Ten digital customer experience and website management trends for 2026

As we navigate our way through December, many digital marketing teams are actively planning their programme of work for the new year. It’s also when we get the 3chillies crystal ball out of the cardboard box in the store cupboard, dust off the cobwebs, and look to some of the likely trends for 2026 that will impact digital teams managing their website and digital footprint.

Of course, AI has been the major trend in 2025, impacting the digital marketing technology stack, customer search behaviour, content generation and more. AI will continue to dominate in 2026, influencing multiple areas of digital marketing.

Here’s our thoughts on some of the likely digital customer experience and website management trends we will see in 2026.

1. AI features in products advance rapidly and far outpace adoption

Unsurprisingly during 2025 the leading Content Management System (CMS) and Digital Experience Platform (DXP) vendors have been busy incorporating AI into their products to power new features, both covering generative AI and now AI agents. Flagship events like Sitecore Symposium and Optimizely Opticon showcased near-mindboggling capabilities that have the potential to save significant amounts of time.

The AI juggernaut will almost certainly continue during 2026 as AI features advances rapidly – but the pattern of actual adoption and take-up by digital marketing teams remains to be seen. The pace of the release of new capabilities will almost certainly outstrip the pace at which busy marketing teams can take advantage of them. The reason for slower take-up will be a mix of price, team bandwidth and because some needs are not that complex and might not need AI. As in the past, CMS and DXP products will continue to have customers that only use a fraction of the features they are paying for.

2. Agentic AI replaces composability as DXP and CMS product marketers go into overdrive

Go back to between 2022 and 2024 and the “composable” DXP – basically a best-of-breed ecosystem of different products all talking to each other via APIs – was positioned as the future of digital customer experience, according to virtually every DXP or CSM product marketer. While this approach can work for some scenarios, many digital marketing teams preferred to stick with one major CMS or DXP to cover most of their needs.

Recently we observed that marketing coming from both Sitecore and Optimizely is very much now focused on the advantage of having “one platform.”  Umbraco HQ has also reflected on the regrets surrounding the first wave of composable projects, including the prevalence of hidden costs.  In 2026 instead of focusing on support for composable architecture, CMS and DXP product marketers are going to be focused on the age of agentic AI – get ready to be bombarded with messages about AI agents in your inbox. You may even have the situation where an AI agent summarises all the emails you’ve received about other AI agents!

3. AI orchestration and governance become a key differentiator for digital marketing solutions

The new era of AI agents offers opportunities to automate or semi-automate more complex activities and processes. AI agents can also potentially interface with each other – even across different applications using the Model Context Protocol (MCP) – in different workflows. Digital marketing teams want to ensure that these AI agents can actually work together in a coordinated way that delivers value. Another area of concern is making sure that there is governance underpinning the use of agentic and generative AI, for example so that brand guidelines are respected.

Digital marketing solutions are already building capabilities to allow digital marketing teams to orchestrate AI agents across different workflows, as well as the ability to establish governance and guardrails that act as a baseline to shape AI output. Capabilities around AI orchestration and governance are potentially a major differentiator for Content Management Systems (CMSs) and Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs), and we think this will be an area where providers try to compete and differentiate in 2026.

4. Environmental footprint concerns start to focus more on AI usage

The global climate crisis has led many businesses to commit to reducing their carbon footprint, often with a commitment to reach “net zero” by a certain date.

These initiatives have prompted some digital teams to better manage their digital footprint from an environmental perspective, for example calculating their emissions, rightsizing their environment and using a CDN to enable caching.

The climate crisis isn’t going away anytime soon, and we think many digital teams will still want to undertake greener practices. With AI eating up huge amounts of energy and data centres hoovering up local water resources, we think environmentally conscious teams may specifically focus on using less AI to create or drive digital experiences and reduce their carbon footprint.

5. Headcount and budget for digital marketing initiatives remain a challenge for some

In 2025 the business climate has been more than a little bumpy, both across the globe and the UK, and sometimes there has been low business confidence. This means digital marketing budgets have sometimes been constrained in terms of headcount and resources, and decisions around funding digital projects have been paused or delayed. The impact of generative AI is also seen as a reason that digital marketing teams should be doing more with less.
With predictions of an AI bubble that is going to be burst, a continuing uncertain international situation, and business confidence still fragile in the UK, we suspect that resourcing constraints for digital marketing initiatives will continue for some organisations. Of course, you can still make digital progress without much budget, but this can be frustrating for digital marketers who want to make an impact. In 2026 teams may have to pivot plans and scale down their ambitions based on more limited resources.

6. Critical infrastructure and cloud providers come under the microscope

In October 2025 there were huge outages from AWS and Azure.  Additionally, there were outages from Cloudflare in both November and December. These incidents are significant, in that they have taken out large number of sites across the world, including some of our clients. To have so many incidents like this occurring in close succession is also unusual, has highlighted our reliance on a small number of major cloud and infrastructure providers. While we don’t think this will necessarily impact the activities of digital marketing teams, we expect there is going to be more scrutiny on critical infrastructure providers and hyperscalers during 2026 from authorities and the media. It will also be a salient reminder for all teams to consider their infrastructure that supports digital experiences for customers, to ensure it is optimised and fit for purpose.

7. Changes in user behavior continue as Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) dominates digital marketing

Since the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, users are increasingly searching the web using LLMs and related services, with AI-generated responses that give them the information and answers they are looking for. This means that people are no longer visiting as many websites, or wading through pages of search results on Google. This is having a major impact on SEO, website content, and digital marketing in general, as teams scramble to optimise content so that it is picked up by the AI.

In 2026, it is likely there will be a significant uptick in teams looking to use Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) to get their content noticed by the LLMs. Of course, there is actually considerable overlap with SEO and good content management practices here, but 2026 feels like the year GEO is going to go fully mainstream.

8. The cookie apocalypse is replaced by the cookie compromise

Recently we wrote about some of the latest developments around cookie management  and data privacy. We explored the UK’s recent exemptions for user consent for some types of cookies, as well as the latest EU proposed regulations which might relax some of the requirements around cookie consent. With Google abandoning plans to phase out support for third-part cookies, we now think 2026 might be the year when we may edge towards more of a compromise around the issue of consent and cookies.

The end goal will hopefully ease the user experience – for example allowing for cookie preferences to be set in the browser or elsewhere rather than having to give consent for every website.

9. Establishing trust and integrity remain critical for websites and content

In recent years misinformation displayed on the internet and social media has become a major concern. Brand integrity is also sometimes questioned, for example with the rise of questions around “green washing. These issues are coupled with an increase in AI-generated material. Reports suggest that as much of 50% of new content produced on the internet is mainly written by AI, leading to a wave of content “slop”.  Many think the proportion of AI-generated material will only increase. 
In our view integrity and trust are critical qualities for brands, and websites and related content must reflect this. The combination of misinformation, focus on integrity and AI slop, means that sites that establish trustworthy, reliable, and transparent content – mainly written by humans – have an opportunity to shine.

10. Marketers become more tech-savvy, coders become more marketing-savvy

Low code no code solutions have been a general direction of travel for technology for quite a few years, and that is particularly true in the world of DXPs and CMSs. The major vendors have designed solutions with interfaces that mean digital marketers are less reliant on their IT colleagues. This trend is only accelerating with generative AI, creating new possibilities to carry out more complex tasks and create new workflows.

However, these solutions also work the other way, in that some developers can now use in-built capabilities and AI to achieve tasks faster which would have previously required coding. The result? We think more marketing teams are being tech-savvy by being exposed to these solutions, while more coders are becoming marketing-savvy by using them too. While this has some potential downsides in terms of potentially downplaying the importance of field experts, we believe anything that helps increase understanding between digital marketers and developers is a positive.

Digital marketing trends for 2026

As we put the 3chillies crystal ball back in its cardboard box for another year, the question remains as to whether it is any good! Have we missed something out? Do any of these trends sound wrong? Or could we even be spot on?

If you’d like to discuss how any of these trends might impact you next year, or want to discuss your new year digital strategy or website project, then get in touch!