Is Agentic Commerce Going to Steal Your Conversions?

Agentic commerce refers to a new era of online shopping where AI agents act on behalf of consumers to research, compare, and make purchasing decisions. Instead of manually browsing, the AI agent handles the buying process, and you purchase through the AI platform. You don’t visit the online store; it’s all done through AI.

For Example you type into an AI tool “I need an outfit for a black-tie event, I’m a female, UK size 14, 5ft 6” tall with dark hair, find me a gown that suits my size and colouring available for delivery by next week”

Currently, in the UK you are shown options like this:

Then when you click on the options, you are shown a selection of available stores and prices

But you’re still required to visit the store to purchase.

Currently in the US, the transaction is made there and then through the AI search tool. Rather than Visit, you are shown a button to ‘buy’ or ‘purchase’ you add your card details and shipping info straight into the tool. See the full run through from ChatGPT here.

Because users will soon have less reason to visit your webstore, your conversion rate will be affected. At the moment, it is unclear how these purchases will be tracked. We’re assuming the data is stored somewhere and you can access it through your usual tracking platforms, but at first, it might come under an unknown channel or be something you’re not used to seeing.

There’s a good chance your upsell conversion rate will also be affected because, without visiting your webstore, you’re not able to show ‘people also bought’ or ‘you may also like’. This could be an opportunity to make sure you’re utilising a post-sale email nurture sequence, but only as long as you have permission from the customer to do this.

Why Agentic Commerce is Something You Need to be Aware of – Even if You’re Not an Ecommerce Brand

Whether you’re an e-commerce brand or not, this new era of utilising AI for purchasing is something you should be keeping on your radar because of the development of these platforms over time.

First AI Impacted Traffic

When AI tools like ChatGPT became free and available to the masses, it affected website traffic. What we noticed was that, yes, AI might mean you see a decrease in your traffic, but it would only be from users who were searching with the “information gathering” search intent. Essentially, your conversions were safe. The drop in traffic means that theoretically, your conversion rate should increase because those visiting your website were more likely to be the ones with a Purchase Intent and so would complete your conversions.

Now it is Impacting Conversions

With Agentic Commerce, this has now been shattered. Users will be able to purchase your products without even visiting your website. It doesn’t matter what their search intent is; your traffic will be affected.

What Will Come Next?

Whether you are an e-commerce brand or not, you need to be thinking about what else AI may be able to do in the future and what that could mean for your brand.

• Will AI know what we want before we do? And make decisions and purchases without us even searching?

• • Will it make our restaurant reservations based solely on location and reviews?

• • Will AI make B2B purchases and orders based on the stock level in the warehouses?

• • Will AI order our new spring wardrobe based on the weather forecast?

There’s a lot of food for thought there. The main thing to consider with the launch and uptake of Agentic Commerce is to be aware of what is changing in AI, and make sure your website is optimised for AI and traditional search.

Work with Bubble

This is all extremely new and can seem daunting. If you want to discuss this in more detail with regard to your business, please contact a member of our team. We can take a good look at your website and explain what you may be experiencing or expect to experience as agentic commerce continues to develop. We can then work on a plan and marketing strategy together that tackles AI optimisation, so you don’t lose online transactions.