As traditional search rankings give way to AI-driven recommendations, AI is playing a massive role in how items are discovered online. While most retailers expect AI to influence purchasing behavior, many aren’t ready for this shift and don’t have confidence in their product and customer data.

In addition to the importance of data, product content is becoming a strategic growth asset, with many companies prioritizing content optimization as it’s no longer just important to optimize for people using search engines but also for AI.

AI is Reshaping Product Discovery

While AI continues to play a major role in many aspects of ecommerce, one area where it’s expected to truly reshape the space is product discovery. AI product discovery is one of the biggest ecommerce trends, as retailers no longer need to worry only about ensuring people discover their products, but also AI.

Many companies are aware of this shift, as evidenced by the results of a recent ecommerce study by Arktic Fox, which surveyed over 100 retail, ecommerce, and marketing leaders. In fact, it found that 83.4% of retailers and 96% of brands expect AI and agentic commerce to have a significant or modern influence on purchasing behavior.

While some people may expect that they’ve got some time to prepare for this change, the author of the report and the founder of Arktic Fox, Teresa Sperti, doesn’t seem to think so. 

She said that “The AI disruption to discovery is not coming – it’s here”, and added that “I feel like the last six to 12 months has shifted a gear. There’s been a lot more conversation around it. There’s been a lot more exposure to it. And I think people are starting to realise the implications of what it could mean for how consumers discover products and make purchasing decisions.” 

Some Brands Are Already Seeing Changes

To back this up, the report noted that some brands are already seeing changes in traffic patterns linked to AI-driven discovery. While half of those surveyed haven’t seen any traffic differences from AI-driven discovery, around one-third reported some level of traffic decline, with 9% of respondents saying that their traffic fell by 4% or more.

While it’s impossible to predict the future, it’s reasonable to believe that more and more companies may experience similar (or even larger) drops as more people flock to using AI to discover, search, and compare products, as opposed to visiting retailer or brand websites.

Many Companies Lack Confidence 

But despite this general sense of urgency about AI product discovery, and the fact that almost all brands agree that AI will play a major role in product discovery and purchasing behavior, many companies lack the confidence that their product data, customer data, product content, and martech foundations are ready to support AI-driven commerce.

In fact, only 12% of retailers are fully confident in this, while a shocking 0% of brand manufacturers report full confidence. This is surprising and shows that companies have plenty of work to do if they want to be able to attract AI traffic to their sites and stores.

The Importance of Improving Product Content

With traditional search largely giving way to AI recommendations, which often rely on the quality of your product content and data, companies are beginning to see the importance of improving their product content. 

While more than three-quarters of ecommerce brands are investing in AI, the ways they invest in AI vary. According to the Arktic Fox report, the leading area of AI investment for retailers is product content creation and optimization, as it was cited by 78.3% of respondents. The next most popular was improving site search and discovery (76.1%), followed by personalization (67.4%).

For brand manufacturers, the top strategic priority is also improving product content and digital shelf execution. In fact, this area rose from a mere 33% last year, up to 63.2% this year. This highlights just how seriously brands are taking product content as AI continues to become a more and more important part of discovery.

The reason product content is so important today is that it’s the foundation of what AI relies on to make recommendations. Visibility is less about traditional rankings, and more about how well you can help AI understand your product. Clear, natural, and structurally-sound content makes it much easier for AI to learn what your product does, who it’s for, and the benefits it provides.

Our Take

Preparing for the Future of Ecommerce

This study, and the results it revealed, highlight the importance of preparing for the AI-driven future of ecommerce. If you don’t take time to adjust your product content and data, you may quickly fall behind your competitors that do.

Specifically, you need to focus on ensuring your content answers common questions about your items, is written naturally and conversationally, clearly explains what your product is and does, and is structured well with headings, short paragraphs, and bullets where acceptable.

While it has traditionally been difficult to gain insights about how AI discovers your products, and how you can boost this performance, this thankfully may not be the case for much longer.

This is because Google recently announced new AI performance insights, which should help brands learn more about how your items are discovered in AI environments and help you optimize your product content and data.