According to a PYMNTS article from July 10, 2026, artificial intelligence-referred shoppers are outperforming organic search visitors in retail. Shopify reported in a May blog post that AI-referred shoppers on its platform converted at nearly 50% higher rates than organic search visitors on product pages, outperforming organic search in 23 of 25 merchant categories by an average of 56%, with 14% higher average order values. Shopify calls this "journey compression," as more than half of AI-referred sessions begin directly on a product detail page, compared with about 20% for organic search. Adobe Analytics found AI-referred traffic to U.S. retail sites grew 393% year over year in the first quarter of 2026, and AI traffic converted 42% better than non-AI traffic in March 2026, reversing from 38% worse a year earlier. AI-referred sessions on Shopify grew more than 8X year over year between January 2025 and March 2026, and AI-referred orders grew nearly 13X. PYMNTS Intelligence found that 47% of eCommerce shoppers used AI during their most recent purchase, and ChatGPT’s share as a product research tool climbed from 2% to 30% in two years, displacing Amazon from second to third place in product research. Adobe’s data showed AI-referred shoppers spend 48% more time on page and browse 13% more pages per