Designing for two audiences: people and machines

For two decades, user experience meant designing for people: how a page looks, how it feels to scroll and how easy it is to act. That still matters. But your website now has another kind of visitor.

Search crawlers and AI agents read your pages too. They do not notice your animations or your colour palette. They read structure, headings, labels and text.

What machines look for

• Clear headings in a logical order
• Real text instead of words baked into images
• Descriptive links and labelled buttons
• Consistent information about services, prices and location

The good news

Almost everything that helps machines also helps people. Clear structure makes a page easier to scan. Labelled buttons help screen reader users. Plain language helps everyone.

The best websites are beautiful on the surface and well organised underneath. You no longer have to choose.