Yes is the short answer.

The longer answer is yes; however, it would be remiss of any company to underestimate just how much the shopping landscape has changed. Consumers have more options than ever before and are now discovering, searching, and buying across multiple channels, platforms, and technologies.

We can now choose to buy directly from:

• A brand’s website
• A brand’s native app.
• A brand built LLMs such as Rufus (Amazon) and Sparky (Walmart)
• Marketplaces such as Amazon or eBay - there are many more, and some quite regional, such as Mercado Libre in Latin America.
• Google*  US only at this point
• Social media - TikTok, in particular, generated  approx $26 billion in global GMV (gross merchandise value) in the first half of 2025
• LLMs such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity- although they are all US-only at this point.

Of course, it’s not just shopping experiences that have changed. Booking a restaurant, purchasing insurance, planning holidays, and a host of other activities used to mean people visited a website.

That’s no longer the case.

However, just because people have choices, or perhaps even because they have choices, it is essential that brands have control over what is said about their product.

​And currently, much of what is said by these various other channels is derived from, yep, you guessed it, the brand’s website.

And this brings me to my main point.

I think we need to reframe the question- or the focus- and start by looking at what a website needs to do. That’s the more important point, in my view.

Brand voice

Much of the information/data used by these other channels and technologies is derived from your site. Other sources include Reddit or Wikipedia, which you do not have control over. But on your site, you control the narrative- your rules, your data, your branding. Your place to firmly establish why someone should choose you over your competitors.

Brand trustworthiness

Along with all the hype around AI, there is also an equally large amount of scepticism. And justifiably so. But it’s not just AI; there is also a hefty amount of wariness around social media and the potential that the ad or video you are watching is a scam. Which is why, so often, when people discover a brand on TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube, their next step is to “Check their website.”

And ideally, when they do visit your site, the CX should feel familiar, and they will be inclined to continue their journey, which in most cases is a conversion of some variety -  purchase, a sign up, a booking or a download.

Which leads me (pun intended) to my next point.  

Conversion optimisation  

Websites are great when done right, at

• selling products
• collecting email
• booking calls
• explaining complex offerings
• hosting long-form content.

It’s not to say that people aren’t shopping on social platforms or natively in LLMs. And I know that these trends will continue to grow in popularity. But it would be a mistake to think that because social and AI commerce are on the rise, traditional eCommerce popularity is falling. These are not mutually exclusive experiences. Rather, they support one another and work best when they work in tandem to ensure a consumer becomes a loyal customer. I like to think of them as two halves of the same funnel, but with different browsing behaviours; humans browse sites, and AI uses agents.

Search & discoverability

As I mentioned earlier, Google, AI search tools, and voice assistants still rely heavily on websites for their sources. And when you are visible, say, in ChatGPT, there will likely be mentions of your competitors. This is brand awareness in action. In truth, it’s also data readiness, or having all your ducks in a row regarding how you talk about your brand, and how you have formatted it on your site.

Or as one person on Medium put it: “The technical infrastructure that powers AI product discovery relies on specific data formats and implementation standards that most online retailers have yet to adopt.” I think organisations and marketers are working on this, but, as with all things, it just takes time.

And even if they don’t visit your site this time, you are getting exposure.

It may even be your gateway into new markets or new audiences, which may translate into a visit at a later date… when the consumer is looking again, but now has a name to search for online. And then when they do visit your site, you need to make it worthwhile. Your website might just be the deciding factor.

I also like this idea from Robert Rose: that websites are where brands can build relationships with their customers.

Here’s what he wrote in a recent article:

Relationships require state, identity, and permission — elements that don’t exist in AI’s dynamic visualisations. They require a user to sign in, engage, contribute, transact, or co-create. They require a brand to choose how it wants people to feel, not what it wants them to know.

This surviving layer of the web could be inherently functional, including:

• Commerce, such as checkout, account management, and fulfilment
• Personalised or exclusive tools
• Participatory programs, such as websites like Lego Ideas, where customers shape future products
• Learning experiences with sequence, nuance, and point of view
• Communities where interaction happens among people, not systems
• Brand storytelling where pacing and craft matter
• Applications that require memory, permissions, and user-specific outcomes

In other words, it’s time to start thinking about your website and the CX in a different way, moving from simply transactional to collaborative, a tool that can truly help brands attract and retain customers. There are plenty of brands that I’d love to make suggestions about new lines and products.​

In the meantime, here are my suggestions for additional reading about some of the new capabilities emerging.

• For more about shopping directly within Google, take a look at this Under the Hood: Universal Commerce Protocol 
• For what UCP means for SEO - What UCP Means for Ecommerce SEO: Preparing for Agentic Commerce 
• And finally, for a look inside Walmart's latest CX leveraging Gemini - Walmart and Google Turn AI Discovery Into Effortless Shopping experiences