The death of the website homepage?

Remember when the homepage was the front door to your business?

You spent hours refining it, writing the perfect welcome message, choosing the right image, obsessing over layout.

But here's the thing: in the age of AI search, your homepage might not matter much anymore.

Historian and futurist Yuval Noah Harari suggests we're heading toward a future where websites become invisible. Not gone (yet), but replaced as the destination. Instead of humans browsing pages, AI agents will scrape, summarise and deliver what users want instantly. No need to visit your beautifully designed site.

Over time though, he suggests that websites themselves could disappear as AI and algorithms gets more sophisticated. This means your content won't live in tidy menus or navigation, it will live in blocks. These blocks could be pulled together by AI in real time, based on what a user needs next. Think of it like Lego pieces assembled on the fly into a unique experience for each person.

If you're leading a digital team or managing your organisation's online presence you'll need to start thinking about what this means for your work and your team.

What does this shift actually mean?

• AI becomes the browser. Tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI overviews are already answering questions without sending people to your site. If your content isn't optimised for machines, it might never be seen by people.

• The algorithm will build the journey, not your navigation. Harari points out something even more interesting: AI won't just answer questions, it will anticipate the next step. If someone searches for a tenancy agreement, the AI might also serve them the bond form and a rent calculator, automatically. No menu clicks. No site map. Just a seamless, predictive flow of information based on need, not design.

• Your content becomes modular. Forget static pages. Your information needs to be broken into reusable blocks, each one focused, clear, and self-contained. That's how AI can find and combine it into personalised journeys for every user.

• Your content needs to speak AI. Plain language. Structured headings. Short, clear answers that answers the questions people are asking. The easier your content is to read and understand, the more likely it will be picked up by AI. Think: Helpful but clever.

What should leaders do now?

• Audit your site content. Is it clear? Useful? Written for search and AI? If not, it's time to rewrite. Not for algorithms but for clarity.

• Stop designing for homepage perfection. Focus on specific content that answers real questions. Your product and services pages, they matter more now than a clever tagline.

• Design for journeys you don't control. Predictive AI means your user's path may start and end without them ever "visiting" you. Your job is to support their next move, even if it happens outside your site. If there was ever a time for the Government to identify and design online content for life events, it's now.

• Start thinking in content blocks. Break complex pages into modular, standalone pieces. Make each block useful on its own. This is what lets AI stitch together the right experience. You might need dev support for this one.

• Train your team to think beyond visual design. AI doesn't care how pretty your layout is. It cares about what you say and how well you say it.

• Build your content capability. Content is king. It will always be king. Recruit, retrain.

The future of website content is about making them understandable to humans and machines.

If we lead our digital work with intention now, we won't be scrambling later.

The bottom line?

Content matters. But how it's delivered, found, and used is shifting fast. As leaders, it's on us to prepare our teams for this AI-powered future.

How might your content strategy change if your homepage was no longer the front door?