{"id":4323375,"date":"2025-08-01T18:16:38","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T16:16:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.deptagency.com\/?post_type=article&p=4323375"},"modified":"2025-08-06T18:37:23","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T16:37:23","slug":"how-agentic-commerce-is-reshaping-customer-journeys","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.deptagency.com\/en-uki\/insight\/how-agentic-commerce-is-reshaping-customer-journeys\/","title":{"rendered":"How agentic commerce is reshaping customer journeys\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/mask><\/g><\/svg>\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tInsights\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\tHow agentic commerce is reshaping customer journeys\u00a0<\/h1>
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\n\t\tBridget Fahrland\t\t
\n\t\tVP of Applied AI\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\tDate\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\tAugust 1, 2025\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\tIn July 2025, DEPT\u00ae and Shopify<\/a> hosted a closed-door roundtable with senior technology executives from global commerce brands. The following insight offers a glimpse into the conversation we had about AI, infrastructure, and the future of commerce platforms.\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n\n\tProduct discovery no longer begins with a keyword and ends with a click. <\/p>\n\tThe entire customer journey is being rewritten by machines that think, browse, and buy for us, and it’s happening fast and often invisibly.

Today, more shopping journeys are being influenced by generative engines, smart assistants, and AI-powered tools that browse, recommend, and even transact on behalf of users. These tools offer suggestions, make decisions, and bypass traditional paths to purchase.

This marks the beginning of agentic commerce<\/strong>: a model where AI serves as the customer’s co-pilot (and sometimes, their representative).<\/p><\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n
\n\t\u201c<\/span>\n\tWe\u2019re moving toward a zero-click world. But here\u2019s the truth: customers never wanted to click in the first place.<\/p>\t
\n\t\u201d<\/span>\n\n\tBridget Fahrland, VP of Applied AI at DEPT<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\t\n\tAs the landscape changes, most brands are still designing for an outdated reality: one where people search, land on a homepage, browse, filter, click, evaluate, and make a decision. But what if that entire loop is compressed to a single conversational moment?<\/p><\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n\n\tWhat is agentic commerce, and why now?<\/h2>\n\tAgentic commerce refers to shopping experiences where AI-powered agents or tools (ChatGPT, voice assistants, or embedded commerce copilots) act on behalf of users. These agents might:<\/p>\n\n\t
  • Browse your site<\/li>
  • Parse product details<\/li>
  • Compare prices<\/li>
  • Complete a transaction<\/li><\/ul>\n\nAnd they might do all of this without the user ever laying eyes on your PDP.

    These behaviours are already emerging. Consumers are using AI to summarise reviews, explore collections via natural language, and even create carts via chat.

    This shift is being driven by:<\/p>\n\n\n\t
  • The rise of LLM-powered search experiences (e.g. Google SGE, Perplexity)<\/li>
  • Integration of commerce tools into AI platforms<\/li>
  • Consumer fatigue with clunky, multi-click buying flows<\/li><\/ul>\n<\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n\n\t\u2026 but commerce isn\u2019t designed for agents<\/h2>\n\tToday\u2019s ecommerce experiences were built for humans. You optimise for metrics like time on site, click-through rates, and even pages per session.\u00a0

    But agents don\u2019t care about any of those things.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n
    \n\t\u201c<\/span>\n\tWe\u2019ve been setting up experiences where there’s search and browse and click and click and click. But nobody liked that.<\/p>\t
    \n\t\u201d<\/span>\n\n\tBridget Fahrland<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\t\n\tAn agent doesn\u2019t want to admire your UI. It wants fast access to structured, accurate, and well-tagged data. And that means rethinking not just design, but how you prepare and present content under the hood.<\/p><\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n\n\tWhat makes a site AI-browsable?<\/h2>\n\tSo what does it mean to design for agentic commerce? Here are some practical shifts brands can start exploring:

    1. Structured product data
    <\/strong>Ensure key information (dimensions, ingredients, shipping, stock) is accessible, consistent, and machine-readable. Schema markup is a must.

    2. Semantic clarity over visual tricks
    <\/strong>Avoid hiding vital information behind carousels, tabs, or image-only formats. AI tools can miss what a human might explore visually.

    3. Modular frontends
    <\/strong>Composable, headless architecture makes it easier to expose content to multiple surfaces, including AI agents.

    4. Taxonomy and tags that make sense
    <\/strong>Your internal categorisation matters. Poor naming conventions and inconsistent tagging can confuse automated agents.

    5. Experimentation infrastructure
    <\/strong>You don\u2019t need to rebuild from scratch. Test an AI-optimised PDP, create a chatbot plugin, or trial a guided shopping assistant in one vertical.<\/p><\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n\n\tDon\u2019t panic. Experiment<\/h2>\n\tAgentic commerce doesn\u2019t mean every customer disappears behind a chatbot. It means some of them will interact with your brand through new channels, and     you need to be ready<\/a>.

    This is less about replatforming and more about creating optionality. About testing ways to serve both the human eye and the machine parser.

    Start small. Run controlled pilots. Observe how agents behave. Learn what metadata they rely on. You don\u2019t need to predict the future perfectly \u2014 you just need to be able to adapt as it unfolds.<\/p><\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n
    \n\t\u201c<\/span>\n\tYou don\u2019t need to predict the future perfectly \u2014 you just need to be able to adapt as it unfolds.<\/p>\t
    \n\t\u201d<\/span>\n\n\t<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\tConclusion: design for humans, prepare for machines<\/h2>\n\tAgentic commerce isn\u2019t a gimmick. It\u2019s a natural progression of the digital shopping journey, and one that\u2019s finally removing friction customers never wanted in the first place.

    The brands that succeed in this next era will be those that serve both audiences:<\/p>\n\n\t
  • Humans who crave convenience, clarity, and care<\/li>
  • Machines that crave structure, speed, and precision<\/li><\/ul>\n\nDesign for both. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n
    \n\tOn our Mind<\/span><\/h3>\n\tVIEW ALL INSIGHTS<\/a>\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t
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