Imagine your online store is visited not by a human, but by artificial intelligence. Its task is to find the right product and buy it. This isn't a scene from a sci-fi movie-it's already a reality that's changing the rules of e-commerce.
The entire classical model of customer interaction - convenient interface, bright design, thoughtful user experience - suddenly becomes irrelevant. The new "customer" - the AI agent - doesn't care about any of this. Whoever first understands how to work with such a client will gain a huge advantage.
How is an AI customer different from a human?
1. No emotions. Pressuring them with "salesy" colors, beautiful fonts, or eye-catching banners is useless. They don't respond to it.
2. No motivation to figure things out. A live human, if they really need a product, might spend time on a complex menu or a confusing checkout process. An AI agent won't. If it doesn't understand what to do, it will simply abort the operation. For the store, this is a direct lost order.
What needs to change first?
1. The buying process: eliminate unnecessary steps
One of the first casualties is registration and personal accounts. A person gives the agent a command: "Buy this specific brand of toothpaste." This command doesn't include the words "register on the website." If a registration form blocks the agent's path, it likely won't fill it out and will simply leave. This means stores must enable purchasing without mandatory registration. Following this, the order notification system will also change - it can no longer be tied to a personal account.
2. Interface: clarity over beauty
The agent interacts with the site by clicking on elements. The clearer they are, the better.
- Good for AI: Buttons with clear labels and properly written tags (alt, title).
- Bad for AI: Elements placed too close together, unclear icons, radio buttons and checkboxes without clear labels, pop-ups. Anything that requires a double-click or guesswork confuses the agent and leads to an abandoned purchase.
3. Content: speak the customer's language
Texts, especially product names, become particularly important.
- Forget abbreviations. If your product has a complex model name like "XYZ-2000," a human is unlikely to name it precisely. They'll tell their agent: "Find a wireless speaker with a voice assistant." The product name and description must include all these "colloquial" phrases and synonyms, accounting for how people speak in different regions.
- Descriptions are for AI, not humans. Humans no longer need long texts on product pages. They'll simply ask their agent: "Tell me about this phone's specifications." The agent will read the description and relay it to the owner. This means the text itself can be removed from the visible part of the page and placed "under the hood" - in the HTML code - where AI can read it.
Architecture for AI: simplicity and predictability
To prevent AI agents from getting lost and leaving without completing a purchase, the site architecture must be built on several key principles:
- Statuses and URLs. Each stage of the process (e.g., cart, shipping selection, payment) must have its own unique URL. The agent can easily determine which step it's on simply by looking at the address bar.
- Clear actions. Key steps, like proceeding to payment, should be executed via standard HTML form submission (POST) or simple links (GET), not complex AJAX requests. This is unambiguous and predictable for the AI agent.
- Explicit actions. Buttons must have clear name attributes and text (e.g., ). The agent should have zero doubt about what action it is performing.
Conclusion
The era of AI customers has already begun. Companies that want to stay afloat need to rethink their online strategies today, focusing not on visual effects, but on machine logic, simplicity, and clarity for their new primary customer - the algorithm. The key to success is architecture that a robot can understand.