Many things have changed in Flow Communications’ 21 years of developing websites, says our chief technology officer, Richard Frank, but what lies ahead “will be more profound than ever”.
For example, how businesses integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into the way their websites work could substantially increase conversion rates, he told the latest Flow Connect webinar.
Flow Connect is an annual series of free half-hour webinars we present, which delve into the latest marketing and communications trends. The 2026 Flow Connect series kicked off with this webinar, titled “AI tools you could be using to increase conversions”, on 3 September.
Until now, if a prospective customer wants to find out more about a product – say, a holiday to a game reserve – your website will require them to click several times or select parameters from pull-down menus, and they have no guarantee of ideal search results.
Now imagine, says Richard, that you “cut down those dreaded clicks to only one” – or even use a voice prompt, and then receive personalised, spot-on results. This is already happening on AI platforms such as ChatGPT or Claude, he points out, but there’s a problem with that: “We’re not in control of the answer.”
Instead, what if this exact AI functionality is situated on your website, and you have absolute control over the information the customer is given and how it is presented? And you can make the booking or sale right away?
Three factors make this option possible for the first time, says Richard:
- AI can hold 300 times more information than before: where AI large language models could hold enough tokens (units of information) for a scene from Hamlet in 2020, they can now hold Shakespeare’s entire works. Thus, an AI can easily accommodate all of your business’s information in a single conversation
- AI is exponentially smarter in answering the world’s toughest questions: it now scores 59% compared to 2.7% in January 2025 on Humanity’s Last Exam (a language model benchmark so-called because when it scores 100% answering our toughest conundrums, there will be no more questions to ask)
- AI costs 600 times less to use than before: AI now costs only five US cents per million tokens, compared to $30 three years ago. Simpler, faster and so much cheaper, they are now within everyone’s reach
Because AI can search for meaning instead of merely keywords, a website can use a vector-embedding model to plot queries on a graph, compare them and return a set of nuanced results that actually answer a user’s query – anytime.
“You can have conversations with your customers while you’re asleep,” quips Richard.
What’s more, it is a multistep conversation (as opposed to merely a search), grounded in your facts (instead of others’) in your system prompt; it knows only what you have given it, and what you want to share.
And a website’s in-built AI can do so much more than respond to a written query, Richard adds. For example, it could build a quotation or proposal; find products by photograph; be a voice concierge, where customers speak to the AI instead of using text; and it could do lead qualification, assessing a lead and booking a call when you’re not at your desk.
One of the most frustrating things about using AI is that information can be inaccurate or out of date. But by giving both your on-site and external AI agents (such as Claude or ChatGPT) “a door, not a window” – tools they can use to access accurate information on your website – you can ensure that customers always get the right stuff.
So, what do you need to embed AI on your website?
Flow has built this functionality for a variety of clients already, says Richard, and you can choose any of three levels for your website.
- Where we need nothing from you: we start with what is already public on your site, crawling it for information. In return you get a search widget for your site that understands meaning and synchronises every day, picking up new pages and updated information without you having to lift a finger
- The same, augmented with data only you know: you share non-public data such as PDFs, product information, price lists, specification documents and internal notes, for richer embeddings. For that you get search results that show better understanding, without you sharing that data with the public (unless you decide to)
- Tools the AI agents can call: you give us access to live systems, such as for bookings or calling out a plumber. In return, you get tools your on-site AI assistant and external AIs can call. Essentially, the conversation can happen anywhere, but the sale is on your website
The truth is, says Richard, AI is no longer the sometimes unreliable, hallucinating beast it was not so long ago – “we’ve all seen the horror stories,” he notes. Instead, it’s coming into its own as an essential business tool.
“This technology is mature enough to deploy in a way to improve your conversion rate,” says Richard, getting your customers to the information they need more quickly, allowing them to have meaningful multistep conversations with bots, and providing them with more nuanced results.
“It’s a time of rapid change for web development,” he concludes. “We’re now building websites for both humans and AI agents.”
Don’t miss the next Flow Connect webinar!
The next webinar in the 2026 Flow Connect series, on the topic of “Generative engine optimisation: how does AI rank your business? (And how to do better)”, takes place at 10am on 10 September.
It explores how AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Gemini decide how your brand measures against your competitors, and what you can do to improve your visibility in this fast-evolving space. Register here to participate.
Also check out the full 2026 Flow Connect roster, to see what else is coming up in the series.