The shift is happening faster than you think - and your website isn't ready.
By 2030, the US retail market alone could see up to $1 trillion in orchestrated revenue from agentic commerce, with global projections reaching as high as $3 trillion to $5 trillion accordingly to a recent research by McKinsey.
Traffic to US retail sites from GenAI browsers and chat services surged 4,700% year-over-year in July 2025, and a BCG survey found that more than half of consumers anticipate using AI assistants for shopping by the end of 2025.
If your ecommerce platform isn’t agent-ready, you'll be invisible to this emerging channel.
What Is Agentic Commerce?
Agentic commerce is when AI agents autonomously research, compare and purchase products on behalf of users. Instead of a customer browsing your site, an AI agent:
Understands the customer's needs through natural conversation
Searches across multiple retailers using product feeds and structured data
Compares options based on price, reviews, availability and fit
Completes the purchase via API, often without the customer visiting your site
Example: A user tells ChatGPT, "I’m going to start tennis lessons and need a new pair of shoes, size 9, under $200 and delivered by Friday." The agent queries product feeds from multiple retailers, evaluates options (with recommendations given based on other user feedback, reviews, etc.) and offers to complete the checkout process – all in seconds – and all without leaving the ChatGPT interface.
Why This Matters Now
Trust in AI companies has improved from 29% in 2024 to 33% in 2025, while 43% of consumers now trust information provided by AI chatbots, up from 40% last year. (Source: Attest). More significantly, among consumers who currently use generative AI tools, 68% trust the information provided by AI tools.
Have you noticed yourself doing a Google search, then reading Google’s AI generated answer and are sometimes satisfied that you got what you need without clicking one of the top 10 websites?
Around 70% of consumers said they would use AI agents to purchase flights, and 65% would use them to book hotels and resorts. For products like medicine, clothes, beauty items and electronics, 50% to 60% of shoppers expressed interest in using AI agents (even if it is just to do some research!). Source: Statistica & SellersCommerce.
U.S. Retailers believe AI agents will be essential for competitive advantage by 2026. And they are right to be worried: customers arriving via AI agents are already 10% more engaged and spend 32% more time on site. BCG First movers aren't just getting visibility - they're getting better-quality traffic.
Retailers who make their catalogues and checkout processes agent-accessible now will dominate agent-mediated sales.
Your website alone isn't enough
A beautiful Adobe, WordPress, Shopify or Magento site means nothing if an AI agent can’t programmatically access your products and complete a purchase.
For example, TripAdvisor has seen search traffic down approximately 30% in two years as vacation planning shifts into AI conversations. AllRecipes lost 15% of traffic as recipe discovery moves into answer engines. Home Depot and Wayfair are seeing 15%+ of referrals coming directly from language models.
The shift is real, and if it hasn’t hit you yet, it will.
The Three Pillars of Agent-Ready Commerce
1. Structured Product Feeds (Autonomous Commerce Protocol)
AI agents need machine-readable product data that goes beyond basic schema.org markup.
What you need:
Rich product feeds following standards like the Autonomous Commerce Protocol (ACP)
Real-time inventory sync so agents don’t recommend out-of-stock items
Detailed attributes (size charts, materials, compatibility specs, use cases)
Performance data (reviews, ratings, return rates, delivery timeframes)
Quick win: Audit your current product feed. If it's just a basic Google Shopping feed, it’s not enough. Start enriching it with structured attributes that answer common customer questions.
Risk if you ignore this: Your products won't appear in agent recommendations - even if you rank #1 on Google today.
2. API-First Checkout & Payment Endpoints
Agents need to complete transactions programmatically, without requiring a human to click through your checkout flow.
What you need:
Headless commerce architecture or API-accessible checkout
Programmatic order placement (agents can submit orders via API)
Secure payment processing that supports agent-initiated transactions
Real-time order confirmation with tracking details returned instantly
Quick win: If you're on Shopify Plus, BigCommerce, or commercetools, you already have API access. Prioritise building a lightweight endpoint that accepts order payloads from approved agents.
If are not on one of these platforms, reach out to us and our team can get you API ready for your product feeds, checkout and payment endpoints.
Risk if you ignore this: Even if agents recommend your products, they'll redirect users to competitors with frictionless checkout.
3. Agent-Friendly Policies & Data
AI agents will prioritise retailers who have transparent, agent-readable policies and performance metrics.
What you need:
Machine-readable return policies (not buried in PDFs)
Clear delivery windows (SLAs that agents can parse)
Trust signals (reviews, sustainability credentials, ethical sourcing data)
Agent authentication protocols (so agents can verify legitimacy)
Quick win: Create a /agent-info endpoint on your site that provides structured JSON with policies, delivery zones and contact details. This takes a day to build and positions you as forward-thinking.
Risk if you ignore this: Agents will deprioritise retailers with unclear policies, favouring competitors with better transparency.
What Retailers Should Do This Quarter
For Digital & Marketing Managers
Audit your product data quality
Most retailers have inconsistent, incomplete product data. Fix this now—it's the foundation of everything.Monitor agent referral traffic
Set up tracking to see if AI agents are already sending traffic your way. If not, you're already behind.Engage with ACP and emerging standards
Technical standards like the Autonomous Commerce Protocol (ACP), Agent-to-Agent (A2A) Protocol and Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) are enabling a new era of intelligent, autonomous agents. Standards are being written now so don't wait for them to be finalised.
For Tech Managers
Build or expose checkout APIs
If your platform supports headless commerce, prioritise API-first checkout. If not, evaluate migration paths.Create agent-specific product feeds
Go beyond Google Shopping. Build feeds optimised for AI consumption with rich metadata.Implement agent authentication
Work with platforms like OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity to understand how agents will authenticate and access your systems.
The Australian Reality Check
While US and UK retailers are already testing agent-ready commerce, Australian businesses are still optimising for Google SEO and Meta ads. That playbook is becoming obsolete.
While smaller Australian retailers face a significant disadvantage due to the lack of time and resources to deploy AI agents, there is still good news for those who use platforms like Shopify. Shopify has partnered with OpenAI to automatically pass through Products and readily accept orders and payments from ChatGPT conversations with end users. On the flip side, while larger brands may have resources to experiment with AI Agents, their priority should be to prepare their bespoke platform to be Agentic Commerce ready.
The numbers are staggering:
ChatGPT fields 2.5 billion prompts per day, with approximately 2.1% related to purchasable products - representing 53 million shopping queries daily.
The agentic AI in retail and ecommerce market was USD $46.74 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach USD $175.11 billion by 2030 - a compound annual growth rate of 30.2%.
Early adopters report that agentic AI reduces shopping time by up to 70% by automating discovery processes.
Bain & Co. reported that 24% would currently be comfortable using it to make a purchase - but from this low starting point and adoption is accelerating rapidly.
Agentic commerce represents a seismic shift in the marketplace, moving us toward a world in which AI anticipates consumer needs, navigates shopping options, negotiates deals and executes transactions. ChatGPT already drives referral traffic underscoring the shift toward conversational discovery. Australian retailers have a narrow window to prepare before this new channel impact their revenue. The retailers who move now can own the AI agent channel.
Before diving into agentic commerce, it’s critical to have a clear AI strategy in place.
Understanding how AI aligns with your business goals, data infrastructure and customer journey will set the foundation for agent-readiness.
If you’re ready to get started, explore our AI Strategy Accelerator – 1 Day Workshop designed to help organisations build a practical roadmap for AI adoption and prepare for the next wave of intelligent commerce.
Learn from us
Join thousands of other Product Design experts who depend on Adrenalin for insights
