Shopify's 2026 Global Holiday Retail Report puts numbers on what we've been seeing: 65% of shoppers say they'll use AI for at least one shopping task this season. Brands that prepared already see the return. Cottonique grew AI-referred sales 276% year over year, and ILIA's AI-referred sales nearly tripled.
Here's the catch. Only one-third of shoppers say they trusted an AI agent to buy on their behalf. People research in AI, then buy somewhere else. So your job is to get understood in that research, not just listed. Shopify's own advice: describe the problems you solve in your customers' own words, not in category terms or SEO keywords.
Agents see price first. Everything else, who it's for, why it costs what it does, why people trust you, has to be written down where an agent can find it. That's exactly what a B.R.A.I.N.™ holds: every reason to buy, in your customer's language. Stanley 1913 brought its social, PR and analytics teams into this work, and we'd do the same.