I agree, but do the potential customers of my business? We need to meet the customer where they are and that means making our site more accessible to search engines, mobile devices, LLMs, or whatever comes next.
- themafia 6mo ago
  "It says x on the side of the tin. Why would you expect to find x when you open it?"
CPLX 6mo ago
Not really, business websites are generally in the business or serving user-agents like browsers that then convey the information to users. If I tell Claude to go search the web and find me a bunch of links to the websites of restaurants in my neighborhood because I want to try something new do you think the restaurant wants to be on that list?
- Mordisquitos 6mo ago
  I would say that the restaurant would be wasting its time and resources by catering their website to hypothetical customers who are choosing to use inferior and overly engineered methods to find information about their physical surroundings out of technological fetishism. But that's just me.
  - CPLX 6mo ago
    Yes I think it's just you. These AI tools are taking over as the main search/discovery vector for websites. Engaging with it is just basic SEO. This isn't really that complicated. For content or media sites it's a different story. But most websites direct people to commercial transactions, and that's the group I'm referring to.