Agentic Commerce: Will AI Soon Be Doing Our Shopping?
AI traffic on retail sites has grown fivefold in just one year—and it converts better than ever. So will AI soon be shopping for us? Verena Gründel on agentic commerce and why many online stores aren’t ready for it yet.
Would you let an AI decide what you buy?
I’m skeptical about agentic commerce. I can hardly imagine an agent deciding what it buys for me. Whether it’s a charging cable, sunscreen, or coffee beans. Or maybe not?
After all, AI has become an integral part of the purchasing process. +393 percent. That’s how much AI traffic on U.S. retail sites has grown in just one year. A fivefold increase.
And this traffic is by no means slop. Shoppers who come via LLMs convert better, and better than they used to. In the past, AI traffic converted 38% worse than traffic from other sources. Today, the tables have turned: The conversion rate for AI traffic is +42% better than the average for other sources.
Visitors from AI sources stay on retail websites nearly 50% longer and view 13% more pages per visit.
For this analysis, Adobe evaluated 1 billion website visits earlier this year.
This numbers show: AI-driven product curation has become very effective. And we humans trust AI’s suggestions. So the next step—AI actually making purchases for us—isn’t far off.
When I think about it: I think I could see this happening with coffee beans or charging cables. When it comes to skincare products, fashion, or shoes, I’d still need to be convinced. But I certainly use the pre-selection feature, especially when researching complex products.
However, one-third (34%) of the product detail pages on the online stores we examined are technically unreadable by LLMs. So this is an area that many retailer still need to work on.
Have you already tested how well your online store can be read by AI? Or is that your homework for the next few weeks?
