Designing for Agents with Jason Attard. UX, CX & the Future of Affiliate Sites

Honestly, the way things are moving um with AI, it's a matter of time where um we'll have the agent kind of crawling our content or craw our products. Welcome to Revenue Optimization with Stats Drone. This affiliate marketing podcast is brought to you by Affiliate Track, which is an affiliate link research tool and affiliate finder and also brought to you by Stats Drone, the best stats and analytics tool for affiliates, agencies, affiliate networks, and affiliate programs.

All right, Jason, I saw one of your posts recently on LinkedIn that talked about um AX, but before we get into AX and this whole uh agentic user experience and design, let's start probably from the beginning. So you're a designer uh UX designer with Game Lounge and let's start like what is design today and how do you how how's everything changed because I think it's been like probably a short period of time that you know we're seeing like a lot of disruption in the the UX

and design space. design space. >> Well from uh from my perspective at least you know design has evolved from much more than just creating graphics right and imagery. Um I've been in the industry now for for quite a bit. Um I did come from a background of design but at the same time I had to adapt to development website you know and product as well because the reality is design on its own it's not going to cut it you know um when it comes to design

itself and and how it is perceived within a company you know it's just a service right it's very rarely you see design being parts uh part of the movement let's put it this way however ever when design then joins the product side of things that's where it shines I would say you know you know because the effort then is measured you know um you know it's it evolved from graphics then to UI user interfaces you know we uh we then evolved from having the desktop designs

to mobile and that came you know with its own set of challenges let's put it this way uh we had to think responsively so technically design then became product design. In fact, if you ask most of the designers today, they're probably trying to use like this hybrid skill between actual design, Photoshop, Illustrator, and so forth. Now, jumping mainly into main tools um such as Figma, you know, and and from there, I think we are at a point where we're creating stuff handinhand with the product side

because in the end, it's all about the experience. It's all about the product. Um, and that's I think where it started for me to then look at the next steps probably. probably. probably. >> Okay. And for me personally, I've I'm always looking at companies and going who are they hiring? Like what is the trend in the jobs happening on LinkedIn? And in the last couple years, the one thing that started to pop up was I'm seeing a lot more emphasis on product.

So I think years before that it was design user experience design. Now I'm seeing product which is kind of like a hybrid of skill sets. Um do you think like you know product is kind of like where things need to to be at? >> It depends. I do see product as a collaboration with design. Um obviously it's logically to put it under a product you know hierarchy and structure because you know designers do work mostly with developers uh at this stage and obviously we're we're excluding

what we're saying we're excluding the part where it's you know like to visual the graphics the banners you know because that goes into other departments. Um, but when it comes to design and and how things work, I always think that when it comes to titles, right? So, we're talking about user experience, we're talking about customer experience, and now even agentic experience, right? It's always about the experience.

So, technically, should it even just be about the product or should the experience lead it overall? Um the product teams obviously focus on the experience the designers as well and then obviously we have conversion rate optimization teams that focus on the experience and the journeys together with the UX team you know it get quite vast um so I wouldn't say product on its own um should be the movement basically but it should more be a collaboration and and that's how I see it >> okay I

want to talk about the controversial stuff which is I've been watching what's happening on LinkedIn I've seen more designers saying hey I'm looking for looking for looking for And even companies saying, "Hey, this person's talented, but we don't need them anymore." Like, they're not saying they don't need them anymore, but I mean, I'm seeing the design space on LinkedIn and X, uh, they're starting to freak out.

And I don't blame them because I'm a self-taught designer, and the tools I'm using now for design, they're just insane. I'm like, I I feel like five years ago, I would have loved to have an army of designers. I would have been like, this is a war chest. Now, I'm like, I have that in my AI tools. So what do you think is the the new world of design and how do people if they want to not just keep a job but use it so they

actually level up like what do they need to be looking at? >> Look when it comes to AI and design itself um I do see it as a big asset for a designer rather than just something to worry about for a few reasons. One of them for me is since AI was made available to us when it comes to designers basically in general. Um I felt like I had more time for creativity rather than execution.

And I do see I I I saw the uh the latest Adobe keynote for example that um they had this Land Rover in the background um you know and there was this pond with the reflection and everything and as soon as they erased it the reflection also was removed in the pond without selecting it. That was mind-blowing. So, so that's the next step right so that facilitates the execution but when it comes to the creativity then perhaps you can focus on you know position the Land

Rover better and we don't have time or you know usually we have um deadlines which are quite tight let's put it this way um it's never it's never things that needed are needed a couple of days from now but you know yesterday as always um so I do think that that uh adds value for us in order to be more creative so when it comes to then um what kind of skill sets these designers should be looking for.

Look, I'll tell you basically my progression. I started from simply sketching on an old notepads, you know, loving arts. Moved up to graphic design because that was the only way I could make money out of my passion. Let's put it this way. Obviously, you could go with art and perhaps try to be the next Picasso, but I don't think that's going to work. Um at least for me.

So once I moved to graphic design, then I started doing design for some websites. Wanted obviously to jump into web design because that's where the money was at started doing web design. When you're doing websites, you figure out, oh, you need backends, you need this stuff because obviously things gets more complex. So then you move down to the development sites. Automatically you have all these three three skill sets.

Uh you become a product designer. So after that UI is a natural progression for you to focus on. Then if you want to go you can jump into UX user experience and from there if you want to see the whole holistic thing from a brand perspective which if you've been a designer you have the experience for you jump into customer experience and I think focusing on brands products and UX will eventually give you so much roles that you could tap into.

Um and today things are becoming very specific especially in big companies. um certain team has specific product designers doing certain things. Uh I personally now diverted a bit um into customer experience and that brought with it experimentation for me. So obviously looking at KPIs trying you know to maximize conversion because obviously that's why we're designing journeys. So I do see it now kind of from uh from a business point of view as well.

So yeah, I mean that's the natural progression for me and probably that's that's how every designer should push it. Not everyone has that passion obviously or that uh hunger. Let's call it this way. Um but yeah, I mean it's natural to just blowing through that potentially what you said I feel like I can relate like just as an example it's like you know I'm a self-taught designer where I started with Corell Draw a long time ago.

Um, you know, I got into Photoshop and then I replaced that with I think Sketch and then Figma and then now I'm using a lot of AI tools. And what I'm finding is that back in the day, like if I wanted to design something, I I felt like I didn't have the opportunity just to ask designers. I had some friends that I'd send them emails, hey, what do you think?

But now I feel like with AI tools, I can actually take my designs and going, is there a clever way of trying to solve? So, I'm basically writing the prompt and saying,"I want to achieve this and I don't even know what this looks like, but I'm actually getting crazy feedback and I'm just wondering, am I the only one doing this?" And I'm not thinking I'm smart by any means, but I'm just like I'm just experimenting, throwing stuff on the wall.

And the stuff I'm getting back, I'm like, wait a minute. I I'm I'm not reading the stuff on LinkedIn or Twitter in the design communities. Look, I tell you one thing. The company recently um initiated a hackathon for for most of the employees. Um and I haven't developed them quite a bit, you know, when it comes to web design. Um and they introduced us to love a bit which you know it was a tool.

So uh V coding was um let's just put it this way was just incredible for me like imagine a designer right which I have experience of code but at the same time this thing was generating stuff in a day I've built a whole prototype that I could easily show to clients or or you know to potential uh CEOs and say listen this is could be the way we go just you know obviously because you have these ideas coming out and you're just materializing everything at once.

It was so refreshing, honest. So, I I found it that quite incredible and um I got even more excited about. >> Yeah. Something that I I think I've noticed as well. You must see this all the time where you look at another affiliates or competitor's website and you're like, "Okay, they have a very good UX designer, but there's no customer experience behind this because you're like, design check.

Uh passion and soul is just missing its dead." And I don't want to name those sites, but you must look at them all the time and going, what are these companies doing? >> Look, sometimes when I look at competitors, it's it's a love page relationship. Uh, I'll give you the reason why because some of them don't look the parts and they really are nailing it when it comes to traffic convers because obviously as affiliates, you know, we focus mainly on SEO, um, PPC.

Um I think for the past perhaps couple of years I focused solely on optimization and I put kind of design just aside you know so I focus on that first and then I see what I can make things pretty you know so and I do see that most of uh competitors are throwing stuff out there just trying stuff out and see what works and worry about the design leader.

design leader. design leader. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Um and I think in the end you know conversion is is key right? Um it is annoying as from coming from a designer as well like you know it shouldn't be this way you know why this is working but at the same time um you know you have to keep up with your with the competition so so but what I personally believe to be true as someone who spent a lot of time in trying to

rank sites and having to spend more time on the conversion side than the design side um I actually think when you build a better product it's becoming part of the new framework for how does Google respect you how does Google know that you're worth mentioning in AI overviews. How how do people link to you? It's I think when you build a better product, um you're starting to get things that are not as tangible like word of mouth or people sending links to your product to other

people which are customers and you know that's kind of like the metric I think that we all aspire to but sometimes they're very difficult to measure. measure. measure. >> Yes, it's um let's just put it this way when it comes to affiliation, right? um Google I think using the your money or life initiatives you know and and all that I think it's helping us even from a customer and user experience point of view.

Um, so we're not I I not we're not we we are distancing ourself more from the wild west that gaming was at one point and then we're becoming more like this product or this brand um that needs to be perceived by the users and that's that's where AX would jump in and kind of you know without this without your money or life without the content being you know um addressing all the issues and concerns and basically um meeting the user requirements ments you wouldn't be able

to step into this into the next step, right? Um so definitely it's it's something that we're changing into. Um it doesn't work on every market. I have to be honest. Um but for me obviously the value is in the brand is in building a product that works works well and the user want you definitely. >> All right. So that sets us up for what is AX? I mean it stands for I think agentic experience.

Um it's the first time I've heard about this in a week ago, but I have been studying uh agentic agents for different projects. Uh tell us tell us what we're we're talking about. about. about. >> Um I mean from my point of view, it's always very new to me, right? Um I've been I've been looking into user experience for quite a while and honestly the way things are moving um with AI, it's a matter of time where um we'll have the agent kind of crawl our

content or crawl our products. Okay. and and that's what uh agentic experience is. It's basically doing UX but for the agent rather than the user. Um this kind of of goes into quite a few parts. Let's put it this way. Um because there is there is some assumptions at the moment of how this is working. Um and also how you going to execute it, right? Um because obviously for example um when we do look at our data you know we have bots you know just votes

on the user we just make sure you know that our experiences are meeting the user but by doing that are we unintentionally blocking in these user that are using these experiences right or and these agents. Um so so this is one of the concerns. For example, um I think when it comes to uh these agents, the goal is for them to make sure that they are crawling to your content the same as a user would.

Um for example, when if you create a journey just for them. Would you need buttons? Not really. You know, would you need um visual elements? Depends. you know if the user is interacting everything by voice or by via their own chat and you know this is feeding into this information then it's another story but obviously this started creating some issues I don't know if you know about Google zero for example where you know Gemini ch and any other content are getting all these results from us

you know from our sites from our content and that's basically it's a concern so with this in mind we will eventually become an agent as a brand that holds it information that a user can access, you know, to get the get what they want. Um, yeah, it's quite, as you said, quite the bit of a rabbit hole, right? >> Basically, the network moving. So, but, you know, a lot of concerns will come as we go, I'm sure.

>> Do you think that would uh lead to people creating markdown files for every page they have? Like, I think I'm actually seeing some sites do this. when I look at them, I'm like, "Okay, I know they're doing it programmatically and automatically," which is great. That's also kind of a lot of work. I think, >> you know, how we um kind of do Quio when it comes, you know, putting our um site maps, you know, in an XML file and making sure Google is scrollable these

pages through Google console and so forth. I do think it will work the same way, obviously, through a different type of file code or whatever. if it's not through our site, it could be um you know built in to through this agent that you know will be accessible from different I don't know platforms, apps or whatever. And this is just obviously a hypothetical assumption from my side.

Um but yeah, I mean I tried I tried to ask Chad GB how this would work and it started already coding some stuff um in a language where I believe it was using React or some sort um React TypeScript for sure um where it's starting saying oh look you know if an agent crawls through this you know this is the way they should go this is the options you could give it you know and for them to kind of end up I don't know on the

on the on the operator side for example I don't know but uh yeah It's uh as I said like it's very new and fresh at the same time. Uh interesting. >> Yeah, I've seen a few people post this I think on Facebook and LinkedIn. So I think after this uh recording I'm probably going to do the same thing. I'm going to go back to code and I'm going to ask the same question.

Hey this how people use our site currently but if we were to kind of uh try to make this ax friendly uh what does this look like and what should we consider? And I'm sure I'm probably going to get a lot of uh good ideas and feedback on it. because we need to consider that down the line we will users interact with search engines anymore you know will will they just interact with those blue links I I I don't believe so I think you know especially

JGBT launching their own Chrome browser um kind of copycats and kind of you know how it is with JGBT for example you can add your own agents you know your own models I do believe that brands will be able to create product like that um I've been looking in fact researching this um the Expedia already has their own agent that you could use you know to build your travel plans.

So perhaps you know as affiliates will become having our brands in there that user can search use it you know to make sure they get the right deals and the right stuff for example um on the operators. I'm not sure but yeah it's it's it's where it seeing I don't know. >> Well it's funny you just said I'm not sure but at the same time as you just finished that whole sentence I'm like you've just changed uh priority in our company for next year.

something we're going to do anyways, but it's now going very high up to the top because like I'll just tell you exactly what it is. So, we're we're an app for affiliates to help get their data. Okay, that's step one. So, by nature, we have all these affiliate program reviews. And what we've realized is that a lot of our customers, they're actually doing searches more on the brands.

So, we have everything. We start from an affiliate program and then it's the brands are a subset, but they're actually searching more for the brand than they are the affiliate program. Well, the thing that we want to do next is we want to be like, well, what is useful for an affiliate to to search inside of our app? And one of the examples we believe to be true would be like, well, what are the bonuses available in each market?

So, that's a lot of data. That's data that you have on your side that's in your entire ecosystem. But, we have to do this for I think 4,000 affiliate programs, which is that's a lot of data. uh we're planning to do it anyways, but we think that by doing this, this is a total UX uh AX play right here. It's a perfect example for it. That's that's a perfect example.

Exactly. Because obviously you're you're shifting um some of your strategy into this, right? And I do believe that um when it comes to this, when it comes to X, it's not something that should, you know, just replace whatever we're doing. I think it's part of the innovation process. So it should be you know uh its own lane kind of going in line with the day-to-day um and and including that and including how how AX is evolving for us.

Um, as I said, uh, for example, I was looking at the Amazon app very recently and they including this chatbot that, you know, it it's a it's a very, uh, prominent icon on the top right if you never saw it. And I interacted with it like it I just asked a question, start giving me products. So, you know, I see bonuses, for example, could work the same way.

same way. Um, but at the same time, they clearly stated, you know, it's better, right? it's beta, you know, and it's uh it it it's under works. So, probably Amazon are not even sure about that themselves. What what hit me there was when it comes to the brand was um that they use a different name rather than for example using Alexa you know they called it real face and potentially because of its face you know they didn't want the big product with it or you know

but I read with some research I've read that um they've done it just so it's a different um it's a different product you know and potentially when it comes to our brands we'll have these little agents you know that kind of do specific things. So, it doesn't have to be just one where you know you could basically drill down all that information to them and the user could pick oh yes I want bonuses um you know I want um you know top casino stops loss whatever

you know and all the information could be drilled down through that >> okay so this is amazing >> right >> right >> right >> yeah so maybe just uh kind of go back to like you know that controversial topic it's a what should designers be doing if they want to not just keep their job but kind of like thrive and grow in the new world of design and user experience and agents.

agents. >> I think adopt AI be open to it. Um when it you know when it comes to AI when you speak to most design they immediately go journey you know and and nano banana whatever but it's more to that um I do believe um even Figma now are even introducing a lot of AI features and they're starting to monetize on that as well which is very smart.

So whatever you try to do, I think AI is going to be part of our life as we go. Um it already is with simple inputs for most of us. But I think if we if we start learning how to make our execution faster um we become better designers because you know what sets us apart is the creativity and the AI that it's it is creative you know you can't deny it but at the same time you still need some input from your side to make

that final vision happen right um so so I do believe you know adopting AI 100% AI 100% um and focus focus on user experience more, you know, focus on what works for the users, what makes them tick, their pain points, and then just use AI to facilitate that process. >> Awesome, Jason. Thank you so much for doing this. I want to pass it back to you. How can people get a hold of you?

>> Um, sure. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn. Um, you know, we can we can chat there and, you know, usually I share some things here and there. Um, yeah, but happy to connect through LinkedIn. LinkedIn. LinkedIn. >> Yeah. Like I said, I'm glad you shared what you posted last week. I got super excited reading it and um looking forward to chatting a bit more and uh kind of like keeping on top of what what is happening in the the layers when it comes

to design, UX, CX, AX. Um hopefully it stops there, but I mean, you know, keep it's keeping us pretty busy as is. >> Well, yes, I hope so it stops there. But, you know, from experience, you know, they always start adding um some new some new rows there. I think what's important as I said experience is always kind of in the end it's always it's always there so focus on experience and probably be future proof.

>> Awesome. Thank you Jason. >> Thanks so much John. Thank >> that was a great episode with Jason Atard director of CX and optimization at Game Lounge. And I think the topic he talked about today was possibly very advanced. It's probably one to two years, maybe even three years ahead of its time where we have agents that actually do work for us. Um, if you can tell an agent what you need done, like research or getting data from a website and doing it on a schedule,

I mean, this is what agents are about. So, it's not just making products and websites and applications for users, it's actually making them for agents. Um, and I've already heard that uh agents in the next couple years are going to really take off. and I've got a lot of friends that are actually building a lot of agents as we speak. Uh, speaking of agents and cool stuff, uh, check out our website, revenueoptimization.io.

revenueoptimization.io. Uh, we've built a really cool new website built with AI and we're looking to add more features to make this a unique podcast website that you've not seen before. And once again, uh, thank you for listening. If you get a chance, give us a rating or re review wherever you listen to your podcast. and looking forward to catching you on the next show. And once again, check out statone.com and as well affili.io to level up and do your affiliate link research and find all the

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