As 2025 draws to a close, we are waiting to see what new advances in AI the new year will bring, and how these will impact our industry (and web design as a whole). If this year is anything to go by, the speed and rate at which AI is advancing makes us feel that its ability to revolutionise how we work is almost limitless.

It’s increasingly becoming something that we are using, being affected by, or seeing it being used by clients every day; and we’re in no doubt that this will increase in the year ahead.

At the start of September, we were pleased to take part in the South Bristol Youth Guarantee programme, coordinated by Bristol City Council and the West of England Combined Authority. The programme focuses on supporting young people aged 17-21 from South Bristol into employment and apprenticeships.

What is GEO? (or AEO and GSO)

GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation), AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) and GSO (Generative Search Optimisation) all describe the process of optimising your content for AI search engines with the hope of being cited in the answers provided by systems like ChatGPT to users’ prompts and queries. 

As one of a series of articles to mark the 25th anniversary of the founding of GWS Media (back on September 25th, 2000) I have put together a short article about the main things I've learnt over 25 years running a business. I hope that some of them will be useful to aspiring entrepreneurs, or people who have already taken the plunge and started their own business. Good luck whatever you are doing - and don't forget that small businesses (SMEs) employ the majority of people in the UK economy - you are making a real difference.

David Graves - Creative Director

Ten additional types of website.

Written content producers have become increasingly concerned since 2024 over the way that AI systems (including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini) have been trawling through their text and using it to train their large language model systems, leading to that content potentially being reproduced (in adapted form) with no attribution to or payment for the original creator.

AI (artificial intelligence) image generation has advanced significantly over the last two years in terms of quality of output and practical usefulness. Having developed from somewhat shaky beginnings, it is now a technology that cannot be ignored by creatives or anyone requiring imagery for work. There is now a range of options to choose from at different price points; and while none of them is perfect, and they may never have the unique character of human-generated photographs and artwork, the level of competition in the marketplace has led to constant improvements.

What is Cloudflare?

Cloudflare is an American company that offers a range of internet services. This includes content delivery network services, cybersecurity services, DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) mitigation and domain name services. Cloudflare is a global network that works to enable faster and safer websites through increased performance and security.

What is PCI DSS?

PCI DSS stands for the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. It is a set of standards and guidelines put together by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) in order to protect sensitive customer data.

It sets out practices for businesses that process or require payment card information (or other sensitive personal information) to follow.