The 2026 eCommerce playbook just changed. Completely

Most "AI + eCommerce" content is bullshit. There. I said it. It's automation porn dressed up as strategy. Better ads. Faster copy. Smarter chatbots. None of that matters. What matters is this: the ground is shifting under your feet. How customers find you. How they decide. Where they buy. That's all changing. Not in five years. Now. And if you're still playing yesterday's game, you've already lost.

The Signal

AI is moving eCommerce from traffic games to legibility games.

The brands that win in the next 24 months won't have the biggest ad budgets. They won't have the slickest SEO. They'll have something better: they'll be the ones AI agents can understand, recommend, and sell. Discovery is moving upstream. Conversion is slipping out of your hands. And personalization? It's finally real—intent-driven, moment-by-moment, not the demographic fantasy you've been sold.

Here are the 3 trends rewriting the rules. Pay attention or pay the price.

The Playbook

1. Discovery is moving from search bars to conversations

Your customers aren't typing keywords anymore. They're asking questions.

"Best black dress for a winter wedding under $300."
"Running shoes for flat feet, mostly city walks."

And AI doesn't send them to you. It answers them. Right there. Decision made.

ChatGPT. Perplexity. Google's AI Overviews. They're not traffic sources anymore. They're gatekeepers. Gartner says search engine volume drops 25% by 2026 because of this. That's not a trend. That's a guillotine on your acquisition model.

What changes:

• SEO dies slowly, then suddenly

• Your product pages stop mattering in discovery

• Structured product knowledge is the only moat left

The brand that teaches AI what it sells—clearly, deeply, structurally—owns the recommendation. I'm watching this happen with clients. Rich product data? They're being surfaced. Thin descriptions? They're ghosts.

What you do this quarter:
Audit your product feed like your business depends on it. Because it does. Ask: can an AI agent explain why someone should buy my product over a competitor's? If the answer is no, you're invisible.

2. The product page is dying. The buying agent is replacing it.

Your product page was built for humans who read, scroll, compare, decide. AI agents don't do that. They evaluate in milliseconds. They compare across your entire category. They narrow it down to one or two winners. Then they push the buy button.

Shopify's AI agents. Amazon's Rufus. This isn't coming. It's here. Bain says 30% of eCommerce purchases will be mediated by AI agents by 2027. Three years. That's nothing.

What changes:

• Conversion happens before they reach your site

• Copy is for machines first, humans second

• You compete on clarity, not charm

If your product can't be understood by an AI, it won't be recommended. Period. I don't care how beautiful your brand is. I'm watching brands with stunning creative lose to brands with better data architecture. It's brutal. It's real.

What you do this quarter:
Rewrite every product description with structured attributes. Fabric. Fit. Use case. Sizing. Care. Make it machine-readable or die trying.

3. Personalization is moving from segments to intent-in-the-moment

"Men, 25–34, urban" was always nonsense. Now it's dead nonsense.

AI personalizes on context. Mood. Use case. Time. The same customer sees different products on the same day depending on what they need right now. McKinsey found real-time personalization increases conversion 10–15% when it's intent-driven. Not demographic fantasies. Intent.

What changes:

• Static collections are obsolete

• Merchandising becomes dynamic

• Your store reshapes itself per session

This is adaptive commerce. Your storefront becomes liquid. Brands thinking in campaigns lose. Brands thinking in systems win.

What you do this quarter:
Track intent signals. Search terms. Browse patterns. Cart context. Build collections that respond to need states in real time, not personas from a deck.

The Leverage Insight

AI doesn't just change how eCommerce works. It changes where power lives.

Power shifts from:

• Traffic → Presence

• Persuasion → Understanding

• Volume → Precision

The winners won't be the loudest. They'll be the clearest.

If you can't be understood, you can't be recommended.
If you can't be recommended, you're dead.

Simple as that.

The Runway Reel

Creativity still matters

AI Updates

1. ChatGPT drove 16% of Zara's traffic in Q3 2025 (Dec 2025)
Impact: AI search is now a primary acquisition channel. If you're not optimized for AI discovery (structured data, clear attributes, machine-readable feeds), you're invisible to 1 in 4 shoppers who start on AI platforms.

2. Amazon sued Perplexity, then launched "Buy for Me" that scrapes Shopify stores without consent (Nov-Dec 2025)
Impact: The AI shopping wars are here. 180+ Shopify merchants woke up to their products listed on Amazon without permission. Agentic commerce is happening whether you opt in or not—McKinsey projects $1 trillion in US retail by 2030.

3. Shopify reports AI-driven traffic up 7x, orders up 11x since January 2025 (Dec 2025)
Impact: Shopify launched "Agentic Storefronts" letting merchants publish directly to ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Copilot. If your product catalog isn't structured for AI agents, you're locked out of the fastest-growing commerce channel.

4. BoF reports 41% of consumers trust AI search results more than traditional ads (Dec 2025)
Impact: Shopping-related AI searches grew 4,700% year-over-year. AI-driven revenue per visit grew 84%. Your SEO strategy is dying. Your new priority: answer optimization, not traffic optimization.

5. McKinsey/BoF State of Fashion 2026: "The winners will be the most legible to machines" (Dec 2025)
Impact: Brands risk losing ownership of the customer relationship as AI agents become the primary interface. 53% of US consumers who use AI for search also use it to shop. Power is shifting from persuasion to understanding.

A Final Note

LET'S TALK

Are you optimizing your product data for AI agents, or are you still pretending it's 2019?

Hit reply. Tell me what you're seeing. Or tell me I'm wrong. Either way, I want to know.

—Tam

Let me know what you thought of this edition.Until next time,