Over recent months I’ve been speaking to various members of the team about how Wholegrain builds Humane Web experiences for our clients. Our MD Chris discussed how the agency is pushing the boundaries for ethical and sustainable web design. Bailey shone light on how we enable sustainable digital transformation. Tod showed how we put users first through our Discovery process. Chânelle talked about the joyful challenge of designing Humane websites.

This next conversation is with one of our senior developers. Tommy is our Technical Delivery Lead overseeing our coding standards, tech stack and much more.

This ended up being a more open ended conversation than some of the others in the series. At times it felt like a meditation on web development and coding, a calm and insightful conversation all at once.

Balance and board games

Our call started with me jealously coveting some Tintin wall art in the background of his office. It becomes clear that the simple artistic style of Herge’s comics offer an insight into who Tommy is. The analog nature of the books reflects his habit of getting away from the screen and technology as much as possible outside of work. Within the agency Tommy is renowned as a lover of board games. This sense of fun and competition translates well into inclusive and occasionally daft games to play on staff nights out. 

Tommy’s deep foundations with WordPress started 12 years ago in a tiny office in Worcester. At the time he was working with it as a user rather than a developer. Over time he started looking for coding solutions to solve challenges. The shift to WordPress developer began in earnest. In the intervening years a mixture of training, WordPress community participation, hands on experience and conference appearances have honed Tommy’s technical and problem solving skills to become a vital part of our developer team.

Today his experience and technical expertise make him the perfect fit for his role as Technical Delivery Lead. Internally he oversees the core codebase of our proprietary theme, owns the team tools and services and creates the process documentation that helps our team work smoothly. 

On the client work side he works closely with our Head of Experience, Tod on finding the right technical solutions for large, complex projects. His experience means he can be called upon for tricky tech support questions from clients and the dev team. 

Craftsmanship in coding

When Tommy talks about his work, the theme of craftsmanship comes up over and over again. He has a passion for making our sites as efficient, effective and robust as possible. While others in the team focus more on design and features, Tommy is busy ensuring our code base is crafted with care, attention and longevity in mind. 

Does this feel restrictive I wonder? 

A little perhaps, but Tommy views any constraints as a good thing, a structure to work within. He sees issues arising from adopting the latest CSS features. Wholegrain is in the business of building sites that have few barriers to entry. This includes technical barriers, where older devices or browsers can’t support the latest features reliably.Using a tool like Can I use to check how widely supported a new HTML or CSS feature is allows us to strike the right balance. Broadly speaking these features should be almost universally supported, but there is always room to manoeuvre given likely audiences and site intentions.

This brings us to another of the key themes I take from the conversation, balance. His “analogue” pastimes balance his technical, digital work. At work he pushes the agency to find balance in our output. This search has users at its main focus and means balancing usability, accessibility, sustainability and creativity. 

Does this impact how creative Wholegrain can be?

Not especially, particularly in light of Wholegrain’s sustainable and user focussed approach. In Tommy’s view, questions about how creative to be should always take into account a user’s needs. We should always be asking “what are you trying to solve”. Meeting user requirements is rarely a question of using the latest tech.

Respect your users and they will reward you

The best Wholegrain sites showcase our creativity without sacrificing usability and respect a user’s attention.  I ask if he has a favourite project where these elements come together. Operation Smile comes readily to mind. Wholegrain worked to improve their donation journey, which in Tommy’s words, was very nerdy work. 

The combination of complex coding and integrations, lots of important and open conversations and a worthy cause represents the best of what Wholegrain does. The end results were impactful too, resulting in a 141% increase in conversions, a reduced exit rate and most importantly a 161% increase in online donations. 

Sustainable Digital Transformation

Craft, efficiency and attention to detail is something that Tommy brings to our digital sustainability consulting projects. He loves helping to bring Wholegrain’s pedigree and experience to other organisations. 

Ever since Tom pioneered sustainable web development we’ve been building an institutional understanding of the issue. What seems obvious to our team is anything but obvious to other organisations. There is a joy in sharing our knowledge and watching understanding grow and behaviours change. Not only that but it’s a way of exploring issues away from our day to day or regular client base. 

It’s a learning experience for everyone involved and each project evolves our understanding. 

I’ve been asking other members of the team what aspect of Wholegrain’s working methods other agencies should adopt. His experiences of delving into some horribly tangled code bases informs his response. Developers should respect the craft of coding when it comes to creating websites. Choose quality over the cutting edge (or vibe coding).

This belief reflects his thoughts on AI coding too. Generative code, produced without a sense of craft or background in coding, is unlikely to meet Tommy’s strict standards when it comes to efficiency, simplicity or accessibility. Coupled to this, you’ve got to know who you are building a site for. 

There can be a massive difference between a site that will make your C-suite happy and a site that meets your user’s needs. AI’s tendency to support and reinforce your prompt rather than push back could exacerbate this problem. 

As you can see Tommy is the perfect person to set the standards for our sites. If you’d like a site crafted specifically for your users, people and planet, get in touch with Bailey to discuss a project.

I’ve been really excited to talk to Wholegrain’s Growth Manager, Bailey as part of our series introducing you to key members of our team. She is a true digital sustainability disciple and brings an energy and eclectic set of influences and ideas to all she does. Her role at the agency includes vetting potential new clients, pitching for projects, managing client projects and relationships as well as working to knit together our Sustainable Digital Transformation offering. 

I start our conversation asking about her inspirations. Typically she mentions a wide range of influences. Gardening features heavily in our initial discussions but otherwise a couple of newsletters stand out to me as illustrative. Creative Destruction and Dense Discovery are beautifully curated emails that aim to find connections and sense in an increasingly “noisy” world. They are inherently curious, pragmatic and realistic but also look to find joy and optimism where it can be found. All of these adjectives are descriptions I’d apply to Bailey too. 

Collaboration and BCorp alliances FTW

Connection and collaboration are key themes for Bailey. She is a keen advocate of the BCorp Agency Alliance. Her enthusiasm about the alignment she finds in this group, as well as a push towards collaborating for the greater good is infectious. While in other circumstances you might find agencies jostling for position, here there is a view that the collective is stronger when ethically driven agencies collaborate together. 

When I talk about her role at Wholegrain (WG), I put it to her that she could be seen as a bit of a protector of WG. Ethical screening and client and project alignment is of vital importance to how WG operates. Given that part of her role is to run prospective projects through the ethical screen policy does she see herself as a gatekeeper? 

She doesn’t quite agree with the characterization. It’s about calling aligned clients in, not blocking them out. Ethical screening is part of the picture but in reality it’s about spotting mutually beneficial relationships. You have to ask “can Wholegrain’s approach benefit a prospective client”? Will there be the right amount of synergy between client and agency to make things a roaring success? 

She points out that energy and effort in the team is not infinite. We have a holistic approach that benefits both clients and the Wholegrain team and we can’t do our best work if we’re overstretched. So Bailey sees part of her work as ensuring that those efforts are focussed on the right clients and the right projects. 

Sustainable Digital Transformation

Some of the most exciting projects Bailey has won for the agency recently are for our Sustainable Digital Transformation offering. Bailey tends to bring a positive energy to calls and meetings but when I start to discuss the transformation projects in the pipeline, this energy kicks up a notch (or three). 

Digital sustainability (DS) is what brought Bailey to Wholegrain. She describes when she first learned about the topic as being like a smack in the face. Our daily lives are digital and when you learn about the amount of energy and infrastructure that enables this you can’t help but be shocked. The scale can be mind blowing.

She cites emails as a powerful illustration.

• In 2025 approximately 376 billion emails were sent and received daily. That’s one hundred thirty-seven trillion two hundred forty billion (137,240,000,000,000) annually. 
• EcoSend estimates that this equates to an annual carbon footprint of 300 million tons CO₂ from emails worldwide.

There is a finite amount of energy that we can expend as a species and remain within safe planetary boundaries. But when your contribution to the problem remains almost infinitesimally small compared to the whole, what can you do? It can be hard to find a starting point to make improvements. As with so many sustainability issues it’s a case of starting small. Like many, Bailey discovered the Website Carbon tool at the start of her journey and it inspired her to greater action. 

The open sharing of knowledge that Website Carbon represents was an inspiration to Bailey. This transparency forms the cornerstone of her approach to DS and Sustainable Digital Transformation. But transparency and knowledge are nothing without positive action. “Like much of sustainability, DS is not a checkbox exercise. It’s a journey to better governance and behaviours”. 

Moving beyond carbon emissions

In many ways Bailey’s journey mirrors Wholegrain’s. Website Carbon represents a starting point, a way of benchmarking, with energy use and CO2e estimates as a metric. But at the core of Sustainable Digital Transformation is the concept of the Humane Web which moves things beyond carbon emissions.  

“CO2 has been the metric for so long but it’s a starting point.” It doesn’t take into account things like climate justice. “Climate change is unequally damaging”. While we in the global north benefit from access to digital services, the harm this causes is often visited on the global south. Issues like E-waste processing, low paid data tagging, arduous and dehumanising content moderation, resource extraction and climate change are all issues felt more keenly in developing nations. At the same time those nations can suffer from low data zones meaning a lack of access and lack of digital benefits. 

Our transformation services aim to take a more global view. Low cost digital platforms and storage have often created messy digital estates. As Bailey puts it “expansion without architecture is chaos”. As with the newsletters Bailey loves, you need to take a holistic view and look for connections, positivity, optimisation and solutions. This leads to asking questions like:

• How do your digital platforms fit together? 
• How do you improve usability for all? 
• How do you bake sustainability and accessibility into your projects from the start? 
• How do you facilitate digital decisions being made quickly, both internally and externally? 

Paradoxes and misconceptions 

From the outside it might seem paradoxical that the creators or Website Carbon are moving away from CO2e as the key element for digital sustainability. Bailey argues that it shows the field is maturing. After years of measuring, benchmarking and considering the sources of digital emissions, she sees Wholegrain as having the experience and mindset required to move the conversation and field forwards. 

I ask if Bailey sees any misconceptions around Wholegrain and the work we do. If there are any, they’re around how the web design process should happen. Too many agencies offer ungrounded designs that over-promise on their capabilities but end up under delivering.

The misconception is that it’s possible to create a fit purpose design without carrying out an effective exploratory discovery process. The findings from the process feed into our iterative design process. All of this allows us to deliver strong designs that not only look great but also work for you and your audience in the short, medium and long term.

Alignment is key here too. When Bailey lands work for clients who are completely aligned in purpose, mission and direction, the results are outstanding.

I ask what this alignment looks like in practice and Bailey cites one of the first projects she brought on board at Wholegrain, Environment Bank. From the very start of the process, there was total alignment, trust and collaboration. With both sides trusting the process and some award winning branding to work with, the result is a site that matches their aims. It’s handsome, robust and supports the work they do. 

Bailey points out that this idea of robustness highlights another misconception around Wholegrain and our process. We won’t only build a site that looks good but also one that is long lived, secure and maintainable. We sometimes inherit sites that look good on the front end but are messy to update and manage at the back end. Cutting corners and moving too quickly at the outset of a project can add technical debt and hugely increase the lifetime cost of a website, or necessitate a full rebuild. 

Why, why, why?

I remind Bailey that she is nearly two years into her time here and ask her what she’s learnt since joining the agency. “Asking why is more important than how or when”. To Bailey’s mind many of the issues we’ve discussed come up because not enough people ask about “the why”. If you don’t know “the why”, you can’t accurately answer how something needs to happen or when it could be finished. 

I can’t leave the conversation without asking about AI, a topic I know she has strong thoughts on. “Tech should enable our lives and not be a destination where we spend our lives”. Much of the AI discourse seems to be about integrating technology into every element of our lives. It’s not clear if the benefits outweigh the costs, be they financial, environmental or societal. If AI lives up to the hype, then maybe the benefits will outweigh the costs after all. 

She appreciates Wholegrain’s considered approach to the technology, pragmatically using solutions where appropriate. Integrating Holp onto the UKGBC site is one such example. Much of Wholegrain’s work is about making things as efficient as possible, so users can find answers and spend their time elsewhere afterwards, while minimising the impact at the same time. Weighing up the pros and cons of a service like Holp allows us to do that.

Ultimately, the evolution of DS and Wholegrain means that our digital experiences are meeting human needs. Our services and working practices can offer inspiration to others. We continue to show that you can put your users first while respecting and protecting the planet and humanity as a whole.

If you’ve been considering making your site more tailored to your community and mission, Bailey is all ears!

So far in this series I’ve spoken to Tod about our Discovery process and Chânelle about Designing for a Humane Web. Both these pieces give an insight into the processes the agency follows. But in this piece we’ll look at the bigger picture and talk to our MD Chris about how he is guiding Wholegrain. It’s nearly 3 years since Chris took over the day to day running of Wholegrain from founders Tom and Vineeta. It’s been a time of internal change but the direction has remained steadfast – building websites (and by extension a web) that are better for people and planet.

This article will give a better idea of what inspires and influences Chris, his thoughts on the sustainability space and his vision for the future of Wholegrain

Inspiration

I kick off our chat by asking what influences Chris both personally and professionally. I already know he’s one of the B Community’s foremost experts on vegan hot spots so I steer clear of this topic as it might derail my research. Chris describes himself as a serial hobbyist. “If it’s creative and something you can learn, I’m pretty much going to say yes – from pottery to sewing to painting, I’m happy using my hands to make something.” Having previously seen Chris’s incredible hand made backpack this definitely rings true. 

More surprising is a keen interest in Architecture. Chris is careful to stress that he’s got no idea of the names of buildings or even architects involved. For him it’s “about the impact space, light or form can have on you as a person”. When faced with a difficult project or decision he’ll often take these thoughts to different buildings or spaces. The simple act of changing your surroundings can be a great way of unsticking an issue. “It’s so interesting how something like a building, that is fundamentally about shelter and survival, can also provide creativity and emotion.” 

I’m keen to find out a little about his professional inspirations too. He comes alive when describing the creative services offered by Nice and Serious. “To me, they were a driving force behind what I think of when it comes to creativity for good.”. He’s reverent about the lack of ego and self promotion in their work and I hear echoes of what Wholegrain does best when he talks about “quality, creative work that is for the people who need it”. 

Dispelling the myth that BCorps only celebrate other BCorps, he also mentions the work Reuben Turner is doing at Rewild. He’s taken with the “gorgeous simplicity to how he approaches creativity” and the humanity of his work. Nowhere is this humanity more apparent than on his Five Things page. The distillation of Rewild’s philosophy into five simple pillars is something I see in Chris’s approach too, as well as the treatise that “Allies always win”. 

As a leader of a celebrated agency I’m interested in other organisations that Chris looks to for leadership and operational ideas. He highlights humanity as being incredibly important to him and it’s a theme that we will revisit over and over again in our conversation. Chris looks for organisations outside of the agency and BCorp bubbles to find people that live and breathe their values on a micro and macro level.

He highlights Hearth as an example. The Wholegrain team recently visited this social enterprise community bakery in Hackney. They “operate in such a circular way that when you see it, you can’t help but be inspired. The impact that individual people can have on the fundamental needs of others and the planet is really inspiring. I want that to be something I distill into Wholegrain.”

Wholegrain and the Humane Web

Humanity has always been important within Wholegrain and how we operate on a day to day basis. Nowhere was this more obvious than in the pioneering work done on Sustainable Web Design. It’s an oft repeated line but our founder Tom, literally wrote the book on the subject. Under Chris’s leadership, Wholegrain has been evolving. Sustainability is still a key but our operations and philosophy are becoming more holistic. Enter the concept of the Humane Web. 

As Chris puts it:

“For a long time Wholegrain has been at the forefront of digital sustainability but we also know that alone is not enough. The reality is that the internet needs far more nuance than just making it sustainable from a technical point of view – it should work for every person that needs it, wherever they are and however they access it. A Humane Web is the defined vision of that thought and it perfectly sums up how Wholegrain has evolved its ways of working over the past couple of years.”

The Humane Web concept is changing Wholegrain on a technical, operational and foundational level.

“Its changed the shape of our business and led to creating roles within our team that focus on experience design and technical delivery alongside the more traditional agency roles to design and build websites. It goes past the idea of ‘user centric’ and instead builds websites that enable users to define what that even means for them individually as they engage with your site – as an example, it leads us to consider users who want exploration and fact gathering in order to convert with equal weight to those who want quick conversion. 

Self paced, accessible both in terms of design and data and high performance built in, are key to everything we do.”

Low weight, highly performant, robustly coded and accessible Wordpress sites remain at the core of everything we do as an agency. We’ll be committed to building low carbon websites as long as we operate. But this evolving approach has allowed us to look beyond websites to be able to offer something more transformative. 

“We have crafted and defined a new service offering that stitches the work we do together across accessibility, sustainability and data inequality for organisations to go past just their website and consider the impact of their entire digital estate. Sustainable Digital Transformation is the best way to evolve and future proof everything digital in your organisation. 

It’s a really exciting evolution of what Wholegrain can do to further the mission of a Humane Web.”

I suggest that this approach might be seen to be at odds with the actions of the big tech firms that shape the way we browse and live online in today’s society. Invasive data gathering and massive data centre growth pushes on regardless of the societal and environmental costs they reap. 

How does he navigate that tension?

“The tension is definitely there but so is the simple fact that a more humane website is a better performing website in all areas. I hold that front and centre whenever we hit that tension because I don’t think there is any brief or hurdle that I’ve seen that can’t be solved with it. If you want to increase performance, a sustainable site does that. If you want increased conversion rates, robust experience design will deliver that. 



We can’t change big tech but we can show organisations and individuals that there is another, greener, fairer, more effective way.”

Inevitably Generative AI sneaks into the conversation at this point. I ask what one word springs to mind when Chris thinks of AI. After a moment’s thought, he settles on “regressive”. It’s not the technology itself that feels regressive rather the models the platforms are based on. 

“Any model, in any area of life, that is based on mass data input and then making decisions based on averages – feels regressive.” This belief has played a part in Wholegrain taking a cautious approach to AI adoption. As with any digital agency, it’s a constant presence in client and technical discussions. For the time being Chris doesn’t see this approach changing. 

Never say never though. 

“As we get further clarity on the benefits and negatives, there is definitely room for a more sympathetic and considered way of using AI and Wholegrain will follow that path.”

The bigger picture

Anyone who works in, or adjacent to the sustainability and purpose driven “sectors” will recognise that the past few years have been tough. The push back against environmental protections and equality by the Trump regime has sent unwanted ripples across the world. Charities and sustainability focussed organisations have suffered. Chris and others in Wholegrain’s leadership have worked tirelessly to protect the agency and team against this backdrop. 

More positively it looks like there are green shoots of recovery starting to become visible. The successes of Zohran Mamdani in New York and Hannah Spencer for the Green Party in Gorton and Denton have provided succour. Their successful campaigns have also marked a shift in sustainability messaging. Equality and quality of life are the core messages with sustainability an important but less explicit policy point. It’s something Chris and I have discussed a lot recently. 

I ask what organisations like Wholegrain could learn from this shift in approach and messaging. 

“Whilst Wholegrain has always led in digital sustainability, there is a legacy and baggage that comes with the word ‘sustainability’. That realisation runs parallel to a second, which is that in the world as it exists in 2026, what’s important is humanity. We see that with the evolution of the Green Parties core messaging and we will start to see that with Wholegrain evolution over the year ahead as we start to position ourselves more authentically to the agency we are now.” 

As I start to wrap up the conversation I ask what aspect of Wholegrains’ ethos he’d like to see other organisations and competitors adopt. Again, humanity is a key influence. 

“Short wins don’t benefit like long term impact does. I struggle to see why that wouldn’t be something that doesn’t steer your approach when it so clearly benefits the quality of your output, the impact of digital on the environment, the experience of the user and the clients ability to meet their goals.”

Additionally there is sometimes a lack of true authenticity in the “business for good” sector. Conversations with prospective clients in the sustainability space can be frustrating. “The amount of purpose or impact driven organisations that don’t live the same values in their digital space when the benefits are so undeniable on all levels.”.

As we often say in our presentations, digital is physical. You can’t separate your online and offline actions and decisions and policies when it comes to equality and sustainability. There is an idea that story telling and impact on a website comes from autoplay videos and heavyweight javascript powered features. Performance and environmental impact be damned. 

For my final question I keep things nice and easy.

What’s the thing that Chris is most proud of in his first 3 years at Wholegrain?

After mildly berating me for the question he considers and settles on “resilience”. As I mentioned earlier the past few years (most of Chris’s time in charge in fact) haven’t been made any easier by external factors. 

“Wholegrain has a legacy that was definitely heavy to carry when I first started and as a sector, agencies have not had an easy few years, but we are still here, still innovating and still moving the needle on what a purpose led business in our space can do. I’m proud of that.”  

For me, the most important thing innovative and ethical businesses and organisations can do is continue doing what they are doing. They have to keep carrying the torch and inspiring others to do better. With Chris at the helm, the Humane Web as a guiding light and resilience as a core tenet, Wholegrain looks well set to do just that. 


*Author’s note. In early drafts of this article I used phrases like “flesh out” or “adding meat to the bones” which are wildly inappropriate for our proudly plant powered MD. I briefly thought about using “adding pulses to the salad” but it didn’t quite land. If you’ve got plant based metaphors to use in place of carnivorous ones, drop me an email…

In our last article we discovered the Wholegrain Discovery process. Tod explained how the process helps align our projects and identify Experience Principles. But when the Discovery phase is over and we’ve identified these principles, what’s next? 

This is when our UI/UX designer Chânelle gets involved and her design magic brings things to life. When I think about her a few things spring readily to mind.  

• The holder of the unofficial title for “most desirable interior design in the background of video calls” at Wholegrain
• A “Ghost Sign” enthusiast
• A fount of NeilsonNorman knowledge
• A taker of (too?) many photos while travelling

But most importantly for this article she’s Wholegrains’ design lead. Since 2020 Chânelle has been helping craft sites with users and the planet in mind.

I chatted with Chânelle about her influences, process and where she takes design inspiration from. 

If you’re lucky enough to be a Wholegrain client you’ll have seen her sorcery in action. If you’re not yet a Wholegrain client, read on to find out why you should be… 

About Chânelle

I kicked things off by asking how she would describe the sites she designs for Wholegrain’s. After a moment’s pause she settles on “clean and considered”. It’s a great summation of our diverse portfolio. Clean design with users considered above all else. Chânelle is on a mission to help create sites that endure and work for all users. 

She explains that there are layouts, patterns and conventions that just work for websites. They allow users to find information quickly. If you can use these conventions it allows you to be creative elsewhere, without sacrificing usability.

Design Inspiration

If the devil is in the detail, where does she find inspiration for those details? As you’d expect from an experienced designer, her inspiration comes from far and wide. Magazines, blogs, her travels, mid-century design and of course websites of all shapes and sizes. 

Regular visits to places like Awwwards means Chânelle is on top of the latest trends in web design. I find this interesting because like most of the team at Wholegrain, if I see a site I like on Awwwards, the first thing I do is check out its carbon score on Website Carbon. More often than not, they are cutting edge but have poor performance scores.

As it turns out Chânelle does the same! What she looks for are features that might work for our clients. From there she works with our developers to see if it’s possible to reverse engineer them with lower weight code. Cutting edge features with lower carbon scores. 

Away from the flashy stuff, places like SiteInspire, LowwwwCarbon and intriguingly, Brutalist Websites feature in her bookmarks on her browser. When she tells me this I have to pause our chat to check out the Brutalist site as Chânelle watches on. She’s smiling as I scroll because hardly any of the site designs are appropriate for any of our client’s sites!

She explains that she likes that the nature of these sites lets the content do the talking and often in a low weight way. Even if the aesthetic isn’t appropriate, the design language can be and looking at these sites provides useful touchstones for her designs.

Designing for a Humane Web in practice

As you’d expect for Wholegrain, Chanelle’s designs have accessibility, usability and sustainability built in from the very beginning. So knowing a bit more about where her inspiration comes from, I’m keen to understand how she uses her years of experience to create designs that fit with our Humane Web approach. 

“Sites should be designed with all users in mind,” she says.

That means 

• Working to AA WCAG standards as a minimum
• Colour combos are verified and changed if required. (Clients can sometimes change their brand guidelines to be more accessible because of this)  
• Fonts chosen for legibility rather than following a trend 
• Important information and hierarchy are prioritised to allow users to easily navigate the sites

Encouragingly, accessibility recommendations are the most readily accepted by clients.

And what of designing with the planet in mind? What measures does Chânelle employ to keep the weight of a site down? 

For her it’s all about pragmatism coupled with sustainable design knowledge. The lowest page weight possible for each use case or user journey is the right approach. Optimising and minimising is more important than the lowest overall weight. 

A donation journey is a good example.  Including heavier elements, such as videos, animations or images often makes for a more engaging and effective experience. Increased engagement equates to maximised donations for important causes. Sacrificing fundraising for increased lower carbon scores isn’t justifiable. Minimising the carbon score for the right features is. 

A close relationship with the dev team is important here. There’s no point in designing a feature that isn’t possible within the low weight methodology that Wholegrain is so proud of. 

And what about client relationships? A Humane Web approach means that corners can’t be cut. On the face of it, it might seem that simple, effective designs are easier to create. In reality the opposite is true. There’s nowhere to hide for these types of designs. Information has to be readily available, not obfuscated by vertical scrolling and distracting transitions. Explaining design decisions in this context relies on buy in from clients and clear communication from our side. 

In Chânelle’s experience there is a difference between what the design and development community vote for on site showcases and what users actually want. A lot of the heavier features you see on showcases like Awwwards are not actually very popular with users.

Usability takes precedence over flashy features. 

The Humane Web approach in action

2026 looks likely to see this Humane Web approach really take flight. Tantalisingly some of the design work that Chânelle is most excited about is just over the horizon. When I ask what we should be looking forward to she mentions some client sites that are currently in development and a rebranded suite of Wholegrain sites that should launch later this year. I’ve seen some of these designs and agree that they’re pushing the boundaries of what a “sustainable website” looks like.  

Watch this space for some beautifully usable and accessible sites launching in 2026.  They are going to show the industry what a better web can look like for all of us

When I wrote about curating web content in my last article the concept of Discovery kept coming up. It’s a vital part of what makes Wholegrain’s projects successful isn’t something we talk about all that often. Given its importance I sat down with our Head of Experience Design Tod Khanian to learn more about the process, how he has evolved the agency’s approach and what it means in the context of the Humane Web.

So what is it?

Neilson Norman summarises it as:

Tod puts it more simply. To him “Discovery is figuring out what the audience and organisational needs are for a website and then translating those needs into how a website looks, how it’s structured and how it works.”

Simplicity and efficacy are watch words where Tod is concerned. In the two years Tod has been at Wholegrain he’s been working to improve the solid foundations he found when he joined the agency. He’s worked with the team to formalise a process that provides balanced, human focussed, actionable outputs that our talented team can use to build successful websites.

Essentially, clients always come with ideas about how a site should work and the goals it should help achieve. The Discovery phase helps flesh out what was contained in the brief and identify anything that might be missing. It provides the data points required to confirm the project parameters. At the end of the process it provides guidance that helps the Studio transform an organisation’s requirements into a beautiful, human friendly website. It provides insights into site maps, taxonomy, structure and also Experience Principles, which we’ll return to later. 

Who gets involved?

As you might expect, Tod is the lead on all our Discovery processes. Who else is involved depends on the type, complexity and budget of the project. For simple builds, such as a brochure type site, Tod will lead a precise information gathering phase. In this case you could expect a workshop to define objectives and touch points as well as goals for how the site will support the organisation.

As projects become more complex, more input is required. It may seem counter intuitive but a simplified UX journey could mean a much more complicated back end. Where this is the case our Tech Leads will collaborate with Tod and the client to discuss APIs, integrations and cutting edge site components. The experience our Development teams bring means that the correct solutions are found but also identifies where compromise, either budgetary or technological, may be required.

On the client side, who we speak to depends once again on the budget and type of project. Discovery for smaller projects can often be undertaken with a single knowledgeable stakeholder. For larger projects, multiple workshops may take place, user interviews conducted and industry focussed research projects undertaken.  

What does our Discovery process look like?

All together now:

“it depends on the project!”

No two Discovery phases are the same, just as no two websites are the same. Even so our Discovery phases all follow similar lines no matter the budget or size of the project. They are based on confirming the organisational and therefore website objectives. These are agreed at the start of the process. From there the watchwords are collaboration and iteration. We collaborate internally and with client stakeholders to focus on the core goals of the site. We work iteratively to ensure that everyone on the project is comfortable with the progress and agree with the direction and findings.  

Larger projects mean longer information gathering phases. Our most in-depth discovery phases can have larger budgets than whole site builds. Where we are involved in multiphase development projects the discovery phase can last months. Stakeholder availability and long term planning can be key. Tod reiterated that Discovery is a vital investment for a successful project.

The more time spent defining site goals and user and project requirements at the beginning of a project nearly always results in a better end product. This is especially important when the project is part of a long relationship between client and Studio.

Most recently this has been true for our work with the International Association of Public Transport (UITP). When redesigning and rebuilding their website the discovery process allowed us to understand the needs of the variety of stakeholders who engage with the organisation. Through the Discovery process we were able to collaborate in a two pronged approach to helping users find the right information more easily. On the Wholegrain side we created an intuitive and simple to use site with a bespoke search UI and improved internal taxonomy. On the UITP side they used the findings to help update and refresh content, allowing for improved findability and relevancy across their content library.

The result? Through our efficient and human centered approach UITP were able“to break down the corporate structure and better highlight the wide variety of knowledge, events and advocacy content available for our users.”

You can read more about the work we carried out with UITP here.

What is the output?

As with any web agency we’re looking for elements that form the foundations of a website:

• Site maps 
• Taxonomy
• Page structure 
• Key user journeys 
• Core components 
• Site features

But because we’re not just any agency we look for some additional key insights from the Discovery process.  In line with our Humane Web principles we take a more human centred approach. Based on our research, findings and discussions we define a set of Experience Principles for our builds. These aren’t technical or design based. They are a set of statements that provide a framework for the project team to work within.

Some principles come from our beliefs as an ethical and sustainability focussed agency and apply to all our sites: 

• The site will be accessible and inclusive – built to AA WCAG 2.2 standards
• The site will be light weight and energy efficient in line with sustainable web design principles
• The site will be intuitive to use and easy to navigate

Others will be project or site specific. For example:

• A new site for Wholegrain should “reflect the joy and positivity our BCorp status represents”. 
• A site for Extinction Rebellion should “reflect the urgency of the climate crisis”

These Experience Principles are what allow us to get right to the heart of any project. They allow us to see things in a different way. Sites that initially look like they have the same user experience challenges as any other site in their sector are shown to be anything but. For instance, a flashy, cutting edge design that mimics a competitor in the field might not work for your audience if they are older or less tech savvy.

Whatever the project, these Experience Principles are prompts that our Studio team can refer back to to keep things on track, designers, developers and project managers alike. Equally importantly our clients can use them as anchor points when discussing our work at various project milestones. 

Wrapping up

As you can see, the Discovery phase is a hugely integral part of all Wholegrain’s projects. It allows all stakeholders in a project, both internal and external to align and drive things forwards. With Tod on board our process is simple, yet sophisticated and provides technological solutions to human problems.

If your organisation is planning a new site build or wants to improve an existing site, get in touch with Bailey to see how our agency can help.

One of the most tantalising prospects of the internet is having the sum total of human knowledge just a couple of clicks away. The challenge is narrowing down all the options to find the relevant information you need.

If you’ve grown up in parallel with the internet as I have, you’ll have seen numerous ways of meeting this challenge. From narrow but reliable options like Encarta, to early search engines offering a glimpse into the wider world, to algorithms offering personalisation to nascent AI driven services and drivers, all are attempting the same thing; fast, relevant curation of information. 

A challenge for membership platforms

For specialist membership platforms and content driven organisations this is an acute challenge. Audiences demand relevant, up to date and engaging content that cuts through the noise of the internet. Platforms need to find commercially viable ways of providing this type of content through subscriptions and premium tiers. Not only that, in a world of AI generated content and a challenging attention economy they also face challenges such as:

• Whether to have a narrow or wide content focus? 
• How to effectively curate content?  
• How to stay relevant and engaging?

At Wholegrain we collaborate with our clients to help meet this challenge head on. Let’s dig a little deeper into the issue and then explore some of the solutions.

Curation methods

Content rarely arrives on CD-ROMs nowadays and curation takes a wide array of forms. For membership platforms we see three broad curation methodologies that work effectively:

Human driven curation on a specific topic

Organisations with a specialist focus provide trusted sources of expertise across the web. There are numerous examples but in a Wholegrain article it seems relevant to choose two that are close to our hearts.

Our client, Carbon Brief is a UK-based website covering the latest developments in climate science, climate policy and energy policy. Their site provides a wealth of well written, data rich content on a range of climate topics. Their daily briefing emails provide comprehensive breakdowns of the latest climate news. 

Our own Curiously Green newsletter does the same thing. We pull together the latest news, resources and regulations relating to the humane web and digital sustainability, sending regular emails to our subscribers. 

Human driven curation that pulls together narrative threads

A favourite newsletter among the Wholegrain Team is Dense Discovery. Described as “Thoughtfully curated links from a noisy web” it doesn’t focus on any particular topic. Rather it does an incredible job of tying together disparate topics and elements in a pleasing alchemy. We often end up seeing things that aren’t usually part of our algorithms and we’re generally glad to see them. It’s a hard trick to pull off and needs an open minded reader to work effectively.

Away from the digital world, I thought of William Gibson’s Blue Ant series of novels here too. They weave popular culture, technology, fashion and global politics into coherent and connected narratives. Curation can be artful as well as commercial. 

Machine driven curation

You can split this into two broad sub categories, algorithmic and of course AI driven.

Algorithmic curation comes from machine learning based on user habits. Analysing user behaviour reveals patterns and connections allowing related and relevant recommendations to be made. Spotify springs to mind here. Its recommendation algorithm can provide a comfortable, familiar set of recommendations and playlists based on your listening habits, but informed by behaviours across the user base.

On the AI side of things I find a platform called Finchling an intriguing prospect. Describing itself as “Intelligent media monitoring” that “helps brands, comms & PR teams find press opportunities, and monitor what competitors are getting coverage for”. It pulls together relevant information for your organization and prioritizes risk and opportunity.  

Challenges and opportunities in content curation

The obvious opportunity here is that you can add value and retain an audience if you are providing information that is relevant to them. On the commercial side you can provide invaluable service within a sector. It can build brand authority and reputation as well as offering monetisation avenues. From a more holistic point of view you can share vital and important information with a wider audience, encouraging behaviour change. 

But there are challenges to doing content curation well too. If you make your focus too narrow users could lose the opportunity to make unexpected discoveries and links across topics. However, if you spread yourself too thin you risk losing relevance among your audience. 

I came back to Spotify here. As time went on I found that its algorithm became less effective. I was listening to less new music as my feed became more and more homogenous. It was frustratingly difficult to break new musical ground. I switched to Deezer and have found it does a better job but still not perfectly. Ultimately I find myself going to places like Six Music’s playlists to find new music. It’s curated by people with (I assume) similar music tastes to mine and an openness to new acts and genres. It’s doing what I found an algorithm could not.

Balancing access and gate keeping 

A particular challenge in the new media landscape is allowing access to your content while paying the bills. Paywalls can be vital for organisations but can put off digital natives who are used to free access. Adding value to your user base and providing exclusive info while keeping your casual audience engaged is a tricky balancing act. I find that 404 Media threads this needle quite well. Their articles are great and free to access for the most part. But the reporting they provide is niche enough to have a loyal, paying audience who see the value in the stories they tell.

Solving the problem with Humane Web Principles

Whatever methodology is most relevant to your organization, it won’t work effectively without a well thought out application or website to back it up. At Wholegrain we are guided by our Humane Web Principles when approaching these challenges. We build with the human in mind crafting self-paced online experiences for diverse needs. Curation is nothing without design choices that empowers audiences.

At the core of this is the Discovery Process. To make the right design choices and streamline curation workflows you have to answer certain questions. You need to know your audience and whether they want a narrow or wide focus to remain engaged. Are they only interested in a specific topic or are they open to being introduced to related areas by experts they trust?

Discovery always illuminates internal factors. It helps identify the key curators within a team and help enable them to effectively use the back end of a website. Interviews and discussions help identify the themes and content types within an organisation’s digital estate as well as how best to showcase them.

It can also help find tech solutions to help streamline workflows. Can analytics help identify what your audience resonates with? Can AI bring something to the party? Regardless of the tech side, it’s the humans in the process that provide the secret sauce. Why should someone subscribe to a membership service or newsletter if there isn’t human oversight taking time to organise and curate your information?

Wrapping up

Curation done well requires knowing your audience and an in-depth knowledge of the topics you are curating. The innate understanding of the topic comes from your experience and expertise and this, in turn, gives some insight into your audience too. However to really get to know your audience and their needs requires something more; discovery and iteration.

Taking time to confirm your understanding of your audience and their requirements is a must. The way we engage with our audience evolves over time along with their needs.

Testing, checking, and creating opportunities for growth from audience led insights. Reach out to our team if you would like to know more.

10 years of BCorp UK – 10! 

In some ways 2015 feels like forever ago but also, yesterday. To get us in the mindset of 2015 – think rose gold everything, selfie sticks being a constant hazard, the word Brexit wasn’t in our lexicon and Adele dropped “Hello” (living rent free in our minds ever since!).

While 10 years seems like a lifetime, it’s hard to remember a time when we weren’t a BCorp. The ethos behind the movement has always been at the core of what we do. Our founders’ original vision in 2007 was to create a better web for a better future. Ethical screening has been part of our business since 2009. What B Lab UK did is solidify that we are not alone in conducting our business with purpose. It pulled like-minded organisations together, creating community and fostering positive growth. Most importantly it created frameworks for others who didn’t know where to start.

Having certified in 2017, we have grown up alongside B Lab UK with many fun collaborations! The B Impact Assessment was a catalyst for our growth and gave us something to continually hold ourselves accountable too.

Let’s Take 10 to reflect on where we started and what we’re fired up about for the future!

• In 2015 we introduced a no-fly policy.
• In 2017, we were part of the 2nd cohorts of BCorp in the UK and launched the first version of the Website Carbon Calculator.
• Joined 1% for the Planet in 2018 to date, supporting organisations like International Rivers, B Lab UK, Business Declares, The Green Web Foundation, Eden Project, Surfers Against Sewage, Solar Aid, Catalyse Change, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust, COAST, and Re-Action Collective.
• We released the Sustainable Web Manifesto and co-created the Sustainable Web Design Guidelines with MightyBytes.
• In 2021, we worked with B Lab UK to build the Better Business Act website.
• We only went and won a B Corp Best For The World accolade for Governance in 2022.
• A true mark of growing up – in 2023 Tom & Vineeta graduated to Founders roles and brought in a Senior Leadership team that not only maintains Wholegrain’s values but builds on them.
• We attended the largest gathering of BCorps in Oxford September 2024, a monumental moment packing out the whole city for 2 days!
• 2024 was a big year! Employee-led benefits were introduced and we took ethical screening to the next level by becoming Clean Creatives.
• Finally in 2025, we launched the 4th version of Website Carbon Calculator! 

We’re very proud of the past, but honestly, reflecting on the last 10 years did fire us up for the future! Particularly for:

• Seeing the Better Business Act become a legal requirement in the UK with an amended Section 172 of the Companies Act. You can pledge your business today on their website (designed & developed by us!).
• Evolving people’s knowledge of digital sustainability from benchmarking to Human Web Principles. In a world where we can generate anything, how can we take a step back to create self-paced online experiences that are adaptable? We do have more on this to share with you..
• Our team! With the introduction of non-bias recruitment, strong flexible working policies and employee led benefits – we are seeing incredible talent enquire to be part of our team. They aren’t hindered by location or stuffy CVs, we are prioritising the human behind the talent so they feel supported to do their best work possible.

This is our impact but there are over 2,600+ other BCorps in the UK alone.  Each and every organisation has  grown in the last 10 years spreading a network of purpose and positivity. We are driving the business world to a more impactful future. 

Take the time to see who in your network is a BCorp and where they’re demonstrating how powerful it is to lead your organisation with people, planet and purpose at the forefront.

#10YearsOfUKBCorps

We are obviously a WordPress agency but that decision wasn’t made lightly or without considering all of the options. If you’re reading this it probably means that you’re interested in WordPress, worried about its security levels (don’t believe the press, its secure!) or we’ve linked you here.

Either way, welcome! Lets get started…

01. Trusted & Secure

It’s incredibly easy to make WordPress secure, mainly because the core is so well maintained and patched so the addition of hosting and domain encryption or SSL certification adds to the security. You may have heard the not so pleasant hype that WordPress isn’t secure but powering over 43% of the web, there is a reason WordPress is so well established and such a trusted platform. Based on its share of the internet, WordPress hacks are actually a lower proportionality. As with most CMS platforms, the security does also depend on maintenance and the actions of the developers / owners and so with Wholegrain’s Maintenance, that security is optimised for you.

02. Simplicity

It’s easy to build user friendly interface, making it easy for you and your team to on-board, update and edit your site. This level of control means your site won’t need a developer or expert to update it – saving time and budget! WordPress enables consistent, iterative and long-term growth, not a new site every few years – its that simple.

03. Scaleable growth

The WordPress framework makes it easy to create multiple websites under one umbrella, maintaining consistency of your brand whilst also enabling some great opportunities to grown your wider digital estate in a easy, logical way. Not only that, it can also handle everything from simple forms to e-commerce thanks to the use of a combination of out of the box and custom functionality. For Wholegrain, we have our own WrodPress theme that pushes this adaptability even further!

04. SEO friendly

WordPress not only comes with its own core SEO functions, but it’s also enables easy SEO best practice. At its foundation, WordPress is built using clean, structured code – which SEO loves! You can easily add custom permalinks and manage meta data to further feed your WordPress site to the search engines, which also help with your accessibility too. WordPress also enables fast loading and image compression with ease, making the site more sustainable and as we always say at Wholegrain – a sustainable site, is an SEO friendly site.

05. Open source

Meaning you own your own site, and have a community of expert knowledge to lean on and collaborate with. For us, this is a huge benefit and our team learn and grow form the community all of the time (and vice versa). There is a side effect of this too, which we don’t like to talk about, but should you ever decide to move away from Wholegrain, finding a developer to work on your site is also easy because of this open source nature.

06. Cost effective

This may be last on the list, but it has a big impact. Firstly, lets start with the lack of licensing fee for the core software and because it’s open source, its free to install – none of those nasty Drupal updates that cost a fortune every year. You will have read further up that WordPress has a large community behind it and this manifests plugins, themes and a professional network of developers meaning not everything needs to be from scratch and support is easy to find.

So WordPress is safe, cost effect, great for sustainability and SEO whilst also enabling some strong growth of your site. It’s easy to see why WordPress is Wholegrain’s platform of choice.

We recently launched version 4 of the Website Carbon Calculator, our free tool to help accelerate the shift toward a more sustainable Internet. We make this available because we can’t build or maintain every website in the world, that in itself isn’t sustainable! Tools like this help to contextualise website emissions to take steps on your own digital estates.

But the ones we do build? We make sure they’re sustainable as they grow.

We work with many people post launch, and after retesting our current client’s homepages and service pages, the average score was a ‘B’. 

A ‘B’ is a good score that indicates sustainable progress, but we’re never satisfied with ‘good enough’. We know it’s possible to reach an ‘A’, and that’s what we strive for. Websites should always be evolving toward better performance, in line with their business growth.

Where there’s growth, there can be bloat

Okay, I recognise that is not the sentence we all wanted to read – but it’s the truth! As businesses grow, there’s often an urge to add more to the website. It’s natural, but sometimes it leads to unnecessary bloat. And while adding more can feel like progress, it can hurt the site’s performance and impact the user experience.

We start builds with low-carbon, efficient code, but that’s just the beginning. The real goal is to make sure that every person interacting with the site has a meaningful, enriching experience. This is where education and collaboration come in. Together, we can make sustainable design choices that benefit both the planet and the people interacting – internally and externally.

A true balancing act! But it is possible; Humanitarian Practice Network is a shining example of displaying varied types of content without increasing its impact on the planet and giving a rich experience for a global audience.

Digital sustainability is not a one and done

We always aim for an ‘A’ score at site launch, but we need to think of websites as living things that need care and attention to stay healthy and high-performing. That’s where continuous iteration of the site is key and keeping Experience Principles front of mind.

With us by our client’s side, we design thoughtful solutions to business developments, campaigns and product launches – demonstrating to your audiences you care about all their interactions with you. We’re on a mission, and we want to bring you along with us! If an image upload is too big, don’t worry, we’ll help you fix it and share a tip or two with your team to prevent it in the future.

Long-term vision

We can’t improve what we don’t measure. Regularly benchmarking our websites helps keep sites in flow with new tools, user needs, and the ever-changing digital landscape – like AI. It’s important to us to be transparent about our own work too because digital sustainability is a journey, not a destination.

It’s time to talk about the elephant in the room – the impact of a ‘bad’ brief.

Writing a brief can seem really daunting – especially when you are not a designer or coder yourself. But trust us, it doesn’t need to be a huge document that strikes fear into your marketing team as they try to wrangle the countless wants, needs and opinions from the finance team, senior leadership, sales execs and your best friend who just doesn’t like the site.

Avoid the panic and keep it simple.

Don’t sweat the small stuff! Adding every possible goal, detail, want and desire will confuse and complicate the responses you get. Trust the agencies responding to do the creative thinking bit and instead focus in – why are you building a new site? That should give you the overall goal. Of course it needs to X and Y and Z along the way but don’t get too fixed on those because they are not your overall goal.

Identify your target audience and put them front and centre. It’s ok for one of the audience to be your company, but remember thats just one group and 99% of website are focussed on conversion of some kind and your team are already converted! It’s also worth noting here heirachy is incredibly important – you might have 10 user groups but the site can’t whistle and dance for all of them across all of their needs and neither should it. Some pre-work on who the main site audience is will really give you a great head start on the work.

Here’s where you shouldn’t got top line and the detail will really help. Specify essential features, functionalities and integrations. Provide any open source documentation on API’s too, that always helps in terms of gathering realistic numbers and not inflated ones because the agency just doesn’t know enough. This will also narrow the field of agencies really quickly for you and make sure you get a better steer on solutions because not all team can or want to work on all platforms and integrations.

Spoiler alert – agencies know you bend the truth when it comes to budgets. It’s a lot easier if both sides are open and honest so both teams are on one page straight away. This will save time and also build trust right out of the gate whilst also making sure that the agencies responding to your brief are being as realistic as possible about the ability to deliver within your budget and time.

We don’t need more carbon heavy, clunky and chunky websites on the internet. Adding “please detail how you will make our site low carbon and accessible please” into your brief will sort those who can from those who can’t and will result in you being delivered a new, sustainable, low carbon site that will look after you well into the future. You shouldn’t have to compromise on performance or impact so this one should be your default.

It’s as easy as that! Happy brief writing!

“Googling” something is now common language in the same way that “Hoovering” has been since in the mid 20th century. While Hoovering still means to use a vacuum cleaner, the meaning of Googling is starting to change.

The market dominant search engine is currently morphing into an “answer engine“. Before, you would search for something on Google and then click a link to find information. Now Google and many other companies are encouraging users to find information without ever clicking a link. New services like AI Overviews are causing a growing number of Zero Click Searches causing organic traffic to fall in recent months.

But organic traffic isn’t just falling because of changes to Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). Services like ChatGPT and Perplexity also appear to be partly responsible. They allow people to “search” for information without ever reaching the website source the information came from.

There are legitimate doubts of the accuracy of AI Overviews. There are also concerns over increased LLM hallucinations. Whether the information is accurate or not, how users find your site and how often people visit is changing. What we can do about it isn’t immediately obvious so we called on some experts to help. In this article Dave Peiris, head of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) at Propellernet helps shed some light on what’s happening in SEO at the moment and how to navigate it.

Summary

• Robust, reliable, fast and performant sites remain the goal. All search engines currently prioritise such sites.
• Well structured, human focussed and authoritative content is still what people and search engines want.
• Where your site features on a results page is just as important as it ever was.
• Adapting content and pages towards more specific search terms could pay dividends.
• A diverse marketing and “discoverability” strategy is key in 2025
• Economic realities and backlashes against AI may yet have a role to play in search.
• Independent and non-commercial players could be disruptors in the near future.

Discoverability fundamentals

Let’s start with the basics.

While SERPs have changed, the fundamentals for technical SEO haven’t, particularly in the case of Google. Sites with strong technical foundations and good performance metrics are more likely to rank highly for organic search results and in AI summaries.

The view from Propellernet:

Position and rank on results pages remains important. Given that AI summaries appear at the top of the page, organisations are increasingly targeting these sections to maintain authority. High search rankings coupled with strong technical SEO helps here in two ways. Dave explains that Google’s AI overviews are partly based on the Gemini model but also grounded in organic search results. They use a process called Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) which passes new, relevant information into the AI model before a response is generated.

Other platforms work slightly differently. Dave says that: 

There are many reasons for an organisation to try and opt out of Search Engines crawling their sites for AI summaries. Those trying to protect IP and content on ethical grounds aren’t penalised as such. Blocking Google’s AI crawlers but allowing Googlebot to facilitate page indexing, means you’ll still appear in organic search results. At present, this doesn’t appear to result in any punitive action or downgrading of search ranking across the major search engines.

Away from search, ChatGPT and other LLMs are slightly different propositions. Blocking access to them means they can’t use your information. You won’t appear in an answer and won’t therefore be cited. Whether this presents authoritative or traffic issues is not yet clear.

In essence, the game has changed but how you play it hasn’t. A site still needs to be written using clear markup and hierarchy, load quickly and contain useful pertinent information. 

Has discoverability strategy changed?

Yes and no.

As you’ll note from the advice above, many of the best practices on technical SEO remain. The difference is that it appears to be driving less traffic to sites. 

So what can we do to mitigate these changes?

One thing is to adapt to the new ways people are searching for information. Search is becoming more personalised and queries are becoming longer and more detailed. The example Dave gave me was about running shoes. He says:

This type of query might come from people using voice to speech features on devices. It might be from an AI deciding that’s the right query based on user data. Either way the specificity is the key.

For purpose driven organisations and businesses this might mean being more specific about your products and services. For Wholegrain it might mean we break down and describe the digital sustainability services we offer in a different way. Dave suggests that a “Best for” type section could help in the new model.

As an example our Website Carbon Audit might be described as “Best for large organisations looking to assess and reduce their website emissions“.

Our Digital Sustainability Workshops could be “Best for organisations asking “How can we reduce the environmental impact of our digital estate?” “.

This small change could prove useful for human users looking for solutions as well as “agentic” AI or LLMs.

“I think the days of pumping out huge amounts of content in order to appear in search results are on the decline”

There might be an interesting side effect from a digital degrowth point of view. This focus on specificity might mean a decline in pumping out huge levels of generic content. Dave advocates for diverse methods of brand and awareness building.  

The irony of so called digital solutions like LLMs is that it might see more efforts put towards human connectivity such as:

• In person events
• Newsletters
• Digital round tables and webinars
• Branded Discord servers or Sub-Reddits
• Digital PR

Synthetic content or dare I say it, slop, proliferates the modern internet. Building authentic connections with your audience has never been more important.

Speculation on the future of search and AI summaries

While AI and LLMs are everywhere, it’s worth considering what the future might look like. Many AI products feel like they are fishing around for a solid use case. There’s also a question of whether these businesses will ever reach viable profitability. I think we might see a limiting of free tier access and a ramping up of costs as VC firms seek returns on investment.

Under those circumstances there are some more philosophical questions to consider when it comes to strategy. I asked Dave how he felt about organisations blocking AI crawlers and opting out of the game (as far as is possible). He saw this as an ethical consideration. News Organisations and publishers in particular have issues with their content being used without explicit consent. The New York Times, for example, blocks GPTBot and Google-Extended from crawling their content.

There are budget implications to being open to AI crawling too. At Wholegrain we’ve seen charity sites experiencing huge amounts of bandwidth being used by AI crawlers. Going over band width quotas increases website hosting costs at a time when charities and not for profits are seeing funding squeezed. 

Ultimately you need to understand the implications of blocking AI crawlers from your site. Your competitors might not be as ethically minded (if you see this as an ethical question) and could steal a march on you. Alternatively an ethical stance of AI combined with a human approach to brand building could be highly effective.

The small matter of truth

The question of human truth and AI summaries also came up. Users often see search results that appear higher up the page as a source of truth or authority. We don’t know enough about how truthful users view AI overviews even when they contain inaccuracies. Users who are used to ignoring the sponsored ads at the top of the page might scroll to the organic results out of habit.

A potential backlash against the new search norms

Propellernet are taking pragmatic steps for themselves and their clients in the face of the new normal. But that doesn’t mean they can’t see an alternative future. Dave acknowledges that AI summaries on all search engines are incredibly divisive. On the one hand Google and others tell us that users are engaging with the overviews and use this as evidence of assent. But social media is full of anecdotes about AI slop and inaccurate LLM generated content. Any company going all in on new, AI heavy, user interfaces might be subject to a backlash.

A smaller player like Ecosia, DuckDuckGo might go back to what Dave describes as a “10 blue links approach”.

We might even see more independence in the search industry. Projects like OpenWebSearch.eu open the way for new players to gain traction with “ethical” search platforms. While they might not overtake Google,the possibility of more competition from more transparent sources feels like an important and hopeful one.

Wrapping up

So there we are. The search landscape is changing but in many ways the situation for businesses and organisations hasn’t changed at all that much. For all the billions of dollars invested in AI “winning” the SEO game still requires the same things. Solid fundamentals, authentic useful content and diversified channels for messaging and engaging with your audience.

Plus ça change, rien n’a changé.

Thanks to Propellernet for their invaluable input on this article.

Enormous thanks to Dave for his time and expertise in answering our questions and shedding light on the topic. Thanks too to Propellernet general manager Gill Sheen for facilitating things.

Propellernet is a team of search experts, storytellers and strategists, helping ambitious brands unlock value across performance and brand marketing. They are AI-enabled, human-led and propelled by purpose.

Since 2003, their mission has remained consistent: to hire great people, deliver outstanding work and enjoy the process along the way. A focus on innovation has driven the creation of tools such as AnswerThePublic, Blackbird, CoverageBook and Hidden Keywords.

This could be you.

Marketing requires expertise. Innovative ideas alone aren’t enough.