Building for a New Audience

When we started building AI Readiness, we thought we were creating an assessment tool to ensure our new website reached its intended audience.

Over the past few weeks we've realised something bigger was happening: the web has a new audience and we have to write for them too.

For decades websites have been designed for people.

Then they evolved for search engines.

Today they are increasingly being interpreted by AI.

Not to replace people.

Not to replace search.

But to answer questions, make recommendations and build understanding in ways that simply didn't exist a few years ago.

That changes what it means for a website to communicate clearly.

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A different kind of optimisation

We've deliberately avoided talking about "optimising for AI".

It doesn't feel like the right description.

Our own experience has shown something much simpler.

As we improved Wayli's website, we realised it wasn't about trying to impress or game AI.

Removing ambiguity consistently improved how AI models understood our website.

And they're the ones bringing our intended audience our way.

We clarified who we are.

We became clearer about what we do.

We strengthened trust.

We documented our methodology.

We made our evidence easier to discover.

Each improvement was followed by another assessment.

Some changes mattered.

Others mattered less than we expected.

But every result taught us something.

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Building in public

We made a decision early on to publish our journey rather than simply publish the finished product.

Interestingly, documenting our work also improved our own AI Readiness, follow-up assessments showed.

Every significant finding became a Lab report.

Every meaningful improvement was documented.

Every assessment helped shape the next iteration.

Looking back, we weren't just building AI Readiness.

We were documenting how one website was adapting to a new generation of the web - and now it feels kind of profound.

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Why this matters

If AI is becoming another audience for websites, then all organisations with a web presence will eventually face the same challenge.

How do you help AI understand your business accurately?

How do you reduce ambiguity?

How do you build confidence?

How do you ensure AI represents your organisation fairly?

Those are questions worth investigating.

And they're too important to answer with assumptions that may lead to hallucinations.

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The journey so far

Before asking businesses to trust AI Readiness, we used it to test and improve Wayli itself.

Over four assessments our AI Readiness score improved from 84 to 100, not because the assessment became more generous, but because we investigated its findings and acted on the evidence.

We're in the process of asking other AI to hold us to their standards - and we will publish the results, unedited!

Explore our journey:

→ Case Study 001: Improving Wayli's AI First Impression (84 → 100)