A website for people, search engines and AI

A video production website has to show its videos to every visitor – including those whose browser will not start them on its own. Browsers in some public offices and iPhones in Low Power Mode block autoplay and show only a still image instead. Our production website is ready for that.

Since 27 July, a play button appears wherever the browser refuses to start playback automatically. Everyone else sees nothing new. It is a small detail, but it shows neatly that speed, clarity and findability are not three separate disciplines.

What we fine-tuned on the production website in July

• Video posters were converted to WebP, and those below the first screen load only as the visitor approaches them. By our measurement, the posters downloaded when the page opens shrank from 1,350 kB to roughly 300 kB.

• The video grid at the top of the mobile page holds its layout while loading: measured layout shift (CLS) is 0.001. Web Vitals give 0.1 or less as a good value.

• On touch devices no more than four videos play at once; the rest hold their first frame. Only videos that are actually visible are decoded.

• A play button is offered wherever the browser does not allow autoplay.

None of these changes added a word of copy. All of them decide whether a person reaches the content at all.

What Google says about AI search

For its AI features, such as AI Overviews and AI Mode, Google states plainly that the same SEO fundamentals apply. You do not need a special file, extra markup or special structured data to appear in AI answers. A page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Search with a snippet. Among the practices Google still lists as worthwhile:

• crawling allowed in robots.txt and by any CDN or hosting infrastructure,

• content that can be found through internal links,

• a good page experience,

• important content available as text,

• high-quality images and videos that support the text,

• structured data that matches the visible text.

None of this is a trick. It describes a website that is good to use.

A service page that answers questions

The way people search is changing, but a good website still has to explain who you are, what you offer and what backs it up. When we review a page, we first list the questions people bring to it: what the service includes, who it suits and how working together goes. The answers belong in the page’s ordinary text, together with examples and links to related work. Headings then let readers find the part they need without reading everything.

Empty superlatives cannot replace a well-written answer to a customer’s question.

That is why we prefer accessible text, genuine references, correct language versions and structured data that matches what is visible on the page.

We measure performance together with usability

A page that renders quickly does not help if people cannot understand the offer or reach the contact details with a keyboard. So we combine automated measurement with checks on a phone, walking through the important journeys and testing accessibility against WCAG 2.2.

Start with one important page. Add the answers customers look for there, show related work and test the route to contact, on a phone and without a mouse. Then watch whether visitors find it easier to finish the task they came for.