AI is Rewriting the Role of the Website in Modern Marketing
Fatih Mehtap, Vice President of Marketing at Cloudways by Digital Ocean, explains how AI, LLMs, and no-code tools are transforming websites from static destinations into contextual, revenue-driving digital experiences.
Topics
For years, websites were built as destinations—carefully designed pages meant to inform, persuade, and then funnel users elsewhere. But that model is breaking fast.
As AI, large language models, and generative experiences reshape how people discover and decide, the website is no longer just a touchpoint. It’s becoming an active participant in the customer journey.
Today’s most effective sites don’t just display information; they guide, personalise, and adapt in real time.
“Typically, the website homepage acted as a shop window, a customer’s first look before bouncing off to wherever they needed to go next. But with AI-powered LLMs and GEO, that discovery layer is being stripped away. People are getting personalised answers before they even land on a site,” said Fatih Mehtap, Vice President of Marketing at Cloudways by Digital Ocean.
Fatih shares how AI-first workflows, no-code tools, and contextual personalisation are reshaping websites into living marketing agents—capable of guiding users, accelerating decisions, and driving measurable business outcomes.
Excerpts from the interview:
Do you believe marketers are leveraging AI’s potential to turn their websites into revenue-generating engines, or are we still stuck in a ‘digital brochure’ mindset?
Currently, I think it’s a mix of both. There are teams of marketers who have fully embraced AI-powered workflows to meaningfully improve the way they engage customers and drive outcomes.
But many are still stuck in the ‘digital brochure’ mindset, unsure of how to best leverage AI capabilities due to a lack of adoption know-how—despite the hype surrounding it.
Marketers who want to adapt to an AI-first mindset should start by auditing the tools and processes currently built into their web management workflows to identify where there are opportunities to start to embed AI’s potential.
There are surface-level tools like GPTs that can be used to support simple tasks like site content creation or researching campaign or product ideas.
Marketers with a more advanced approach to web tooling can embed AI within the website experience to guide customers, help reduce friction, and speed up decision-making, thereby enhancing the overall user experience.
There’s an opportunity to look beyond the hype and adopt AI in a way that is authentic to your business and apply automation in ways that actually streamlines and drives business outcomes.
Marketers can now launch campaigns or microsites without waiting for developer bandwidth. What’s something your team has been able to execute quickly that would’ve been unthinkable a few years ago?
What’s really changed for us is the ability to prototype ideas at speed using tools with AI capabilities built in. This doesn’t mean we’re launching fully live experiences without any oversight, but using AI to shortcut the early stages of development.
We recently explored an interactive pricing experience, helping users identify the right plan based on their expected traffic or site type, for example.
A few years ago, we’d have needed weeks of developer time just to test the idea – today we can work up a prototype in a day, hand it over to our engineers and move things forward faster.
It’s the same with campaign creative or social media banner designs. Rather than spending hours on design tools, we leverage AI to mock up concepts that act as a clear starting point we can later build-upon to do the finishing touches.
It’s made us more focused, agile and less dependent on bandwidth from other teams.
AI promises to simplify complexity, but often brings new layers of decision-making. What frameworks or principles do you rely on when choosing how much AI to embed in your digital experience?
At Cloudways, we don’t adopt AI for the sake of it. We start by asking ourselves: Does this solve a real customer problem? Does it make the experience faster or clearer? Is it genuinely helping users get to value sooner?
We use AI where it improves decision-making, removes steps, or gives users more relevant guidance – not where it creates extra layers. That could mean simplifying onboarding, tailoring offers or promotions based on product usage, or recommending the right setup based on what a user is trying to achieve.
For us, it’s not about how much AI we embed; it’s where it earns its place. The goal is always the same: less friction, better outcomes. Speed is great, but only if it gets people to where they need to be, with context awareness and with more confidence in solving their query.
If you were to reimagine your company’s homepage not as a static landing page but as a “living” marketing agent, what would it be capable of doing in an ideal AI-powered world?
In an ideal AI-powered world, the homepage wouldn’t be a static destination. Instead, it would function more like a personalised GPT interface, actively adapting to user intent in real time.
Rather than treating every visitor the same, it would adapt based on where someone came from, what they were trying to achieve, and how much context they already have.
At Cloudways, we’ve started exploring how to build this. If someone arrives on a website from a Reddit thread or a pricing comparison article, for example, could the site recognise user intent and open with something relevant, like a recommendation or setup walkthrough tailored to their needs?
The idea is to meet users where they are – not just contextual to their persona, but also based on the journey that brought them to that site, which is where AI becomes really valuable.
Helping users make faster, more confident decisions by helping shortcut how to get from point A to B without having to dig or take multiple actions is what makes a good digital user experience.
The future of the homepage isn’t just personalised, it’s contextualised, guided and purpose-built for action.
With AI lowering the technical barrier, how has ownership of the website changed within your organisation, and what’s the impact on agility & experimentation?
With AI and no-code tools like Lovable and Bolt, ownership has become far more democratised to the point where we’re now all builders. At Cloudways, our marketing and content teams are able to play a much more hands-on role.
This means creating assets, shaping user journeys, testing messaging and creating prototypes, having a huge impact on agility. We’re now able to run small experiments, gather feedback fast and iterate without a bottleneck.
Despite this, developers still play such a core role. They’re now the enablers of more ambitious UX, where cutting-edge tooling intersects with complex functionality builds. AI has allowed us to move from a request/wait/ build cycle to something that’s much more accelerated, iterative and collaborative.
Looking ahead, how do you see AI-integrated websites shifting the channel mix or budget allocation? Will they absorb roles played by landing pages, email, or even paid ads?
In my opinion, we’re starting to see this shift. Typically, the website homepage acted as a shop window, a customer’s first look before bouncing off to wherever they needed to go next.
But with AI-powered LLMs and GEO, that discovery layer is being stripped away. People are getting personalised answers before they even land on a site.
This naturally changes the role of traditional web traffic, and by extension, how we as marketers think about things like SEO, landing pages and even email marketing. Some spending that historically went to Google Pay-Per-Click or newsletter campaigns could shift toward LLM-native ad placements.
The bigger change, though, may be behavioural. Users won’t wait for a brand to email them or push them an offer, they’ll just ask the model directly, get the answer and convert in that moment.
ALSO READ: Buyer Ubiquity: Three Strategy-bending Retail Shifts
