From clicks to code: why AX matters for your digital growth
by Johan Högborn
Key takeaways
- An AI agent is an autonomous digital assistant that carries out online tasks for people – like booking a trip, comparing products, or placing an order.
- AX (Agentic Experience) is all about making your website and data so clear and accessible that AI agents can easily understand and complete tasks on it.
- When users move from clicking around themselves to letting AI do the heavy lifting, it takes close collaboration across strategy, tech development, SEO, and content.
Digital development never stands still. Right now, we are facing the next major shift: Agentic Experience (AX). But what does that actually mean, and what is an AI agent?
Put simply, an AI agent is an autonomous digital assistant. Unlike a traditional search engine or a chatbot that merely answers questions, an agent can actually get things done for you. You give it a mission – like "book the best-value train to Gothenburg on Friday afternoon" or "find the best price for this coffee machine and order it" – and the agent heads out onto the web to handle it.
For the agent to succeed, your website needs to be easy for machines to read. That is where AX comes in. While UX (User Experience) ensures the site is easy to navigate for humans clicking and scrolling, AX makes sure that pricing, details, and features are just as simple to grasp for an AI agent.
What AX means in practice
Our colleague Johan Högborn, Head of Performance & Insights at Bombayworks, sums up the difference:
– UX is about how smoothly a person clicks around on your site. AX is instead about how easily an AI agent can read your service and complete tasks for its user. Think of it as your website needing not just an inviting front door for visitors, but also a seamless service entrance for agents.
Why we need to act on the shift today
User behavior is already evolving. There are already AI tools capable of clicking through menus, comparison sites, and forms on behalf of users – and they are getting better fast.
As Johan Högborn points out:
– User behavior is starting to shift from 'search and click yourself' to asking a digital assistant to find the best solution. If your services, products, and prices aren't structured so machines understand them, it becomes much harder for the agent to choose you.
As digital consultants, we see that this calls for broad collaboration across multiple disciplines. It is not enough to just look at the code or rewrite the copy – strategy, design, development, SEO, and content need to work hand in hand to create an experience that works seamlessly for both humans and machines.
Three pillars for an agent-friendly digital presence
Preparing your digital presence for AI agents isn't about ditching great design. It's about giving your website a sturdier structure beneath the surface.
Create semantic clarity and structured data
For an AI agent to understand and select your products, the information needs to be crystal clear. Using structured data and semantic HTML provides agents with clear-cut details on prices, stock levels, terms, and specifications.
Build accessible technical flows
A human can usually figure out how to dismiss a popup or navigate an unruly form, but an AI agent needs a straight path. Open and well-documented APIs allow the agent to fetch information or complete an order without getting tripped up by visual obstacles.
Unite the visual with the functional
AX and UX are not mutually exclusive. A well-structured, machine-readable website naturally becomes more accessible and easier to discover for traditional search engines – ultimately delivering a better experience for human visitors, too.
Curious about how well your website works for AI agents? Get in touch with us and let's take the conversation forward.
