From CRO to AXO: Adapting to AI in Digital Marketing

Slobodan "Sani" Manić — host of the No Hacks Podcast, co-founder of Web Performance Tools and PodPacer, and one of the organizers of the Future of eXperimentation conference — joins Guido to talk about the shift from Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) to what he calls Agent Experience Optimization (AXO). His thesis: your next million visitors won't be human. As AI agents do more of the browsing and buying, websites need to be designed for both humans and machines. Sani's framework, Machine-First Architecture, sets out four pillars — Identity, Structure, Content, and Interaction — for building sites that actually work in this new reality. Sani is also co-running the pre-event workshop at Space Academy on May 6th with Iqbal Ali, on building reliable agents and workflows with n8n and small models. Get your Space Academy tickets: https://experimentationelite.com/ Key takeaways:

• The shift from CRO to AXO is no longer optional — it's a question of when, not if
• AI can enhance personalization, automate interactions, and surface predictive insights
• The job becomes orchestrating AI alongside human judgment, not replacing one with the other

Links:

• https://slobodanmanic.com/
• https://www.nohackspod.com/
• https://experimentationelite.com/