Peter McKenna & Nicky McKenna, Founders & Joint CEOs at WSI Digital Advisors
For over twenty years, ecommerce has been built around driving traffic to retailers’ websites.
Optimising SEO, paid search, performance marketing, and UX optimisation. All designed to chase clicks, to get to the top of the Google homepage, to get customers into the environment and through to checkout.
However, the emergence of AI overviews, conversational search and embedded commerce has brought in a new era, and therefore a new model.
Google’s recent launch of its Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), effectively a universal shopping cart that sits over multiple brands, marks the next step in this disruption of the ecommerce space.
This “Universal Cart” allows internet users to discover products, compare deals, and check out across Google’s platforms. It means that there is no longer a need to send users elsewhere, keeping the entire customer journey within their own environment.
That creates a significant challenge for retailers that are still focused on driving visitors to their website.
Recommendations Over Browsing
Historically, retailers were competing on price, range of SKUs, and user experience, as well as in performance marketing and SEO arenas.
Consumers would compare tabs, research the product, and move between multiple ecommerce sites before making a purchase.
AI has compressed choice, with recommendations replacing the browsing experience. Customers are asking questions or giving LLMs direct prompts to find what they want, for example: “I need a dress for a wedding in August. The dress code is smart casual”. It’s more conversational, while also being more specific.
Instead of presenting a list of links and leaving the customer to do the hard work, AI systems increasingly interpret intent on the customer’s behalf and recommend a smaller number of products, retailers or brands.
AI-powered assistants, like ChatGPT and Gemini, increasingly research and compare products on behalf of customers, and emerging “agentic ecommerce” means that the AIs can now even complete the purchase on behalf of the customer. This results in a customer journey that involves fewer searches, fewer tabs, and fewer retailer visits.
It means that, for retailers, visibility is no longer about just being found, but increasingly about being understood well enough to be recommended.
E-commerce’s Biggest Threat? Being Generic
Retailers that are most exposed to this are those that blend in. Those undifferentiated multibrand stores. Retailers that rely on page after page of products. Those that are built purely on transactional SEO.
That’s not going to cut through with AI. It “baulks” at 500 identikit category pages, wafer-thin product descriptions, and endless “best black dress” landing pages.
What do these models like? Confidence, clarity, and authority. There needs to be structure, led by data.
That creates problems for retailers who have spent years optimising purely around search traffic volume rather than building identifiable expertise or brand distinction. It’s a particular challenge for those retailers who specialise in multiple brands.
For instance, if a customer searches for Dove hand cream, established retail brands that have strong authority signals will naturally appeal to AI. But a smaller or less distinctive retailer selling the identical product is basically invisible.
It means that retailers can no longer rely solely on product availability or the effectiveness of their ads. Instead, they need to showcase their expertise, have recognisable (not generic) positioning and structured content.
It is within this change that mid-sized retailers may have the advantage.
Mid-sized Retailer Time To Shine
The largest retailers often face the biggest obstacles in adapting to these changes. Legacy systems, siloed teams, disjointed customer data and organisational complexity can slow decision-making.
Then at the other end of the scale, smaller retailers often lack the digital footprint, authority signals or ecommerce maturity required to appear within AI-driven discovery.
Mid-sized retailers, however, are in the sweet spot. They are typically established enough to have that recognised authority, have a meaningful ecommerce infrastructure, specialised enough to be distinct, and agile enough to be quick to adapt.
Retailers with clear positioning, specialist expertise and effective customer experiences are significantly better placed for recommendation-led commerce than businesses built around large, generic catalogues.
In short, if a retailer knows who they are, AI will reward them.
