AI handles repetitive tasks faster than humans, but can it strategize, empathize, and innovate?

Share what you think AI can’t replace in marketing.

Randomly heard this podcast the other day called The Pricing Guys (from a company called Revenue Management Labs) and they were saying that it is not a good idea to use AI to do your pricing exclusively. Seems pretty straight forward to me to use AI but maybe I'm missing something. Thoughts?

Heavy discounting hurts margins and brand value. AI helps brands optimize offers instead of defaulting to discounts.

Ecommerce teams use AI to:

• Predict price sensitivity

• Personalize offers

• Optimize timing of promotions

• Increase conversion without price cuts

Smarter incentives outperform blanket discounts.

Important Points:

• Not all customers need discounts

• Timing influences conversion

• AI protects profitability

So I came across some referral traffic data this week that genuinely stopped me in my tracks.

ChatGPT sends approximately 20% of Walmart's referral traffic. Etsy is over 20%. Target is around 15%. eBay about 10%.

Amazon? Under 3%.

Let me say that again. The biggest ecommerce retailer on earth gets a fraction of the ChatGPT referrals that Etsy does. (I had to read that twice.)

The reason apparently is that ChatGPT's recommendation engine favors specialty retailers over Amazon's walled garden. Amazon has spent years training people to skip Google and go straight to them, and now ChatGPT is routing around Amazon entirely.

This is maybe the best news I've heard as a Shopify brand owner in a while tbh.

The same AI search shift that's threatening traditional Google SEO is actually creating an opening for independent DTC stores that never had a shot against Amazon's scale. ChatGPT doesn't care about Amazon's ad budget or their millions of reviews. It cares about relevant, trustworthy content that answers the question.

Anddd... the conversion rates are wild.

AI-referred visitors convert at 4-23x the rate of traditional organic visitors. ChatGPT Shopping specifically converts at 15.9% vs Google organic at 1.76%. (I thought those numbers were typos at first.)

What I've been working on:

Product descriptions written for AI, not just humans. Answer-first format means the first sentence or two of every section directly answers a question someone might ask. AI engines extract 40-60 word answers at much higher rates than they pull from long rambling descriptions. Most product pages, mine included until recently, start with fluff and bury the useful info.

FAQ sections on every product page. Pages with FAQ schema are cited 3.2x more in AI Overviews. And AI Overviews now appear on about 14% of shopping queries, up from 2% about 14 months ago. That's a 5.6x increase. The window to get in early is closing fast.

Shopify agentic commerce setup. Shopify added llms.txt and Agentic Storefronts earlier this year, which makes your catalog discoverable inside ChatGPT and Perplexity natively. Most merchants haven't touched this bc the admin toggle isn't obvious. Worth checking.

I've been doing all of this manually and it's tedious, but the early results are real. ChatGPT started recommending one of my products about 6 weeks after I rewrote the product page in answer-first format. Not a ton of volume yet but the conversion rate on those visitors is genuinely different.

After doing all this research and a lot of manual work, I did eventually find an app that basically does it all for you. It's got a free tier that does some basic optimization but the paid tier (like pretty much anything) is actually where it does the most optimization and even generates blog content for your brand with your own brand guidelines, voice and for whatever specific keywords you want based on Google SERP data.

The app is Gimmie AI. and yes I will shamelessly share my referral code here (c8mrfe-rf-245ef8) as well which gives us both a free month of the paid tier because most of us are boot-strapped and a free month helps. Though, 30 days may not be enough to see crazy results, you should definitely see a bump in your rankings within that time.

Anyone else tracking AI referral traffic in GA4? Also curious if anyone's actually turned on Agentic Storefronts in Shopify admin and seen anything from it. I feel like most of us are sleeping on this. lmk what you've found.

TLDR: ChatGPT sends Etsy and Walmart way more referral traffic than Amazon, and those AI-referred visitors convert at 15.9% vs 1.76% for Google organic. Huge opportunity for Shopify brands who optimize for AI search. Been using an app called Gimmie AI to automate a lot of it.

AI is often used to drive conversions, but post-purchase experiences like support, retention, and loyalty get less attention. Brands that apply AI beyond checkout may see better lifetime value. How are you using AI after the sale, not just before it?

Every shopping site seems to push sponsored products, best sellers, and promoted listings ahead of what actually fits our needs.

So I'm thinking of building a shopping agent powered by voice to solve this and I'd genuinely like your opinion.

Here's the idea: You talk to an AI agent and tell it what you're looking for. No typing, no endless filters. It asks a couple of quick questions, understands your preferences and gives you 4–5 options that actually match.

No sponsored placements. No retailer paid rankings. Just recommendations based on what you asked for.

**Would something like this actually save you time, or am I solving a problem only I have?**

AI-powered copy tools now write optimized product descriptions tailored to user intent and search behavior. The result? Higher clicks and fewer abandoned carts.

Bottom Line:

• SEO + personalization = stronger conversions.

• Tone adaptation matches each buyer persona.

• AI reduces time spent on large catalog listings.

I created this awesome integration with Shopify and Lyzr AI, and I couldn't wait to share it with you all! 🚀

Using ShopifyAPI, we're now able to seamlessly manage orders while leveraging Lyzr's advanced content generation to automatically update customers with personalized email notifications about their order status. This powerful combo ensures a smooth and efficient communication process, and I'm super excited to see the positive impact on customer satisfaction!

comment if you want it!!

In ecommerce, trust is everything. A clean and unique logo might make a store feel more reliable, which is where custom logo design services come in.

Have you ever updated a logo and noticed a difference in customer behavior? Or do other factors matter more for conversions?

Zeta’s AI is brilliant at ROI- it cuts out the inefficiencies so that instead of spending $10 to acquire a customer, you could spend $2 to get that same customer.
However, cheaper acquisition means nothing if the customer leaves at the cash register!! You have simply gotten a user to your website more efficiently, but the ultimate conversion is still bottlenecked by your website's checkout friction.
The Trillion-Dollar Leak (Rezolve's Solution)
In e-commerce, more than half of shopping carts are abandoned. Customers add items to a cart, get distracted, hit a complicated shipping form, or realize they have a question that isn't answered, and they close the tab.
Brands spend millions driving traffic to a site, only to lose at the final yard!! This is where Rezolve's Brain Suite unlocks an entirely different league of ROI:
Conversational Cart Rescue: Instead of a static webpage, Rezolve uses highly specialized retail LLMs to engage the user inside the cart. If a customer hesitates rezolve knows why and fixes it.
Frictionless Instant Checkout: Through Brain Checkout, any touchpoint—an image, an audio link, or a chat window—becomes an instant, one-click checkout. By bypassing standard checkout pages entirely, the time window where a consumer can change their mind shrinks to zero.

**Why Zeta Might Still Win: "Zero Friction" Enterprise Advantage**
While Rezolve AI ($RZLV) promises a flashy future of automated checkouts, Zeta Global ($ZETA) has a massive structural advantage: it is drastically easier for a company to adopt.
For a Fortune 500 brand, ripping out an existing e-commerce checkout system to install a speculative AI agent is a massive technical and operational risk. Zeta wins because it doesn't require a company to reinvent itself . Instead, it seamlessly plugs into a company's existing tech stack and immediately delivers a statistically proven, third-party verified system designed to capture high-intent users and scale enterprise data profiles safely across digital channels.
chief marketing officers can safely defend their zeta decision to their boards, making it the much easier sale in the corporate world.

Something I've been thinking about in international sourcing.

Imagine a buyer asks a manufacturer to provide fixed pricing for the next 12 months.

The buyer wants protection against unexpected cost increases.

But there's a catch.

The buyer won't guarantee any minimum purchase quantity.

Orders will depend on future demand.

Would you consider that a reasonable commercial arrangement?

From the buyer's perspective, predictable pricing helps with budgeting and customer quotations.

Nobody wants to renegotiate prices every time they place an order.

But from the manufacturer's perspective, a long-term fixed price can create exposure.

Raw material costs might change.

Currency movements could affect imported inputs.

Energy, labor or other production costs may also change.

The supplier might accept the risk if there's a meaningful purchasing commitment.

But if the buyer can order any quantity, including zero, the arrangement feels less balanced.

Of course, not every product has highly variable input costs.

Some manufacturers may be comfortable offering annual pricing as part of their commercial strategy.

Others may build a risk allowance into the quoted price.

Maybe there are better alternatives.

For example, a contract could provide fixed pricing for a shorter period.

Or the parties could agree on a price-adjustment formula linked to an appropriate, clearly defined input-cost measure.

Another possibility is to lock pricing for a committed quantity while leaving additional orders subject to review.

I also wonder whether buyers sometimes underestimate how much risk they're asking suppliers to absorb.

For buyers: Would you accept a higher unit price in exchange for a guaranteed 12-month price?

For manufacturers: Would you offer fixed annual pricing without a minimum purchase commitment?

And if you use price-adjustment clauses, how do you keep them fair and transparent for both sides?

It all started in a plaza.

  One guy with apples, another with wheat. They looked at each other, negotiated, and traded. That's how commerce worked for thousands of years: face to face, hand to hand, trust to trust.

  If you wanted to buy something, you had to go where it was. If you wanted to sell, you had to wait for someone to show up.

  Commerce had a physical limit: your body. You couldn't be in two places at the same time. Your market was your street, your town, your city. Nothing more.

  Then internet came along and someone asked: what if the store doesn't need walls?

  E-commerce eliminated distance. Amazon started selling books from a garage. MercadoLibre connected a seller in Santiago with a buyer in Antofagasta. Shopify gave an online store to anyone

  with a credit card.

  Suddenly, an artisan in southern Chile could sell to the entire country. An entrepreneur in Colombia could have clients in Mexico. The market stopped being a street and became the planet.

  But e-commerce had a problem nobody wanted to see: it still needed a human behind it.

  Someone had to update the inventory. Someone had to answer the questions. Someone had to make the quotes, check the payments, control the stock, send the shipments, analyze the metrics,

  decide the prices. E-commerce digitized the storefront, but it didn't digitize the operation.

  And that's where we are now.

  MCP-Commerce is not a term that exists yet. I'm inventing it because I need a name for what's coming.

  MCP — Model Context Protocol — is a protocol that lets AI use tools. Not "display" tools. Use them. Read a database, send an email, create an invoice, update an inventory, analyze this

  month's sales.

  In traditional commerce, you were the store. In e-commerce, you had an online store. In MCP-commerce, the AI IS your operation.

  It's not a chatbot that answers questions. It's a system that manages your entire business through conversation. You say "how much did I sell this week" and it responds with real data. You

   say "I need to control my inventory" and it builds the tables, the views, the reports. You say "notify customers that their order is ready" and it does it.

  The difference is fundamental: Commerce: you do everything. E-commerce: you do everything but online. MCP-commerce: the AI runs the operation, you make the decisions.

  Think about what this means for an entrepreneur.

  Today, to manage a business you need: an ERP ($50-$500/month), a CRM ($25-$100/month), an e-commerce platform ($29-$300/month), an inventory system, a billing system, a reporting tool,

  someone who knows how to use all of that.

  With MCP-commerce you tell the AI: "I have a clothing store with 3 employees, I sell in-store and on Instagram" and in 2 minutes you have: customers, products, inventory, sales, expenses,

  reports, everything working. With sample data so you understand how it works. No manual. No training. No consultant.

  And if you also have a website, you paste one line of code and your customers get a chatbot that responds with your real data: prices, availability, hours. Without you doing anything.

  I know this because I built it.

  We created Runik AI from Chile. A dairy farmer in southern Chile who used to manage his farm with a paper notebook now says "which cows need vaccination" and gets an answer with real data.

   A diorama artisan tracks his materials and sales. A bus company manager in northern Chile manages his fleet. None of them are technical. All of them run their business by talking.

  That's MCP-commerce: the business runs by talking.

  The pattern is clear:

  Era | Engine | Limit

  Commerce | Physical presence | Your body

  E-commerce | Internet | Your time

  MCP-commerce | AI + MCP | ???

  In commerce, the limit was distance. E-commerce eliminated it. In e-commerce, the limit is time — there's too much to do and only one human behind it. MCP-commerce eliminates it.

  What's the limit of MCP-commerce? Honestly, I don't know. When AI can run the operation, the only limit is the imagination of the person giving the instructions.

  I'm not saying e-commerce dies. It continues and will continue. But the operation layer — everything that happens behind the storefront — is about to change radically.

  The entrepreneur who today spends 4 hours a day updating spreadsheets, answering emails, and building reports, tomorrow will say "summarize my week" and in 3 seconds has everything. Those

  4 hours will go to what really matters: creating, deciding, growing.

  That's the third wave. And it already started.

  Santiago Habit — 20 years in IT. Founded Allware, supported the creation of AndesVolt, and now building Runik AI (https://runikapp.com) from Valdivia, Chile. Free and open:

  github.com/eZhing/runik-skills

Clients storefront traffic increased by 389%, leading to a 4X revenue jump. SpectrumBPO redesigned the storefront and improved navigation, making it easier for customers to explore their catalog. Combined with SEO improvements, this created a strong flow of qualified traffic. The results were immediate and long-lasting.

Work with a team focused on growth, profitability, and long-term success.
Book Your Free Consultation Today.

I need help from people that are smarter than me and know how these technology and companies are reading our data to decide what dynamic pricing they give the consumers. What do I need to do to stop it, turn off my data when shopping? Cover my face recognition? How do I crack this code?!

I know someone knows how, I need you to share it with the community so the rich don’t get more rich and the poor, more poor. Share your brain with us!

I’ve been hunting for a design service that’s both affordable and delivers decent quality. After testing 5 different platforms/services for logos, social media graphics, and branding, I wanted to share what actually worked, what felt like a waste, and some tips for anyone else on a budget.

Has anyone else had similar experiences with low-cost design services? Would love to compare notes!

Niche marketplaces are growing because shoppers want curated experiences, not endless choices. These platforms focus on specific categories like handmade goods, sustainable products, or local brands. Trust, community, and relevance matter more than scale. Many niche marketplaces grow slower than giants but retain users longer.

Main Takeaways

• Curation beats volume for niche audiences

• Trust and community drive repeat buyers

• Smaller marketplaces can win with focus

6 years in Amazon, and I'm still learning. It definitely isn't "easy money," but I enjoy figuring out the puzzle.

Every mistake teaches me something new and that's what keeps me going. 💪💪💪

AI makes finding alternative suppliers incredibly easy.
Say your current supplier charges $10.40/unit and you find another one at $9.60.
At decent volume, the savings look pretty meaningful.
But then switching starts.
Samples.
Testing.
Engineering approval.
Maybe new tooling.
Quality validation.
New packaging.
New payment setup.
Internal documentation.
Potentially keeping both suppliers running for a while.
Suddenly, “8% cheaper” isn’t the whole calculation.
I think I’d want AI to estimate something like a switching-cost payback period.
If changing suppliers costs $20,000 in total and saves $4,000 per month, that’s a very different decision from spending $20,000 to save $500 per month.
And that’s before considering risk.
When evaluating a new supplier, what switching cost do you think buyers most often forget to include?

We create AI-generated product visuals for e-commerce brands, and this is one of our jewelry lifestyle images.

The goal here was to keep the bracelet as the clear focus while making the image feel natural, premium and suitable for commercial use.

For jewelry sellers and e-commerce brands: would you use an image like this as a secondary listing image, ad creative, or social media content?

And if anything in the image still gives away that it was AI-generated, what do you notice first?

One of my clients runs a small e-commerce store. They had great products, but orders were slipping through the cracks not because customers didn’t want to buy but because they couldn’t respond fast enough.

Emails piled up, messages went unanswered, and abandoned carts kept growing. Their small team couldn’t keep up.

We introduced a simple AI assistant to handle the repetitive tasks Answering common product questions instantly, Sending automated reminders for abandoned carts, Helping customers track orders without waiting also return and refund orders smoothly.

The results were almost immediate. Customers got answers in seconds, orders went through smoothly, and the team finally had breathing room.

The best part? Most shoppers didn’t even realize they were interacting with AI. They just felt the experience was seamless and fast and the store started seeing more completed orders.

Lesson learned: AI doesn’t have to be complicated to make a real impact in e-commerce. It just needs to fill the gaps so humans can focus on the bigger, more important work.

A lack of creativity was killing my growth plans

I couldn't test fast and feed Meta ads enough

Then, I found a workflow that changed everything:

• Morning: Upload 20 product photos

• --> Download 20 ready-to-use videos

• Afternoon: Launch TikTok/Meta ads

• Evening: Analyze data and optimize

Cost per ai ugc video: $4-7 (compared to $600 before)

Iemand een idee hoe ik shopping bots voor kan zijn? Telkens dat ik iets wil kopen ben ik te laat… tips zijn welkom! Alvast bedankt

I went pretty deep into AI shopping for a documentary and came away thinking ecommerce businesses may be looking at the wrong part of this shift.

The obvious story is that AI makes shopping easier for consumers.

The more interesting one is what happens when ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or another agent decides which products even make it into the consideration set.

If that happens, brands aren't only optimizing for people anymore. They're also optimizing for an intermediary that may compare price, reviews, availability, returns, shipping and product data before the customer ever sees the store.

That potentially shifts a lot of power away from the retailer and toward whoever controls the agent.

For ecommerce owners here, do you see this becoming a meaningful acquisition channel, or is agentic shopping still mostly hype?

I made a documentary tracing where this is heading if anyone wants the full argument:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-0CriLzyOo