Insights on AI-powered marketing, GEO optimization, and getting your brand recommended by AI assistants.
AI-originated orders on Shopify grew **15X between January 2025 and January 2026**. ChatGPT alone now serves over 900 million weekly users, many of whom are shopping directly inside the conversation. Google AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot, and Perplexity are all adding embedded checkout. Shopify merchant
With 3.5 billion monthly active users, 98% message open rates, and 72% of Latin American conversational commerce flowing through its platform, WhatsApp is the world's largest untapped agentic commerce channel. While brands pour budgets into saturated ad networks and crowded marketplaces, the messagi
Your customers are asking AI to shop for them. Right now, someone in your target audience is typing "find me the best [your product category]" into ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity. An AI agent is evaluating your brand against every competitor in seconds, deciding whether to recommend you or skip you
Agentic commerce -- the model in which AI agents shop, negotiate, and transact on behalf of consumers -- is rewriting the economics of retail. This reference compiles every major statistic from McKinsey, IBM, BCG, Gartner, Morgan Stanley, Bain, Adobe, Salesforce, Forrester, and other primary sources
The order confirmation email lands. The customer closes the tab. And then, almost immediately, the questions begin: Where is my order? Can I change the delivery address? How do I return this? For most ecommerce operations teams, what happens after checkout is where the real cost center lives -- and
Your next customer might never visit your website. They will ask an AI assistant to find the right product, compare options, and complete the purchase -- all inside a conversation. The storefront is no longer a webpage. It is a protocol.
On August 2, 2026, the European Union's AI Act begins enforcing its high-risk AI system rules. For ecommerce businesses that sell to EU consumers, use AI-driven pricing, deploy recommendation engines, or operate autonomous purchasing agents, this is not a future concern. It is a compliance deadline
NRF 2026 -- Retail's Big Show -- took over the Javits Center in January with a single, unmistakable message: agentic commerce is no longer a concept deck. It is shipping code. Over the course of three days, Google open-sourced a new commerce protocol, Stripe and OpenAI launched a rival standard with
WeChat proved something that Western tech executives spent a decade trying to disprove: a messaging app can be a full-stack commerce platform. At its peak, WeChat's Mini Programs generated nearly $140 billion in annual GMV, WeChat Pay processed over one billion transactions per day, and 400 million
If you had to pick one country on Earth where agentic commerce -- AI agents that discover, negotiate, and complete purchases on behalf of consumers -- will reach mass adoption first, the answer is Brazil. Not the United States. Not China. Brazil.
Agentic commerce has introduced an entirely new vocabulary to retail and e-commerce. Whether you are a merchant evaluating AI-driven sales channels, a developer integrating commerce protocols, or a strategist mapping the future of online retail, this glossary defines every term you need to understan
Five protocols. Four transports. Three payment layers. Two competing alliance blocs. And one question your board will ask before the year is out: can customers buy from us through an AI agent?
Hexagon helps brands optimize for AI search engines and get recommended by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. Our blog covers Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), AI marketing strategies, and how to improve your brand's visibility in AI-powered search results.