In today’s crowded ecommerce landscape, consumers are inundated with marketing emails, social media advertising and promotions, facing endless choices about where to spend their money. It has become increasingly difficult for retailers to stand out – and this challenge is being fundamentally reshaped by a shift in where customer attention lives.
As generative AI (GenAI) accelerates, discovery is moving away from traditional search and SEO toward AI-driven answer engines that curate, summarise and recommend on the customer’s behalf. This represents an epic change in how shoppers find, evaluate and trust brands, raising the bar for retailers to deliver faster, more personalised and more authoritative shopping experiences in order to remain visible and relevant.
So what can brands do to gain advantage over their competitors, attract customers and ultimately increase sales? Michael Scholz, VP, product marketing at global commerce solutions company Commerce, discusses the five key trends that retailers need to embrace to create great shopping experiences and drive success.
Create seamless omnichannel experiences
It’s never been more important to create a smooth, personalised customer experience across all channels. Customers now expect to be able to use email discount codes in store; spend a physical gift card online; or even view personalised product suggestions on a website based on their in-store purchases. To create connected experiences, retailers must prioritise consolidating customer data into a single centralised system, explains Scholz.
Many businesses still hold data for their online and offline platforms separately – for example, storing online customer information in enterprise resource planning software (ERP) and physical store data in a point of sale system (POS). Investing in a comprehensive customer management solution such as a CRM, or an ERP with CRM capabilities, can sync up data between platforms.
Retailers should also consider how to gather data from non-owned platforms, such as Google Shopping. Linking up with services like Google Live Inventory Ads can help retailers reach local shoppers by showcasing product availability at physical stores to customers who are browsing online nearby, bridging the gap between online and offline shopping.
Reduce barriers to purchase
In today’s attention-scarce retail environment, brands must ensure their checkout experiences are fast and frictionless to reduce cart abandonment. Capabilities such as single-page checkout are now table stakes; the next frontier is enabling customers to complete purchases the moment intent is expressed. As AI answer engines increasingly curate and recommend products on a shopper’s behalf, retailers must be prepared to support instant checkout flows that meet customers wherever decisions are being made.
That foundation starts with offering payment methods that are fast, secure and built on trusted providers. Digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay significantly reduce checkout time, while “instant buy” experiences from providers like PayPal and Stripe enable one-click purchasing through stored credentials. “If I have to populate my card details, I’m probably not going to complete the purchase,” says Scholz.
Guest checkout remains popular, so while retaining this option is essential, retailers should also create lightweight incentives for customers to connect with the brand. “If a customer can get a 10% or 15% one-off discount code, that can be critical for driving repeat purchases and moving customers from browsing to conversion,” says Scholz.
Embrace GenAI for search
As platforms such as ChatGPT become smarter, customers are increasingly turning to them for product searches and even purchases. The option for “instant checkout” via these platforms is expected to be available in the UK by the end of this year. This means customers will completely bypass retailers’ websites, social media channels or marketplaces such as Amazon and Etsy to buy products – so brands need to get ready by ensuring their product information is available for answer engines to find.
GenAI platforms already scrape the internet for retailers’ basic data, such as product descriptions, prices and categorisations. But retailers can help these platforms develop a deeper understanding of their brand by actively supplying richer, contextual data, says Scholz.
For example, by sharing brand guidelines, fit guides and detailed product attributes such as materials, sizing logic, sustainability claims, usage scenarios and regional availability. Syndication platforms like Feedonomics can help operationalise this by transforming and distributing structured product, inventory and merchandising data so AI-driven platforms can present more accurate, brand-consistent answers at the moment of discovery.
Choose marketplaces wisely
Selling via online marketplaces can help retailers expand their reach but they can also make it harder to track sales and maintain control over the customer relationship. Many marketplaces also act as competitors to a retailer’s own website. “There are a lot of risks when it comes to marketplaces, but the reality is that you often need to be present to grow sales,” says Scholz. “The key is to think of marketplaces as a new sales channel.”
Prioritisation is essential, he says. Retailers should conduct market research to understand which marketplaces their customers already use. “Otherwise, you end up spending a lot of money going live across multiple platforms, and it can become very complex.” Each marketplace operates differently, meaning a one-size-fits-all approach rarely works.
Retailers can also adopt a testing or trial strategy, experimenting with select marketplaces before scaling, or choosing platforms strategically. Adding incentives such as email or postal coupons, or small personal touches like branded inserts or stickers, can help build loyalty beyond one transaction. “Do something so that you can still own that experience, make it feel branded and give customers a reason to come back to your store,” says Schoz.
Use automation to increase efficiency
AI is set to be one of the most significant forces shaping retail in the coming years. Beyond its role as a new surface for discovery and commerce, it is increasingly being used internally to streamline operations, accelerate execution and improve efficiency across everyday retail workflows.
Rather than manually managing large product catalogues, AI tools can help back-office users more efficiently curate assortments, enrich product attributes, manage taxonomy and maintain consistency across channels, freeing teams to focus on higher-value decisions instead of repetitive data work.
Making this work at scale depends on how well AI systems can access accurate, up-to-date information. Emerging standards such as Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol are designed to make it easier for AI tools to securely connect to a retailer’s existing systems, such as product catalogues, inventory and policies, without relying solely on public web scraping.
In simple terms, this allows AI answer engines to draw from authoritative, structured data rather than incomplete or outdated information. Without these connections, retailers risk AI platforms presenting incorrect products, pricing, or availability, which can undermine trust at the moment of decision.
Speed at scale
Taken together, these capabilities point to a single strategic advantage: speed at scale. Retailers that successfully apply AI across customer experience, content creation and internal operations can move faster – from launching campaigns and updating assortments to responding to changing customer demand – without sacrificing quality or brand control. “Being agile, using the right technology, and leaning into differentiated experiences is going to be critical for success,” concludes Scholz.
In today’s crowded ecommerce landscape, consumers are inundated with marketing emails, social media advertising and promotions, facing endless choices about where to spend their money. It has become increasingly difficult for retailers to stand out – and this challenge is being fundamentally reshaped by a shift in where customer attention lives.
As generative AI (GenAI) accelerates, discovery is moving away from traditional search and SEO toward AI-driven answer engines that curate, summarise and recommend on the customer’s behalf. This represents an epic change in how shoppers find, evaluate and trust brands, raising the bar for retailers to deliver faster, more personalised and more authoritative shopping experiences in order to remain visible and relevant.
So what can brands do to gain advantage over their competitors, attract customers and ultimately increase sales? Michael Scholz, VP, product marketing at global commerce solutions company Commerce, discusses the five key trends that retailers need to embrace to create great shopping experiences and drive success.
