We Internationalized Our Website (for Agents)

TL;DR

We rebuilt our website so it can serve people and the agents working on their behalf. Visible pages are one experience; structure, facts, capabilities, and TL;DRs are part of what machines can use. The work felt like internationalization and localization - preparing a system for different experiences, then making it useful for a particular audience - except the new audience is agents, not people in another country. The interface is still English-only. The first adaptation was for them.

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Helping people understand one another, work together, and reach new markets is why Cornelius Communications exists.

Communication and understanding across cultures are in our hearts.

Clove and I have spent decades building global programs and using technology to support that work. We've seen how much becomes possible when people have the right systems, knowledge, and connections.

Our website should be part of that experience.

For people visiting it, there are articles, free downloadable resources, and links to open-source applications we build.

These resources are parts of our investment in the global language and AI community.

• We benefit from people who share what they know and build.
• We contribute tools and knowledge that others can use and improve.

We want visitors to find something useful, whether they're working through a business decision, exploring a technology problem, or getting acquainted with us.

A website for more kinds of visitors

I recently wrote A Website Should Know What You Can Do, about connecting the place where someone discovers a business with the place where they can get something done.

A person might visit to read, compare options, download a resource, or decide whether to meet with us. They can tolerate a gap or two.

An agent acting on their behalf cannot. It needs facts it can use: what we offer and whether it applies to the needs the agent is trying to fulfill. If the information falls between pages meant for human browsing, the agent stalls, or the person has to finish the job by hand.

Our new site delivers machine-readable information beyond what appears in the visible page layout. The work looked a lot like localization and internationalization, but the audience we needed to address is agents, not people in another country - their agents.

Why we changed how we build

We needed a web presence that serves the people on the internet and also meets the needs of the non-human actors working with them.

Our previous page builder could not support that direction. Many tools can generate nice looking HTML pages, few can build for an agentic visitor with a job to finish.

We chose to build an application that we can extend as our services, tools, and visitors' needs evolve.

The visible pages are one part of the experience. What you see is not all of what an agent or crawler sees. The information available to machines and the functionality we can connect are integrated in the new design. Structure, facts, capabilities, TL;DRs.

The new site gives us a place to bring capabilities together with information. Someone can discover us, a tool, understand purpose, and - as we add functionality - use it in the same environment.

Much of our work will continue to happen in conversation with clients and partners. Understanding a situation, exercising judgment, and working through a difficult problem together are the parts of the job we enjoy.

But, where technology can help, we want to make it easier to reach and use.

Come explore

The new site is live. Read something, explore, and tell us what you think.

There's an irony here that my friends in localization and internationalization will spot pretty quickly.

• We've spent decades helping companies adapt their experiences for people around the world.
• We've just launched our own new site, and the interface is still English-only.

We adapted it for a different kind of visitor in a way that felt quite familiar.

• Internationalization prepares a system to support different experiences.
• Localization makes an experience useful for a particular audience.

We're applying that to visitors whose needs are beyond a translated interface: agents acting on people's behalf.

So, here's a question for you:

When we plan which audiences an experience should serve, should we include the agents those people send ahead of them?

We strongly think so. Our first adaptation was for them.

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If you're considering how to rewire your own web experience for people and the agents working on their behalf, we'd love to chat.

Our clients tell us we're fun to work with. We're proud of that.

How do we make ourselves fun to work with for an agent or an AI?

I don't know yet. But I'm not afraid to try.

-Ben Cornelius