For years, digital commerce has been built around search.
Whether customers were looking for a product, a service, or a piece of information, the journey usually started with a search box. People typed in a few keywords, scanned the results, clicked through to a website, and made decisions from there.
That behaviour is beginning to change.
As AI search, conversational interfaces, and early forms of agentic shopping become more widely adopted, customers are starting to discover and interact with brands in a very different way. Instead of simply typing a few words into Google, they are increasingly using tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and other AI assistants to narrow down choices, compare options, and support decision making.
That was one of the key themes explored during a recent episode of The FODcast, where we sat down with Alex Melen, Co-Founder of SmartSites, to discuss how AI is reshaping digital commerce, why agentic shopping matters, and what brands should be thinking about now.
Alex brings a huge amount of perspective to this conversation. He started his first technology company in 1997 and later co-founded SmartSites with his brother 15 years ago. Today, SmartSites has more than 400 employees and, as Alex explained, is one of the largest privately owned digital marketing agencies in the US.
From search-led behaviour to AI-led discovery
One of Alex’s strongest observations was the speed at which digital behaviour is changing.
As he put it, “the amount of transformation we’re going to see in the next 12 months will be more than the last 12 years.”
That is a big statement, but it reflects the pace of change many businesses are already seeing.
For most of the internet’s history, discovery has been search-led. Customers have learned to think in keywords, whether they are searching for a plumber, a pair of trainers, a product review, or a new ecommerce platform.
AI is beginning to change that pattern.
Rather than searching in short phrases, customers can now have a more conversational interaction with technology. They can ask for recommendations, narrow down their requirements, compare options, and refine their thinking through a dialogue rather than a traditional list of results.
That does not mean traditional search disappears overnight. Alex was clear that customers may still end up on Google, on a website, or in a familiar purchase journey. But the starting point is changing, and that matters for brands.
Why agentic shopping matters
The conversation then moved into agentic shopping, which Alex described in simple terms as having an AI agent shop on your behalf.
That might still sound futuristic, but the foundations are already appearing. AI agents can increasingly help identify products, support purchase decisions, follow instructions, track orders, and manage parts of the buying journey.
Alex was cautious about saying this will become mainstream immediately, but he was clear that it is moving quickly. The important point for ecommerce brands is that this introduces a new type of customer journey. In future, businesses may not only need to market to human customers directly. They may also need to be discoverable and understandable to AI agents acting on behalf of those customers.
That creates a very different commercial challenge.
If an AI agent cannot see, interpret, or access a brand’s products, that brand may simply be excluded from the consideration set. As Alex explained, “if you are invisible to agentic AI… you don’t exist to them.”
Why this is an incremental channel, not a replacement overnight
One of the more practical themes in the episode was the idea of agentic shopping as an incremental opportunity.
Alex was not suggesting that every ecommerce journey will suddenly be handed over to AI agents. In fact, he was clear that adoption is still early and that different categories may move at different speeds.
Repeat purchases and functional products may lend themselves more naturally to automated buying. More considered, emotional, or high-value purchases may still involve a much more human-led journey.
However, the commercial point remains important. Even if agentic shopping represents a small proportion of sales today, brands should still be thinking about how they prepare for it.
For Alex, the risk is not that every business needs to overhaul everything immediately. The risk is that businesses ignore a growing channel until competitors have already built an advantage.
Shopify, platforms and the speed of change
A significant part of the discussion focused on Shopify and why it appears well positioned in this emerging environment.
Alex explained that Shopify’s advantage comes partly from the fact it owns and manages the platform infrastructure. Unlike more self-hosted or highly customised environments, Shopify can roll out features across its ecosystem much more quickly.
That matters in a fast-moving environment where AI search, agentic shopping, and platform integrations are evolving rapidly.
Alex also discussed how Shopify’s position creates both benefits and risks. On one hand, the platform can move quickly, reduce technical complexity, and support new capabilities at scale. On the other, businesses relying heavily on a managed platform need to understand the commercial and operational dependencies that come with that choice.
For many retailers, the question may increasingly become less about whether Shopify is capable, and more about whether there are strong enough reasons not to use it.
What happens to CRO when AI enters the journey?
Another interesting part of the conversation was how AI could change conversion rate optimisation.
Traditional CRO has often focused on how humans move through websites. That can include layout, buttons, colour, messaging, page structure, product presentation and user flow.
But AI agents do not behave like human shoppers.
They do not care whether a button is green or orange. They are not persuaded by visual hierarchy in the same way. They need information to be accessible, structured and interpretable.
Alex’s view was not that CRO disappears. Instead, it evolves. Just as SEO has long involved optimising for both human users and search engines, CRO may increasingly need to consider both human shoppers and AI-driven journeys.
That means businesses may need to think differently about what conversion actually looks like when part of the journey is being influenced, filtered, or completed by AI systems.
The skills commerce teams will need next
The episode also touched on how AI is changing the shape of commerce teams.
Alex’s advice was simple: teams need to use AI, not just talk about it. He made the point that people need to become familiar with the tools, understand how they work, and get close enough to the technology to make informed decisions.
That does not mean everyone needs to become a technical expert. But it does mean that digital commerce teams need to be curious, hands-on and willing to experiment.
Alex also made an interesting observation about junior talent. Rather than simply replacing entry-level roles, he suggested AI may allow less experienced people to operate at a higher level more quickly if they know how to use it well.
In his view, those who can leverage AI effectively are likely to become more valuable, both inside their current organisations and across the wider market.
Avoiding AI for AI’s sake
Despite the excitement around AI, Alex was also clear that not every use case is valuable.
One of the strongest messages from the conversation was that businesses should not adopt AI simply to say they are using it. AI can be expensive, and in some cases, businesses may use it in ways that are less efficient than the processes they already had.
The real question is not whether a business is using AI. It is how the business is using AI, where it creates value, and whether it genuinely improves efficiency, customer experience, discoverability or commercial performance.
That distinction is important because the market is already full of hype. For ecommerce brands, the priority should be practical readiness rather than chasing every new tool or trend.
Agility will matter more than certainty
Towards the end of the conversation, Alex compared the current moment to the early stages of Covid, when businesses had to adapt quickly to changing customer behaviour.
The companies that performed best were often the ones that could shift quickly. They were able to communicate differently, sell through different channels, and meet customers in the way customers wanted to buy at that moment.
Alex believes a similar mindset is needed now.
That does not mean ecommerce brands should make extreme changes immediately. But it does mean they should review their tech stack, understand their current limitations, and stay close to how AI search, agentic shopping, advertising models and platform capabilities are evolving.
The businesses best placed for the next phase of digital commerce will not necessarily be the ones making the loudest AI claims. They will be the ones with the agility to respond when customer behaviour changes.
Final thoughts
What came through clearly in this conversation is that digital commerce is entering a new phase of discovery.
Search is not disappearing, websites are not becoming irrelevant overnight, and human shoppers still matter. But AI search and agentic shopping are beginning to influence how customers find, compare and buy products.
For brands, that creates both risk and opportunity.
The risk is becoming invisible in new AI-led discovery journeys. The opportunity is to prepare early, understand the technology, and build the foundations needed to be found and chosen in different ways.
A big thank you to Alex for sharing his insight and perspective on this topic. If AI search, agentic shopping, ecommerce platforms or the future of digital commerce are currently on your agenda, the full episode is well worth a listen.
