How should brands build websites with lasting value?

To build websites with lasting value, brands should expand their focus from helping people find information to helping them complete tasks, stay involved, and build relationships. Alongside traffic, they should pay attention to logged-in users, subscribers, members, and customers; potential areas for development include account management, personalized tools, progressive learning, and co-creation. This does not mean that informational websites have already lost their value: the Content Marketing Institute material explores a scenario in which AI might absorb the informational web, and the author explicitly acknowledges considerable uncertainty about whether this will happen.

Start by asking what the website can help users accomplish

To assess a website’s long-term value, start with this question: if users have already read a summary in the search interface, what would they still need to return to the brand’s website to do? The material suggests making the website a tool, rather than merely a product catalog. This shifts the development discussion from page counts to specific uses.

• Transactions and services: Let customers check out, manage their accounts, or handle fulfillment-related matters.
• Choices and configuration: Offer product configuration, personalization, or dedicated tools, rather than simply listing specifications.
• Learning and continuity: Structure learning progressively and save progress so that users can pick up where they left off on their next visit.

These are possible directions for development, not a checklist of features that every brand must implement all at once. Planning should begin by clearly defining the tasks to be completed, then determining which pages and features are needed.

Make logging in and participating meaningfully different

The value of membership features lies not in adding a login step, but in whether recognizing the user makes the experience more useful. Examples in the material include preferences, membership status, loyalty programs, and saved progress. What they share is that subsequent experiences vary according to the user’s identity, status, and permissions.

Participation need not stop at reading or clicking. The material uses Lego Ideas as an example of co-creation that allows customers to help shape future products, while interpersonal communities enable people to interact with one another. When planning such features, ask specific questions: what outcomes will users’ contributions change? How is the brand prepared to respond? This is closer to the relationship-building emphasized in the material than simply adding another way to interact.

Create content grounded in genuine understanding, without making rankings the sole measure of success

Websites still need content, but that content should involve more than swapping in industry keywords. In a 2025 Seer Interactive article, the author describes interviewing relevant people and searching internal discussions while creating a page for bank marketers, hoping readers would feel that the brand understood their circumstances. The author also acknowledges that the page did not outperform list-style articles in search. This example supports a long-term commitment to understanding users, but does not prove that in-depth content necessarily leads to higher rankings.

Thus, in a scenario where AI-mediated search makes traffic difficult to predict, traffic can be treated as an added benefit rather than the sole strategy, with membership, subscriptions, and customer relationships also included in measurement. Brand storytelling, guided learning, and a consistent brand voice can also form part of website planning. These should work together with trust, dialogue, and the brand’s presence across channels, rather than being treated as techniques that guarantee visibility.