New Stripe research puts a number on something many online sellers may have started to notice. Of the merchants surveyed, 76% say traffic referred by AI converts at a significantly higher rate than traditional browsing. Another 58% expect agentic commerce to drive more than 10% of their online revenue within two years.
The survey was run by YouGov between 26 June and 6 July 2026. It covered 1,002 Australian adults and 155 senior ecommerce decision makers at businesses with 20 or more employees. Stripe says 82% of consumers use AI tools to help guide their online purchases, and 99% of merchants receive machine driven traffic. The findings come ahead of an anticipated $6.8 billion Black Friday Cyber Monday spend.
Why AI shoppers convert better
Stripe’s survey reports the lift but doesn’t test the cause. Salesforce data from last year’s Cyber Week offers one reading, as Dynamic Business reported. Traffic from AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Perplexity converted at eight times the rate of social media traffic, and it tripled year on year. Australian online sales rose 7% while retail site traffic fell 2%. Salesforce’s data suggests shoppers are doing their research with AI first, then arriving at a retailer’s site knowing what they want. That comparison is against social media, not against every channel.
Bellroy, the Melbourne founded accessories brand, describes something similar. It is an early design partner for Stripe’s agentic commerce solutions in the United States, where customers are already asking AI detailed questions, such as which carry on bag suits a weekend trip. Tyler House, Chief Marketing Officer at Bellroy, says: “AI is changing how people discover and consider products. Customers are moving beyond broad searches to detailed questions about what will suit them best. Our job is to adapt: to be as helpful and informative as possible wherever that research happens. We’re still early, but we’re already seeing higher-intent shoppers as a result.”
None of the research cited here breaks conversion down by page type, so there’s no published Australian data yet on which layouts perform best. What the guidance does describe is what AI tools can read.
What AI actually reads
PwC Australia set this out in a June 2026 publication. It says AI agents don’t browse a homepage or feel a brand story. They take in structured data, product attributes, pricing and reviews, then use them to build a recommendation. In PwC’s words: “Search engines rank pages. Large language models rank knowledge.”
PwC also says agents draw on more than your own site, including comparison sites, review platforms, Wikipedia and social media. Its view is that structured, specific and verifiable information performs better than vague marketing language. Google’s AI Mode, which the ACCC says launched in Australia in October 2025, is one of the places this plays out.
Stripe’s research shows what shoppers notice when it goes wrong. Among those dissatisfied with AI search results, 35% said suggestions felt generic and untailored, 29% pointed to inaccurate product information, and 28% were sent to products not available in Australia. Stripe says these breakdowns happen when retail platforms fail to feed live, readable data to AI assistants.
Fixes to make now
PwC suggests starting by asking ChatGPT, Google AI and Copilot about your brand. See what they recommend and what they get wrong. PwC says this takes minutes and almost always surprises.
Next, audit your product data. PwC’s questions are whether your product attributes are explicit and comparable, and whether your schema markup is current. It lists schema markup, structured product data and crawlable content as the foundations to build first.
Price and stock need to stay current. In Stripe’s survey, 44% of businesses are restructuring catalogues for AI, 42% are upgrading to modern API platforms and 36% are deploying real time inventory and pricing engines. The 28% of shoppers sent to products not sold in Australia suggests Australian availability is worth stating clearly.
Then check whether agents can get through your store at all. PwC asks where CAPTCHAs, pop ups or authentication flows might block them. B&T reported that a Time Under Tension study of 11 Australian retailers found some major sites were inadvertently blocking shoppers who use browser agents.
Stripe also says Australian businesses can prepare now by uploading their product catalogues to Stripe, ready for when agent led shopping becomes available. Worldpay’s Colin Baines has told Dynamic Business: “The real question is whether your business will stand out when the algorithms start making selections.”
Keep it accurate
Shoppers still want a say. Stripe found 61% of Australians are unwilling to let an AI agent spend money without explicit approval, citing security, fraud risk and loss of spending control. Only 22% are comfortable letting an agent complete a purchase.
Accuracy matters on the seller’s side too. The ACCC’s December 2025 snapshot on AI says product images and descriptions created with generative AI can be used to make false representations about a product’s performance or characteristics. The ACCC also notes that Treasury’s review of AI and the Australian Consumer Law found no evidence that existing rules for attributing liability to corporations are unsuitable for businesses adopting AI. For sellers using AI to write product pages, that is a reason to check the copy before it goes live.