How to use Autopilot
Most websites are built once and then left to drift. Autopilot is Frontpage's always-on optimization engine: it reads your traffic, runs the experiments, and ships the wins, so your site keeps getting better after you stop touching it.
Launching a page is the start, not the finish. The version you ship on day one is a best guess, and the only way to know what actually converts is to test it against real visitors. Autopilot does that loop for you: it watches how people use your site, forms ideas about what to improve, runs the experiments, and rolls out what works. Here's how to put it to work.
What Autopilot does
Think of Autopilot as a growth teammate that never sleeps. It's built from four moving parts that work together:
- Insight reports that read your analytics and tell you, in plain language, what's working, where visitors drop off, and what to try next.
- A/B testing that builds variants, splits live traffic, and measures each version against your real goal.
- Site-wide rollouts that take a winning change and apply it everywhere it belongs, consistently.
- Automatic fixes for the slow decay every site suffers: broken links, stale dates, and content that's fallen out of sync.
Turn it on and stay in control
There's no setup wizard. As soon as your site is live and gathering visits, Autopilot has data to work with. It runs experiments and ships the winners for you, and you stay in control the whole time:
- Full, revertible history. Every change is tracked. If you ever don't like something Autopilot did, revert it and go straight back to the version you liked.
- Off whenever you want. You can disable Autopilot at any time. If you'd rather not use it, switch it off and nothing else changes on its own.
- Custom instructions. Give Autopilot extra context about your goals or where to focus, and it tailors its work to exactly those things for better, more relevant results.
Rule of thumb
New site with light traffic? Add a custom instruction or two so Autopilot knows what matters most to you, then let it test and ship. Because every change is logged and reversible, you can always undo anything that doesn't feel right.
Read the insight reports
Autopilot's insight reports are where it shows its thinking. Instead of a wall of charts, you get a short, prioritized read on your site: which page is leaking visitors, which headline isn't landing, which CTA gets ignored. Each insight comes with a suggested next step, so you're never staring at a number wondering what to do about it.
You and your agent share the same dashboard, so you can act on an insight just by chatting: "run the test Autopilot suggested on the pricing page," or "show me why the signup page is underperforming."
Let it run experiments
This is the heart of Autopilot. From a single insight it writes a hypothesis, builds the variant, splits your live traffic between versions, and watches your real goal, signups, clicks, or whatever you're optimizing for. When one version pulls clearly ahead, it ships the winner and retires the loser. No tags to paste, no separate testing tool, no flicker as the page loads.
You don't have to know which headline is better. You just have to let both of them meet real traffic, and Autopilot will tell you which one won.
Because it's all happening inside Frontpage, a winning change can roll out site-wide in one move: if a new button style converts better, every matching button can adopt it cleanly through your design system.
Let it keep the site healthy
Sites rot quietly. A link breaks when you rename a page, a "new for 2024" line goes stale, a date slips out of date. Autopilot watches for exactly these and fixes or flags them, so your site stays current without you running manual audits. It's the unglamorous maintenance that keeps a site feeling cared for.
Steer it by chatting
Autopilot isn't a black box you switch on and walk away from, it's something you direct. Talk to it the same way you edit anything else in Frontpage:
- "Focus this month's tests on the pricing page."
- "Optimize for newsletter signups, not button clicks."
- "Pause experiments while we run our launch campaign."
- "Show me what Autopilot changed last week."
You set the direction and the goal; Autopilot handles the mechanics of getting there.
A quick checklist
- Get your site live so Autopilot has real traffic to learn from.
- Give Autopilot custom instructions so it knows your goal and where to focus.
- Read the insight reports and act on the highest-priority ones first.
- Tell Autopilot which goal and which pages matter most.
- Check in on what it shipped, and adjust the direction as you go.
Want to see what Autopilot is reading? Pair this with Analytics, and if you're still finding your feet, start with Getting started with Frontpage.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to set up Autopilot, or is it automatic?
There's nothing to configure. Once your site is live and collecting visits, Autopilot starts reading your analytics on its own. You decide how hands-off to be: let it surface ideas you approve, or let it run experiments and ship winners without waiting on you.
Will Autopilot change my site without asking?
Autopilot tests variants and rolls out winners automatically, but you're never locked in. Every change is logged in a full history, so you can revert anything and go back to the version you liked, and you can disable Autopilot entirely at any time. You can also give it custom instructions so it focuses on the goals and pages you care about.
How does the A/B testing actually work?
Autopilot writes a hypothesis from your data, builds the variant, splits live traffic between versions, and measures against your real goal, like signups or button clicks. When a version reaches statistical significance, it ships the winner and retires the loser. No snippets, no flicker, no separate tool.
What does Autopilot fix on its own?
Beyond testing, it watches for the quiet problems that erode a site over time: broken internal links, stale dates and copy, and pages that drift out of sync. It flags or fixes them so your site stays healthy without you auditing it by hand.