Will websites even exist in the future?

I've been around long enough to watch this movie a few times.

When I was at uni in Lismore, the internet was a curiosity and the newspaper was king. If you wanted customers, you bought an ad in print. Then every business needed a website. Then came Web 2.0, when the web turned two-way: instead of one-way information, people could finally talk back with comments and reviews. Then you had to be on Facebook, the RSL of social media. And now the question I get asked most is this: if everyone just asks ChatGPT, do I even need a website?

Let me explain it the way I'd explain it at the pub.

Meet the concierge

Think of AI as the concierge at a good hotel. You walk up and ask, "Where's a good place for dinner?" The concierge doesn't hand you the phone book. They give you three names, and a reason for each.

That's exactly what AI does now. Ask it for the best business coach, plumber or walking holiday in your area, and you get a shortlist of three to five names. If you're not on it, you're not considered, and you'll never know the conversation happened.

Your website used to be your shopfront on the main street, hoping people would wander past. But people aren't wandering anymore. They're asking the concierge.

So the real question isn't "will websites exist?" It's "does the concierge know about you, and what are they saying?"

Your website's new job

Your website stops being the shop and becomes the source. It's where the concierge does their homework.

And if your homework is messy, the concierge gets confused. Three different versions of how long you've been in business. The wrong phone number on one page. Your best results locked inside a picture that no machine can read. A confused concierge doesn't take a punt on you. They send people somewhere else.

Next stop: agentic, and no website at all

Here's where I think this goes. People won't even leave their AI.

With something called MCP, an assistant like Claude can plug straight into a business's data and tools. Someone asks their assistant to find a walking holiday that suits their knees and their budget, and it could check availability, compare prices and book it, without anyone opening a website.

That's what agentic means. AI that doesn't just answer the question, it acts on it: it searches, compares, decides and books on someone's behalf.

Go one step further and people will have the power to build their own personal algorithms: their own rules for who makes their shortlist. Not Google's rules. Theirs.

The concierge doesn't read your brochure anymore. They ring your kitchen directly.

So if your kitchen's in a mess, with wrong prices, old opening hours and facts that don't match, you won't get a second chance. There's no pretty homepage to hide behind.

The power shifts

For years, developers were kings. If you wanted anything online, you queued up and waited for them.

Now they're the plumbers: still essential, keeping the data flowing through the pipes. But the tools come pre-built. The power has moved to the marketers who know what to do with them, and AI takes it to scale.

That's good news for small business. You don't need a big tech budget anymore. You need someone who knows which problem to fix first.

Not another acronym! The BS decoder

I didn't know what an EDM was, but I knew what an enewsletter was. So here's the new jargon, in plain English.

AEO: Answer engine optimisation. Making sure AI tools can find, trust and repeat the right facts about you. SEO's new cousin.
GEO: Generative engine optimisation. Same family, different hat. Don't let anyone charge you twice for both.
Zero-click: When someone gets their answer without visiting any website. The concierge answered, and nobody walked to your shop.
Schema: Labels on your website that tell machines what's what. Like writing "flour" and "sugar" on the jars in your pantry, so the concierge doesn't have to taste everything.
llms.txt: A cheat sheet you leave out for AI tools: who you are, what you do, and where the good stuff is.
Agentic: AI that acts, not just answers. It goes off and does the job for you: searches, compares, fills in the form, makes the booking.
MCP: Model Context Protocol. A universal plug that lets an AI assistant connect straight to a business's data and tools. Think of the travel adapter you take overseas: one plug, every socket.

My unpopular opinion

I was thrilled when printed brochures died. They were expensive and mostly a waste of money. Their death let smaller businesses extend their reach, by moving that money into social media and Google.

Now it's the digital brochures' turn. Some websites will disappear, and honestly, they deserve to. The digital brochures. Built once to look pretty, never updated, saying nothing anyone actually asked. If you built it just to look pretty and be fun, it's already not working.

An architect draws a plan before anyone builds a house. You follow a recipe when you cook. So why would you hand your developer a request for "pretty" instead of a structure for your information? Pretty is the paint. Structure is the house.

Whatever survives, website or data feed, will have one job: being the single, honest source of truth about your business. Clear facts, written as text, answering the questions your customers really ask.

And don't blame the AI. Same ingredients, two cooks: one plates a masterpiece. It was never the oven. What comes out depends on what you feed it.

What to do on Monday

Ask the concierge. Ask ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity the question your customers ask: "Who's the best [what you do] in [your town]?" Are you on the list?
Check your story matches. Your website, Google Business Profile and LinkedIn should all tell the same facts.
Write your answers down. Turn your five most-asked customer questions into plain-English FAQs.
Get your results out of pictures. If a number matters, write it as text.

That's the what. The how, for your business, is where I come in.

It's all just the flow of information

Everything evolves, right? CDs. Film. When I started out, I didn't even imagine there'd be such a thing as websites. Now I may see them disappear.

No one can predict the future, but we know what it is: the flow of information. The printing press, newspapers, radio, television. And now the most efficient flow we've ever seen.

With this much access to information, personalisation becomes the ultimate luxury, and it's available to everyone. Everyone can have it exactly the way they want, so they'll want it exactly the way they want.

But are we losing serendipity, when everything is based on a profile? I don't know. It's something you have to think about for your business.

Keep the human in the automatic thinking.

The bottom line

Will websites exist in the future? Maybe not as we know them. The shopfront became a reference library, and the library is becoming a data feed that people's own AI plugs straight into.

My dad grew bananas. A banana doesn't need a flash shop. It needs to be on the shelf where people are actually buying. Your business is no different. Be where the answer is.

Next on Nerd: agentic AI, and what happens to your business when your customer's AI does the shopping.

Every idea here is mine, sorted with Claude's help. Nothing scraped, nothing auto-generated.