Insights on AI-powered marketing, GEO optimization, and getting your brand recommended by AI assistants.
The grocery aisle is getting an AI makeover, and it is happening faster than most retailers expected. Walmart's AI assistant Sparky is driving a 35% increase in average order value among its users. Instacart became the first platform to achieve a full checkout experience inside ChatGPT. Albertsons i
Agentic commerce has introduced an entirely new vocabulary to retail and e-commerce. Whether you are a merchant evaluating AI-driven sales channels, a developer integrating commerce protocols, or a strategist mapping the future of online retail, this glossary defines every term you need to understan
Your next customer might never visit your website. They will ask an AI assistant to find the right product, compare options, and complete the purchase -- all inside a conversation. The storefront is no longer a webpage. It is a protocol.
Every year, fashion e-commerce generates more than $50 billion in avoidable costs from a single source: returns. Fifty-two percent of those returns trace back to sizing errors -- garments that looked right on screen but fit wrong on the body. For an industry built on visual appeal and personal expre
Ninety-two percent of global shoppers prefer websites that display prices in their local currency. That single statistic explains why cross-border commerce remains one of the highest-friction, highest-opportunity segments in retail. With global cross-border ecommerce sales projected to reach $1.2 tr
AI-driven traffic to US retail sites grew 4,700% year over year according to Adobe. That is not a typo. While most ecommerce teams are still optimizing title tags and meta descriptions, a parallel discovery channel has emerged where AI agents -- not human browsers -- decide which products get recomm
Every AI shopping experience shipping today runs on the same plumbing. When ChatGPT recommends a product and lets you buy it in-chat, when Google AI Mode surfaces merchant inventory, when a LangChain agent builds a cart across three stores -- the transport layer underneath is MCP. The Model Context
The order confirmation email lands. The customer closes the tab. And then, almost immediately, the questions begin: Where is my order? Can I change the delivery address? How do I return this? For most ecommerce operations teams, what happens after checkout is where the real cost center lives -- and
Three AI shopping assistants. Three fundamentally different strategies. If you are a consumer trying to find the best deal, or a merchant deciding where to invest your limited integration budget, the choice between Klarna AI, ChatGPT Shopping, and Perplexity Buy with Pro is no longer hypothetical. E
ChatGPT now has over 700 million weekly users. Google launched native checkout inside AI Mode and Gemini. Microsoft's Copilot Checkout lets shoppers buy without leaving the conversation. Perplexity is processing one-click purchases through PayPal.
On August 2, 2026, the European Union's AI Act begins enforcing its high-risk AI system rules. For ecommerce businesses that sell to EU consumers, use AI-driven pricing, deploy recommendation engines, or operate autonomous purchasing agents, this is not a future concern. It is a compliance deadline
AI-originated orders on Shopify grew **15X between January 2025 and January 2026**. ChatGPT alone now serves over 900 million weekly users, many of whom are shopping directly inside the conversation. Google AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot, and Perplexity are all adding embedded checkout. Shopify merchant
Hexagon helps brands optimize for AI search engines and get recommended by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. Our blog covers Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), AI marketing strategies, and how to improve your brand's visibility in AI-powered search results.