The homepage is dead. The future belongs to the question

The internet is undergoing its most fundamental transformation since the birth of the web browser. While millions of dollars continue to be poured into homepage redesigns, a seismic shift in behavior is rendering these efforts obsolete. The numbers don’t lie: we’ve entered the age of the question, not the click.

The great click recession

In 2024, nearly 60% of Google searches ended without a single click, compared to just 26% in 2022. This isn’t a gradual decline. It’s a behavioral revolution. Users are no longer browsing; they’re asking. And when AI provides the answer directly on the search results page, there’s simply no need to visit your carefully crafted homepage.

The behavioral evidence is everywhere. ChatGPT reached 700 million weekly users in August, processing 2.5 billion prompts daily. Additionally, the presence of Google AI Overviews has led to a noticeable drop in CTR for many websites. Today, Google’s AI Overviews appear in about 18% of search results, and this number grows faster each day.

The conversation revolution: why traditional websites are failing

The pivot from clicking around to simply asking is about more than convenience. Cognitive load drops dramatically in a chat environment. That is part of why ChatGPT’s adoption speed toppled even Instagram’s early numbers. Users don’t want to decode menu structures or hunt through static pages on your website. They ask questions they want answers to, such as “How do you compare to your competitors on data security?” and expect a direct answer.

Traditional web design rests on the idea that people enjoy exploring complex information architecture. This assumption is outdated. Users who arrive through AI entry points are bouncing more easily, spending less time navigating, and using fewer classic menu features. Today’s visitor shows up with intent. Curiosity for its own sake has taken a back seat.

This new behavior is here to stay. Fifty-seven percent of US adults say they interact with AI at least several times a week. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman predicts that we are nearing the end of human-human customer service. The writing is on the wall, and it’s spelled out in billions of daily interactions.

Our own journey reflects this shift. We’ve been building conversational AI agents for nearly a decade for almost 800 customers across the sports, entertainment, tourism, and education industries. We know first-hand that chat is becoming the central way users engage with brands.

Case in point: our intent data across all clients shows that over 42% of all customer questions are about tickets, and 62% of those conversations are specifically related to buying tickets. The fact that sports and entertainment websites optimize call-to-actions for ticket purchases and promote ticketing, yet still receive many ticket-related questions in chat, suggests that they are not adequately addressing customer questions. This also indicates that customers prefer direct answers over searching for information.

The business case for conversation-first design

The implications for businesses are enormous. Every customer question becomes actionable intelligence. Companies are finally seeing what people demand, rather than just what marketing wants to highlight. That’s why the chatbot technology market now has a valuation of over $15 billion and is on track to triple by 2029.

Organizations everywhere are investing in conversational infrastructure, knowing where the world is heading. It’s time to take the next step. Instead of investing in homepages as digital billboards, they should be building chatsites capable of smartly responding to whatever users need to know, at whatever depth of detail. Organizational success with AI chatbots is now driving our client discussions about using conversational AI as the anchor to their online presence.

Instead of a menu tucked in the margins, organizations should restructure their smart chats from support bubbles to the center stage of the website. Navigation no longer means scanning for drop-downs or page hierarchies.

This conversational experience now revolves around a prominent chat interface that spans most of the screen, always present and energetically guiding users to ask, discover, and engage. Visual elements still play a role, but they support, rather than compete with, conversation.

A chatsite design deliberately pulls chat from the periphery and transforms it into the organizing principle of the entire digital experience. The result is a site where visitors don’t hunt for answers. They’re invited to start a dialogue right from the first moment.

The leading digital experiences of 2026 will be conversation systems with seamless visual supports, not websites in the traditional sense. The organizations best positioned for the future are designing around the question as the key interface, and measuring success by utility and conversations.

The homepage of the last 30 years is ending. In the future, it’s the conversation that leads.

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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com