As part of our whitepaper ‘The vision of 27 marketers and content creators for 2026’, we asked CRO specialist Gijs Wierda for his vision for 2026 and two practical tips he would give to readers. You can read his response below.
Who is Gijs Wierda? Gijs is a freelance Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) specialist and Experimentation Strategist. Based in Utrecht, the Netherlands, he acts as the “Swiss Army Knife” for business growth, helping organisations in SaaS, E-commerce, and Lead Generation turn their visitors into customers. With over a decade of experience running over 7.500 of experiments, Gijs helps marketing teams shift their culture from one of just “shipping features” to one of “learning and validating”.
Predicting the digital landscape of 2026 is an exercise in humility. If the last few years have taught us anything, it is that the trajectory of technology is rarely linear. We are currently navigating a fog of uncertainty regarding how Artificial Intelligence will ultimately settle into our daily browsing habits. However, looking at the current signals, we can sketch a few plausible scenarios that every marketer should prepare for.
The most significant potential shift is the divergence of the “user” into two distinct categories: the Biological Human and the Digital Agent.
For the entirety of our industry’s history, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) has focused on one thing: influencing the human brain. We optimise for cognitive biases, emotional resonance, and visual hierarchy. But in 2026, we may face a reality where a significant portion of “traffic” consists of autonomous AI agents acting on behalf of humans. These agents won’t “see” your hero image or feel the urgency of your countdown timer. They will parse your code, verify your pricing data, and execute transactions based on logic, not emotion per se.
This creates a paradox for the CRO specialist. On one hand, the Human Web will likely become even more focused on authenticity. In an era of AI-generated noise, human buyers may crave genuine connection, verifiable social proof, and distinct brand voices that prove they aren’t interacting with a bot. Trust will become the most expensive currency.
On the other hand, we might see the rise of a Machine Web. If buying decisions are delegated to algorithms – especially in B2B or routine commodities – our websites must be legible to them. This isn’t just about SEO anymore; it is about “computational clarity.” A pricing table hidden in a complex image might be invisible to an agent, meaning you lose the sale simply because the machine couldn’t read the price tag.
Furthermore, the way we experiment is evolving. The traditional A/B test requires significant traffic and time. These are resources that are becoming scarcer in a fragmented media landscape. While AI cannot replace real user data, we are seeing a trend toward Synthetic Validation. Using AI models to simulate user journeys allows us to “stress test” concepts before they go live. It’s not about replacing the customer; it’s about filtering out the bad ideas faster so we can focus our real-world testing on the hypotheses that truly matter.
In short, 2026 won’t be about choosing between human or AI. It will be about building digital experiences that are robust enough to serve both: deeply human for the people who visit, and structurally perfect for the agents that assist them.
One of the biggest bottlenecks in optimization is the time it takes to validate a hypothesis. Before you spend weeks building and running an A/B test, start using AI as a “pre-flight” filter.
You can configure an LLM with your specific buyer personas and ask it to critique your new landing page copy or value proposition. Ask specific questions: “What objections would a risk-averse CFO have to this offer?” or “Is the return policy clear?” While this synthetic feedback is never a replacement for real human behavior, it acts as an incredibly efficient quality control layer. It helps you catch clarity issues and friction points instantly, ensuring that when you do launch a test with real visitors, you are testing your best possible work, not fixing basic errors.
We spend hours obsessing over how our site looks to humans, but how does it “read” to a machine? With the potential rise of AI-assisted browsing, your site’s structure is as important as its style.
Conduct a simple audit: feed your key product URLs into an LLM and ask it to extract the price, shipping time, and return conditions. If the model hallucinates the answer or fails to find it because it’s locked inside a PDF or a non-standard script, an autonomous agent in 2026 might fail too. Ensure your critical decision-making data is structured, accessible, and crystal clear. Future-proofing your site means ensuring that whether the visitor is a person or a bot, the path to purchase is frictionless.
Would you like to discover the other 26 marketers’ and content creators’ visions for 2026? Download the whitepaper here.
