As chat and AI overviews are increasingly becoming an important — if not the most important — form of search, how does that change the user journey as an entry point to our products? That’s a question I posed to the INMA Product & Tech advisory council recently.  

For many of you, I suspect the current levels of traffic from platforms such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc. are just too small to focus on. But as this set of charts from FT Strategies show, these platforms are accelerating rapidly while others are declining at surprising paces:

One thing that keeps coming up is although the volume is smaller, the referral traffic may be more qualified. They have a basic answer and want to dig deeper. 

Assuming the above is true and continues to develop, we need to at least start thinking about what the AI-first user journey may look like when it comes to our own platforms. Here are some key questions we need to know to start thinking about adapting the user journey:

1. What is the traffic source? 

We need to start to get to know the sources and the differences between them. Is there a difference between a ChatGPT user and a Perplexity user? What are the different signals we can determine and how do we react to them? 

2. What data do we have about the individual and the context?

What is the search term or question that was asked and in turn led them to your platform?

Lastly, what information do we know about the individual user? I’ve heard people say the AI answer machines don’t know that much about you. But ChatGPT has a pretty good handle on their users, as you can see from the screenshots below.

Most of this is pretty accurate by the way. The data is likely not structured in the way we are used to it — especially when dealing with nuances such as “may be in Helsinki” (which I was, but am no longer):

3. What signals are there? Is there an opportunity with this reader to engage further? Is there a risk of churn? 

While this may be a question about user behaviour once they come to our platforms, there may be valuable supplemental data that gives us insights. For example, could there be a way to determine if it is a standard user, a paid for/pro user, or an enterprise account on the AI platform the person has come from? 

There are a lot of unknowns so this is the time to ensure we are asking the right questions. Have you started thinking about an AI-first journey? If so, I would love to talk to you. If you can spare 30 minutes, please find a suitable time, here.  

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