Are websites really dying?

Are websites really dying? I really hope not. I keep reading that they are. So if they aren't, then what's next? Here's my take.

We've always gone straight to search

We skip websites. We have for years, we've just not really thought about it.

Google, Amazon, Booking.com, Airbnb, and millions of other sites and platforms all have one thing in common. Tonnes and tonnes of content in all sorts of forms. Some video, some written, some product. And it's all there for you to find yourself, through menus, categories, filters, pages and pages of it.

But the real common thing is the search bar. We just go straight to it. Not because the rest of the site is bad, but because it's quicker than finding stuff manually. Search has always been the shortcut.

For years I've looked at, watched and recorded how people behave on websites, and that pattern has always been there. People want to get to the thing they came for.

I once asked a room full of students what their favourite websites were. Their answers were Google and Instagram. The reason? "They could find stuff easily." That was about eight years ago, and it's stuck with me ever since.

Now the shortcut is the whole experience

With AI and agentic search, that behaviour has gone on a bit of a wild ride. It's come full circle really. There's an almost frenzied expectation now to get to the info immediately. Type a prompt or a search term, get the answer, skip the manual approach altogether.

And that's a big shift for anyone designing digital products. For years the job was understanding how people move through a site. Now more and more people don't want to move through it at all.

So is the website dying?

I don't think so. But I do think it's changing what a website is for, and challenging the core things we thought users needed from one, even more so with AI in the mix.

If people are skipping the pages, what are the pages actually for? And are we now designing for a generation with completely different needs and expectations, people who'd rather ask than look? Those students eight years ago were already telling us the answer.

What AI can't do for you

AI is getting really good at finding things for people. What it's not so good at is making you trust what you've found. Or making you feel anything about the brand behind it.

Browsing gives you things a prompt doesn't. The thing you didn't know you wanted until you saw it. The bit of context that makes you believe what you're reading. The feeling you get from a brand before you've even read a word.

Those aren't nice extras. They're a big part of why people choose one thing over another, and that's still on us as designers.

Designing for both

I don't think the answer is stripping everything back to one search field and calling it a day. I think the job now is designing for both.

Quick answers for the people who know exactly what they want. And a website that's actually worth exploring for the people who don't. Search and browsing working together, rather than one replacing the other.

It means thinking harder about what the website is really there to do. Less about pages for the sake of pages, more about the moments where someone needs to check, compare, feel reassured and decide.

Where that leaves us

Maybe the website as we've known it is changing for good. That's fine. Things should change. But the need for good design isn't going anywhere, if anything it matters more.

Search gets people to the answer, but design is still why they believe it... right?