Improve discovery and engagement for your brand

We live in exciting times for digital builders. If you had told me a year ago that I’d be launching a SaaS product to help marketing and content teams tackle the discovery and engagement challenges they’re facing with AI, I would have asked, “but how?” And yet, here we are. The evolution of AI-coding tools over the last 12 months has made it possible for someone with my particular set of skills and experience to build an end-to-end application to begin doing just that.

The reality we’re now facing is that nearly 60% of searches end without a click. People are asking AI assistants for recommendations instead of Googling and clicking through results. If your content isn’t structured for AI discovery, you’re invisible to this growing segment of potential customers.

Frilly is being built to solve this problem. Today, we’re launching our open beta with two smart tools designed to help local businesses, organizations, and makers thrive in the AI era: Smart Directory and Smart Chat.

Why AI-powered discovery matters now

The way people find local businesses is fundamentally changing. Instead of typing “coffee shop near me” into Google, they’re asking ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity: “Where should I grab coffee in downtown Madison?”

Traditional SEO focuses on ranking high in search results. But when AI assistants provide the answer directly, there are no rankings to climb, only recommendations to earn. AI doesn’t care about your keyword density. It cares about context. It cares whether your content is structured, accurate, and easy to understand.

This shift requires a new approach. Your website needs to speak two languages: human-readable content for visitors, and machine-readable formats for AI assistants. That’s where Frilly comes in.

Introducing the Smart Directory: Get discovered

Over time, the Frilly Smart Directory becomes a living map of an area’s offerings. It’s already optimized for both human discovery and AI recommendations. All it needs is the information you want to share about your business, organization, practice, or craft to make yourself discoverable.

What makes it “smart”:

• AI-ready profiles with structured data (Schema.org JSON-LD) and machine-readable formats (.md and .json files)
• Conversational search that understands natural questions like “help me find a coworking space”
• Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) so AI assistants can discover and cite your profile when recommending local businesses
• Free for everyone because we believe local knowledge should flow freely and become shared wisdom

When you create a profile, you’re not just adding a directory listing, you’re also building infrastructure for AI-powered discovery.

Introducing Smart Chat: Engage your visitors

Your website visitors have questions: hours, services, pricing, parking, accessibility. All of these and more will determine whether they choose you or keep looking.

Smart Chat is an AI agent trained on your content that embeds on your website and answers visitor questions conversationally, 24/7.

How it works:

1. You provide the content by uploading documents, adding website URLs, or in-depth write-ups in markdown, docx or PDF
2. We train the agent using semantic search (RAG) to understand what you offer
3. Visitors ask questions, and Smart Chat responds using only your provided content
4. Source attribution ensures accuracy and the responses cite which document the information came from

Perfect for:

• Companies with deeply researched content intended to educate potential customers that (sadly) goes largely unread
• Restaurants answering menu questions and reservation policies
• Event venues explaining accessibility features and calendar schedules
• Nonprofits helping visitors understand programs and volunteer opportunities
• Service providers clarifying booking processes and pricing

Our first customer, 100state, uses Smart Chat to help prospective members understand their flexible workspace options, community events, and membership tiers through natural conversation.

This blog uses it as well. Feel free to ask anything about this post or about Frilly in general from the chat input box floating at the bottom of this screen! ⬇️

Start with a free profile, upgrade when you’re ready

Frilly’s been designed with a simple philosophy: discovery should be free, engagement is worth paying for.

FREE tier: Create your profile in the Smart Directory and get a preview Smart Chat agent. Perfect for testing Frilly and establishing your AI-ready presence.

Premium tier: Unlock the full Smart Chat with document uploads, website scraping, and widget publishing. Train your agent on up to 25 documents and embed it on your website.

Enterprise tier: Advanced features including dark mode, unlimited queries, comprehensive session memory, and priority processing for organizations with complex needs.

Get started today by creating your free profile. You’ll join a growing ecosystem of Madison businesses, organizations, and makers who are preparing for the future of AI-powered discovery. Paid tiers are available by contacting us directly through the About page.

What’s coming next

This is just the beginning. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing behind-the-scenes looks at how Frilly’s Smart Tools are built, best practices for training your AI agent, and strategies for crafting the perfect concierge persona for your business.

Upcoming posts:

• Behind the scenes: How Frilly’s Smart Chat is built
• Behind the scenes: How Frilly’s Smart Directory tackles SEO/AEO
• How to craft the perfect concierge persona for your business
• Best practices for training your AI chat agent
• Why Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) matters as much as SEO

Frilly began as a fun experiment in using AI to aggregate local events in Madison, Wisconsin. As the capabilities of the technology have grown, so have its ambitions. The goal now is to build a living map of local knowledge where communities discover what they need through intelligent, conversational interfaces.

Welcome to Frilly. Let’s get smarter together.

Press Release: Frilly Launches Smart Tools to Help Local Businesses Thrive in the AI Era

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