The evolution of e-commerce: the new touchpoint is not where you think
“Hey chat, help me find a pair of trending red sneakers for around 80 euros.”
And boom, multiple options for trending red sneakers appear.
No more effort, just a simple question to AI. It handles everything. It finds products, compares prices, and even completes the purchase. All without the consumer ever visiting your website.
For years, brands have built their success on direct website traffic and conversion-focused funnels. But customer behavior is shifting toward new forms of interaction. Think AI assistants, voice search, and embedded shopping via platforms that help consumers discover, compare, and buy without visiting a webshop.
Shopify makes sure your webshop and products are included in those AI conversations with their new tool: the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP). An infrastructure that allows products from brands to become directly available in AI environments like Google’s Gemini or Microsoft Copilot. Consumers can discover and purchase products through AI interfaces, without ever going through traditional channels.
This shift raises a logical question:
Is my webshop still relevant in a world where purchase decisions are increasingly made outside my own channels?
The short answer is yes.
But its role is evolutionary changing.
What does this mean for your brand?
Your website remains essential, but not as the final stop in the customer journey. The path to purchase is shorter, more fragmented, and less linear. That is why your digital environment needs to be more strategically built than ever, because that is how you appear in the list of options given to the consumer by AI.
Not only beauty, but also the brains
Where the homepage or product page used to be the first point of contact, in AI commerce, that role is taken over by your product feed. AI systems do not pull their information from your design or user experience. They rely on the structured data behind it.
Brands that do not invest in high-quality, consistent product information, will show up less often or not at all.
So how to build a future-proof webshop that stays visible in the algorithm?
We follow a simple principle. Your data determines your visibility.
Brands that manage their information structure actively participate in the new ecosystem. Brands that do not will slowly disappear from the algorithm.
Your website should meet the following standards:
- Completed metafields, categories and attributes
- AI-optimized product descriptions
- Reviews, user-generated content, and FAQs that build context and trust
- Seamless connections with shopping feeds and discovery channels
This way AI understands your product feed. AI can guide the purchase, but decisions are still made based on brand perception, emotional connection, and context. AI can’t take over that.
The customer remains central
That is why it is essential to focus not only on discovery and conversion, but on relevance at every step of the journey.
Thinking from the brand: consistency across every channel. A brand depends on algorithms, but it is built through recognition and trust. In a fragmented landscape, brand consistency is no longer optional. It is essential.
When brand strategy and data architecture work together, your brand becomes:
- Recognizable, even outside your owned channels
- Consistent, no matter the platform
- Relevant, even as consumer behavior shifts
So, what remains essential?
In this new e-commerce reality, your foundation must include:
- A clear brand story
- Well-structured and accessible product data
- A scalable technical setup
- A strategy built for a changing customer journey
“So, the webshop is not dead. It is more important than ever.”
You just have to pop yourself the question: Is it playing the right role in an AI-driven commerce environment?
