Why Every Client Wants a Chatbot Now (And Why It's the New Carousel)

"All my clients wanted a carousel, now it's an AI chatbot" — a post by Adële on her blog. The pattern is familiar: client pulls out phone mid-meeting, navigates to a competitor's site, points at a blinking bubble in the bottom-right corner. "You see? They have one of those." Years ago it was carousels — big, slow, sliding stock photos that every visitor ignored in half a second. Now it's the chatbot.

The Conversation

Whenever a client brings up chatbots, the author asks: "Do you actually use chatbots when you visit other websites?" The answer is almost always no. They close them immediately, find them annoying, or get wrong answers. One client laughed about a competitor's chatbot confidently giving out wrong opening hours for months. Yet the same client says: "But we should have one, right?"

The chatbot has become a social signal — a way to say "we're keeping up" — not a tool. A website without one in 2026 risks feeling unfinished, even if the widget is half-broken and dismissed in three seconds.

The Counter-Approach

The author has tried showing clients examples of smolweb sites — fast, minimal, readable, no pop-ups. The reaction is genuine: "Oh, that loads fast. That's easy to read." But then comes the hesitation: "It looks a bit simple, doesn't it?" Here, "simple" doesn't mean easy to use — it means not impressive enough. A lean, fast site doesn't signal effort or cost.

Building something genuinely simple — loads instantly, says exactly what needs to be said — is often harder than bolting on a chatbot. But that invisible work goes unappreciated.

No Fix, Just Reality

The author offers no tidy solution. The pressure doesn't come from clients — it comes from a decade of bloated pages, dark patterns, and feature arms races that redefined what a "real" website looks like. Clients are just reading the room. The room is wrong, but they're not imagining it.

The shift, if it comes, will be from users — when enough people notice the fast, calm site was easier to use, and they actually found what they came for without closing three pop-ups first.

In the meantime, the chatbot sits in the corner of the author's client's homepage, blinking patiently. It doesn't know the opening hours, prices, or anything. But it's there — just like everyone else's.