eCom Buzz

Your eCommerce Store Isn’t Ready for AI, and That’s a Problem

Five strategies to future-proof your customer experience and build your AI advantage

AI is reshaping how customers shop, discover products, and interact with brands. In this episode of eCom Buzz, Joseph Maxwell explains five actionable strategies executives can use to prepare their stores for an AI-driven future. You will learn how to collect and organize customer data, optimize your website for AI-powered search, connect your systems, and identify performance gaps that AI can solve. Preparing now ensures that when advanced AI tools arrive, your business is ready to act, instead of playing catch-up.

AI is no longer a distant trend. It is here, it is evolving quickly, and it is already changing how customers shop, how products are discovered, and how competitors gain an edge. There is an uncomfortable truth that many executives have not yet faced:

Most eCommerce stores are not prepared for AI. And the difference comes down to one thing: data.

These five strategies will help you improve conversion rates, build customer loyalty, and prepare your business for the AI-driven future.

Watch the full episode →

The AI Readiness Gap in eCommerce

Most executives already know that AI will influence the future of digital commerce. What many do not realize is that preparing for AI is not about chasing the newest tools or adding trendy plugins. It is about ensuring that your people, processes, and systems are ready to provide the structured data AI needs to deliver meaningful results.

We often see three common gaps:

Incomplete customer data: Companies are sitting on valuable insights but fail to collect, organize, or analyze them.
Content that is not AI-readable: Product descriptions, FAQs, and landing pages are not optimized for the next generation of AI-powered search and recommendations.
Disconnected systems: Without an integrated foundation, AI cannot leverage your customer data to personalize experiences effectively.

AI will not replace human strategy, but it will reward the brands that prepare early and penalize those that wait.

Five Strategies to Build Your AI Advantage

1. Turn Customer Conversations Into a Strategic Asset

Every chat log, support ticket, product quiz, and on-site search term tells a story about what your customers want. Most companies do not capture this data in a way that is actionable, and that creates significant blind spots.

Every unanswered customer question today becomes an untrainable gap in your AI systems tomorrow.

For example, we worked with a retailer that wanted to improve personalization for their customers. By reviewing customer service transcripts, on-site search terms, and support emails, we identified recurring frustrations that were stopping buyers from completing purchases. Once we updated their product detail pages to address those concerns, we saw a measurable lift in conversions and created a stronger foundation for AI-powered personalization.

What to do now:

Centralize all customer interactions into a single source of truth
Tag recurring themes, issues, and questions as they come in
Build a “voice of customer” dataset that AI can reference for future personalization

The more structured data you collect now, the more powerful your AI-driven systems will become later.

2. Find and Fix Your Biggest Money Leak

If you only focus on one improvement this quarter, make it the issue that is hurting your bottom line the most.

For some brands, it’s abandoned carts. For others, it’s overwhelmed support teams or visitors struggling to choose the right product.

AI can help, but only if you know where to focus.

Identify the friction point.
Quantify the problem.
Start collecting granular data around it.

AI feeds on data, and the company with the best dataset wins.

Ask yourself: “If we fixed one problem right now, which change would deliver the highest impact?” When you answer that, focus your energy and AI strategy there first.

3. Get Inside Your Customer’s Head

Analytics can tell you what your customers are doing, but they cannot explain why they are doing it.

To compete in an AI-driven future, you need insights directly from your customers.

One of our favorite approaches is conducting User Studies. We call real customers, ask intentional questions, and listen closely to what they say.

From there, we blend these insights with heatmaps, session recordings, and analytics to build detailed customer personas. When AI begins personalizing experiences at scale, you’ll know exactly what messaging resonates and why.

Your competitors will guess. You’ll win.

4. Write Like AI Will Read It

The way customers search for products is changing. AI-driven tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini are becoming trusted assistants that deliver product suggestions and answer buying questions directly.

This shift means your website copy cannot just be optimized for Google anymore. It must also be structured in a way that AI systems can easily parse, summarize, and present to customers.

Steps to take now:

Rewrite product descriptions with clear, complete information
Build FAQs that address the most common customer questions
Incorporate real feedback and insights from your customers into landing pages

The takeaway is simple: write as if your content will be consumed by both humans and AI systems, because it will be.

5. Build Your Invisible Advantage

Even the most advanced AI tools are only as effective as the systems that support them.

Your automation layer (the infrastructure connecting your eCommerce platform, CRM, marketing tools, and analytics) is where AI begins to create real value. Without integration, your customer experiences remain fragmented and personalization cannot scale.

Start by connecting:

Your CRM, CDP, and marketing automation platforms
Your content and product data sources
Your analytics tools and customer service systems

Make your systems talk to each other. When these systems communicate seamlessly, AI can act on the information it gathers and deliver meaningful, personalized experiences in real time. This integration creates an advantage that competitors cannot easily replicate.

Prepare Today to Win Tomorrow

The companies that will dominate the next era of eCommerce will not be the ones with the flashiest AI tools. They will be the ones building the right foundation today by collecting customer data, improving content quality, and connecting their systems into a cohesive ecosystem.

AI will reward the prepared. The choices you make now will define your ability to compete six months from today.

In the coming weeks, we will release deep-dive eCom Buzz videos exploring each of these strategies in more detail. Be sure to subscribe so you do not miss them.

Watch the full episode →

Start by collecting and organizing customer data today. Every chat, quiz answer, purchase history, and email holds valuable insights that AI will need to personalize experiences later. Then review your site content, your automation layer, and your biggest performance gaps to ensure you are ready when more advanced AI tools arrive.

2. Find and Fix Your Biggest Money Leak

If you only focus on one improvement this quarter, make it the issue that is hurting your bottom line the most.

For some brands, the biggest problem is abandoned carts. For others, it is poor product discovery, weak content, or overwhelmed support teams. Finding this single point of failure should be your starting point, because AI thrives when it solves one defined challenge before scaling to the rest of your customer experience.

At SwiftOtter, we helped a client struggling with an unusually high bounce rate on mobile. After digging into the data, we learned that shoppers were leaving because the sizing charts were unclear. We built a guided sizing assistant powered by AI, and within three months, bounce rates dropped by 27 percent.

Ask yourself: “If we fixed one problem right now, which change would deliver the highest impact?” When you answer that, focus your energy and AI strategy there first.

Start Preparing Your Store for AI

AI is moving fast, and the companies that win will be the ones that start preparing now. Let’s chat about the steps to build your advantage now.