AI traffic surge shows e-commerce is changing, is your enterprise ready?

Online shopping methods and expectations are in a state of evolution and retailers need to avoid becoming extinct.

The only constant is change, and that is as true in digital commerce as in any other aspect of life. Your customers are finding new ways to search, locate and purchase the products they need (agentic AI-based shopping bots), new form factors (mobile devices) and new fulfillment timetables (ultra-fast delivery).

Let’s take a closer look at each of these pivotal examples of online shopping evolution and how you can grow along with your customers rather than get left behind.

Shopping agents of fortune

Traffic from agentic shopping bots is rising dramatically and shows no signs of stopping. According to Adobe data, in July AI traffic to U.S. retail sites was up 62% year-over-year and roughly 1,200% from October 2024. Adobe also expects AI-driven visits during the upcoming holiday season to rise 130% year-over-year.

Leveraging the natural language capabilities of agentic AI, shopping bots let customers search for and purchase products based on factors such as where they’ll be going, what they’ll be doing, and who’ll they be with. This means consumers can describe an event in detail and then search for products that match their needs as determined by the event, rather than by traditional aspects such as pack size, brand, etc.

For example, a shopper seeking gifts for a camping enthusiast could say to their bot,” I’m buying for an experienced camper who needs a complete set of high-priced expert gear suitable for all weather conditions.” The AI shopping bot would then generate highly specific product recommendations based on those exact specifications.

To ensure their products will show up in conversational shopping bot searches, retailers need to include attributes beyond traditional features in their product descriptions. A camping tent needs to be described by factors such as specific materials, what climates or parts of the country it is ideally suited for, and level of user expertise it is appropriate for.

Mobile is the new norm

Mobile shopping is also rapidly increasing in popularity. Data from Statista indicated 60% of all e-commerce sales worldwide are now driven by mobile, and Adobe predicts a record 63% of Cyber Week online spend is set to come through mobile devices, outpacing the full holiday season where mobile will account for 57.4% of overall spend.

There are some basic steps any retailer can take to make their customer environment more mobile-friendly. Stores can be integrated with mobile shopping through simple touchpoints like QR codes that bring up more detailed product information, as well as more complicated interfaces like scan-based shopping and checkout.

For e-commerce sites, retailers should either employ a “mobile first” design strategy that initially develops a site for display on a mobile device and then modifies the user interface for laptop use, or create an entire separate mobile native site.

For apps, retailers should tap into leading-edge capabilities offered by technologies like AI and augmented reality to take full advantage of the mobile device’s shopping functionality. Examples include AI-powered photo search in the Target app which enables customers to use a photo on their phone to browse similar products without needing to describe them in words.

Another example is an AR tool in the new Rugs.com app that lets shoppers virtually place any rug in a room through the phone camera, viewing it at true scale on the floor to confirm size, color and style fit before ordering.

Make it fast – ultra-fast

While not every retailer can offer ultra-fast delivery within 30 minutes or less, customers increasingly expect all retailers to offer delivery in as compressed a time period as possible. 

[READ MORE: Under-30 minute delivery use to continue growing among consumers]

The easiest way to enhance the speed of deliveries is to partner with a third-party platform. Onboarding generally takes a week or less, and the delivery process can be totally or partially outsourced.

The major on-demand delivery platforms can all offer delivery in at least some markets in 30 or even 15 minutes or less, and DoorDash and Uber Eats also offer some drone delivery options which can potentially cut delivery time even more. 

In addition, Walmart and Amazon both provide their own hosted third-party delivery services which can fulfill customer orders in 30 minutes or less, and many drone companies will partner directly with retailers.

Meanwhile, retailers with a brick-and-mortar store fleet have a built-in local distribution network waiting to be put into operation. While delivering from existing brick-and-mortar stores eliminates the need to invest in any new physical infrastructure, starting up isn’t as simple as loading trucks from a store’s back room. 

Retailers will need to reconfigure their store layout to accommodate the space needed for picking and packing online orders, train associates in how to receive, pick and pack online orders, and also reprogram order and inventory management systems to manage this new method of filling digital purchases