Meet the agent behind agentic AI

Before an agent can take action, it needs to understand what your organisation does, who it serves and which information is relevant to the task. This is not unique to agentic AI, but when an agent is working towards a goal, gaps, contradictions or disconnected journeys can affect the decisions it makes along the way.

Clear information architecture, consistent terminology and well-connected content help both people and AI understand how everything fits together. How your website is built can make this information easier for machines to interpret. Semantic HTML, structured data and consistent page templates provide useful context, helping AI recognise whether something is an event, an organisation, a ticket price, a service or a membership option.

Practical steps:

• Organise content around real user needs and tasks.
• Use consistent names for services, events and membership options.
• Link related information, policies and next steps clearly.
• Keep important facts consistent across your website and third-party platforms.
• Follow accessibility best practice, using clear headings, descriptive links, properly labelled controls and semantic HTML.
• Apply structured data where it accurately describes important content.
   

Understanding your organisation is only part of the journey. An agent also needs to decide whether it can trust the information it finds before recommending, comparing or acting on it. That trust is unlikely to come from marketing claims alone. Clear policies, independent reviews, recognised accreditations, case studies, expert content and authoritative external references all help demonstrate credibility.

People naturally look for signs that information is trustworthy, and AI systems use many of the same signals. Often, it's the small details that make the difference: named authors, publication and review dates, source links and consistent metadata all help show where information came from and whether it remains current. Microsoft research suggests that large language models can show systematic preferences for information attributed to particular sources. While there is no simple formula for becoming a preferred source, it reinforces the importance of making credibility clear, consistent and easy to verify.

Practical steps:

• Replace broad claims with specific facts and supporting evidence.
• Publish clear accessibility, pricing, eligibility and cancellation information.
• Keep awards, accreditations and organisational details up to date.
• Use independent reviews and testimonials where they genuinely add evidence.
• Make authorship, expertise and sources clear on important content.
• Include accurate publication and review dates, supported by consistent metadata.
   

This is where the shift becomes distinctly agentic. An AI agent may understand your offer, but it still needs a reliable route through the next step, whether that means checking availability, choosing a membership, making a donation or completing a booking.

Unlike a traditional search, completing a task often means moving between several systems. An agent may need to check live availability, confirm eligibility, retrieve account information and complete a transaction before it can reach the user's goal.

Clear labels, accessible forms and logical journeys all matter, but the website is only part of the picture. The information and functionality an agent needs may sit across a CRM, ticketing platform, membership system or payment provider. APIs and other structured connections help those systems share information reliably, so pricing, availability, eligibility and account details remain accurate as the journey progresses.

Early research comparing two versions of the same ecommerce website found that clearer information and more explicit actions increased successful agent task completion from 49.3% to 89.3%. While this was one controlled setting, it suggests that well-structured journeys and dependable access to information can materially improve agent performance.

Practical steps:

• Give buttons, links and form fields clear, descriptive labels.
• Make prices, availability, eligibility and restrictions easy to identify.
• Use clear validation, confirmation and error messages.
• Test complete journeys across your website and connected platforms.
• Check that important information remains consistent between systems.
• Use APIs or structured data services where they provide reliable access to live information or actions.
• Retain human approval for sensitive or consequential actions.
   

Agentic AI may change how people research options and complete tasks online, but the strongest response is not to build a separate experience for machines or chase every emerging optimisation tactic. The best way to prepare a digital platform for agentic AI is to strengthen the same foundations that already make it work well for people: clear information, credible evidence, accessible journeys and connected systems. The better those foundations are, the better the experience becomes for people and the AI agents increasingly acting on their behalf.

The organisations best prepared for an agentic future will not necessarily be those adding the most AI features. They will be those whose websites make sense as a whole and make the next step easy to complete.

Planning your next steps?

If you are reviewing your digital strategy and considering how AI may change the way people discover and interact with your organisation, speak to the Ten4 team.

References
Gartner 2025, Microsoft 2026, Arxiv 2026