This holiday season, shoppers will hand AI assistants their wish lists, complete with budgets, delivery deadlines and must-have details. When prompted, agents will narrow thousands of options to a handful in seconds. A majority (65%) of shoppers plan to use AI for at least one holiday shopping task, according to Shopify’s 2026 Global Holiday Retail Report.
Whether your brand surfaces in agentic commerce hinges on the systems behind your storefront. However, many enterprise retailers rely on systems that were built for a different era, with years of custom code piling up and disconnected channels splintering the view of the customer.
As the holiday season approaches, global brands, from upstarts to household legacy names, are beginning to rethink their commerce platform for the AI age. Lauren Nemeth, vice president of global enterprise at Shopify, shares what an AI-ready, unified commerce foundation looks like and how it helps brands keep the customer relationship, wherever the sale starts.
AI channels are becoming real discovery engines for Shopify merchants. As of Q3, AI-referred traffic to Shopify storefronts was up 2.6x year over year, and orders grew even faster, up 3.3x. Among those storefronts, Stanley 1913’s AI-referred orders in the U.S. grew 5x year over year, and clean beauty brand ILIA’s AI-referred sales nearly tripled.
AI-referred shoppers also begin their journey closer to the finish line. AI channels send them straight to product pages at 3x the rate of organic search, and they convert 64% more often.
But to earn those AI-referred orders, retailers have to clear three hurdles: legibility, reach, and identity.
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