The digital customer journey, traditionally viewed as a linear progression from awareness to purchase, has evolved into a dynamic, ‘always-on’ ecosystem. Every digital touchpoint—from a social media scroll to a voice-activated search—serves as a data signal that informs a brand’s understanding of a consumer.
On their journey, customers often jump between discovery and deep research in seconds, expecting a seamless transition across devices and platforms. This shift has placed a premium on journey orchestration, where the goal is no longer just to push a user to the next stage, but to provide immediate, contextual value at whichever point they choose to engage
The start of the digital customer journey
For over two decades, the infrastructure of discovery was defined by optimising content for search engine crawlers, focusing on keywords and backlinks to secure a position in a list of links. However, as search evolves toward AI-generated answers and curated feeds, the traditional role of the website is being redefined.
Sean Winter, Value Engineer, Contentful, comments, “For years, discovery was shaped by optimising content for search engines, aiming to rank in an index and drive clicks. But with large language models, it increasingly happens within answers rather than lists of links. The goal shifts from being easy to find to being easy for machines to understand and use, which means content must be structured, clear, consistent, and reusable across contexts”.
This transition requires a strategic pivot from traditional Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO). While SEO focused on ranking within an index to drive clicks, the objective now is to influence the ‘latent space’ of AI models.
“Instead of focusing on keywords, content must fit into a broader semantic understanding that models can interpret and recombine. This requires a strategic shift. It’s no longer just about bringing people to your site, but ensuring your content shows up wherever discovery happens, including inside AI-generated responses”, says Winter.
Building authority in the era of LLMs
While the mechanics of SEO have shifted from chasing web crawlers to feeding Large Language Models (LLMs), the core philosophy of marketing remains anchored in human authority. Sara Faatz, Senior Director, Strategic Awareness, Digital Experience, Progress Software, comments, “It is no longer enough to churn out machine-generated content at scale; to rank at a deeper level today, organisations must leverage their unique competitive advantage: critical thinking and original creative perspective. Algorithms now prioritise a distinct point of view over generic data, making human-led insights the primary driver of digital authority”.
The focus has expanded from on-site optimisation to a holistic, off-site brand presence. To establish yourself as an authority that LLMs recognise, you must maintain a consistent message, tone, and brand experience across every platform—including those you don’t own. This requires a golden rule approach to the modern era – you must have a hyper-granular understanding of your Ideal customer. By speaking their language and solving their specific problems everywhere you appear, you create the persistent signals necessary to define your brand’s reputation in an AI-driven search environment”.
The website as an authoritative basecamp
Despite a documented decline in general web traffic—often cited between 20% and 40% due to zero-click searches—the importance of the website and the supporting Content Management System (CMS) has not diminished. Winter advises, “The role of a website, and the CMS behind it, has evolved significantly in today’s customer journey. While websites were once the centre of the digital experience, customers now engage across many touchpoints, making the website just one important part of a broader ecosystem where they go to explore, build trust, and make decisions”.
“As a result, the CMS is no longer just a tool for managing pages; it must now power flexible, reusable content that can be delivered across any channel. So while the website remains important, the CMS has become the foundation that connects and powers the entire digital experience”.
According to Faatz, websites are evolving from a simple destination into an organisation’s basecamp. While zero-click search is a reality, its primary effect is to filter out noise and drive more highly qualified traffic to your site—provided you are visible within LLM outputs. In this new era, your website serves as the single source of truth and the authoritative system of record. It is no longer just a marketing asset; it is a mission-critical hub that must be equally accessible and engaging for both human users and AI agents”.
“While discovery may happen off-platform in interfaces like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini, the homepage remains a critical site for validation”, says Faatz. “Users who navigate to a site today often arrive with more context and higher intent, seeking to verify information or build trust with a brand before finalising a decision. In this environment, the CMS functions less as a page manager and more as a foundational hub that powers flexible, reusable content delivered across an entire ecosystem of touchpoints, both human and agentic”.
Winter concurs, “Even as discovery shifts off-platform, the homepage hasn’t lost its importance—it’s simply taken on a different role. Users now arrive with context, making the homepage less of a starting point and more of a place to validate, explore, and build trust in a brand. At the same time, the CMS has not become just a headless database; it plays a critical role in structuring, connecting, and delivering content across channels, including AI-driven experiences.”
Navigating the phygital and multi-channel brand
The modern brand experience has moved far beyond logos and color palettes; it is now a complex, interconnected web where the physical and digital realms collide. Faatz says, “Whether a customer engages with your brand in person or via a digital interface, the experience must be seamless and intentional. This off-site brand presence includes every real-life interaction, making your brand identity far more layered than ever before. Organisations must shift their mindset to view brand not as a static visual asset, but as the sum of every touchpoint across the physical-digital divide”.
In a multi-channel world, your brand is no longer a destination; it is a persistent presence that must maintain integrity whether it’s being parsed by an AI agent or experienced by a human in a brick-and-mortar store.
Mastering the controllable and the uncontrollable
As the boundaries between human-to-human interactions and agentic digital experiences blur, intentionality becomes your most critical tool. Faatz highlights, “You are now catering to a dual audience – the humans who experience your brand in the physical world and the AI agents that interpret your digital footprint. While you can directly control your owned platforms, much of your brand perception is shaped in spaces you do not own. Success in this landscape requires a hyper-awareness of how your organisation is perceived, ensuring that the core value and humanity of your brand remain consistent even when filtered through third-party platforms or AI-driven summaries”.
Defining the modern DXP – agentic RAG and measurable impact
As the industry moves beyond the initial “AI pilot phase,” the defining characteristic of a high-impact Digital Experience Platform (DXP) is its ability to treat content as a strategic asset.
“It embraces a composable approach”, says Winter, “allowing teams to integrate the tools they need and evolve over time, while an API-first architecture ensures content and experiences can be delivered anywhere, including AI-driven interfaces. This combination creates the flexibility to adapt and scale as new channels and technologies emerge and leads to real outcomes, including faster time to market, consistent experiences across channels and the ability to scale and adapt quickly.
The business impact of this shift is visible in the transformation of site search. Traditional search has historically underperformed, but by embedding agentic RAG tools, organisations can offer conversational experiences that mimic the utility of leading AI tools. Faatz advises, “The impact of shifting from traditional search to an agentic experience is staggering. When visitors interact with a RAG-powered search tool, we have seen average session durations exceed 27 minutes.
“In an economy where attention is the primary currency, capturing an audience for nearly half an hour is a monumental business win. This level of engagement proves that when you provide immediate, contextual value, users don’t just find what they need—they stay to explore”.
“Internal data from industry leaders indicates that when visitors engage with these advanced search tools, average session duration can increase significantly, sometimes exceeding 27 minutes. This level of engagement turns the DXP into an intelligence orchestrator, providing deep insights into customer intent through the analysis of natural language prompts”.
The transition from brands building a linear search journey towards AI-driven orchestration requires a shift in both technical architecture and strategic philosophy. Success, however, will not be measured by the volume of machine generated content, but by the depth of human authority and the structural integrity of a brand’s content an data”.
Websites will no longer merely be storefronts but must evolve into basecamps providing verification and a ‘single source of truth’, anchoring the brand in the perception of customers.
