How AI Optimisation Can Supercharge Your eCommerce Growth

Scale smarter through every stage of the buyer journey with the help of our webinar:

How AI Optimisation Can Supercharge Your eCommerce Growth. Register here:

We will demonstrate how the latest AI tools and techniques can aid strong scalable growth to your business.

Join us:
DATE: Thursday 26th June
TIME: 12-1245.
REGISTER HERE: How AI Optimisation Can Supercharge Your eCommerce Growth

5 Tried & tested techniques to deliver success through the use of AI

1. Utilise ChatGPT or Google Gemini to help you write persuasive, engaging product descriptions that align to your brand and tone of voice
2. Put existing copy and product descriptions into AI – ask for improved suggestions and see if you can improve upon what’s already there
3. Revisit old blog articles to look for outdated product or brand mentions and links – improve the quality and accuracy of what LLMs are finding from your website as a key point of reference.
4. Add a LLMS.txt file to your website to provide LLMs with your best quality products, categories and informational content to drive improved accuracy and perception of your brand
5. Use Klavio for your email campaigns to help segment, target and personalise your approach to prospects and clients alike

How to adapt for to AI-driven buyer behaviour

In the fast-moving world of eCommerce, growing and scaling up isn’t just about attracting more traffic or having a bigger ad spend, it’s about aligning your digital marketing strategy with how and why your customers actually buy your product or service.  

A significant shift in buyer behavior has radically changed the eCommerce buyer journey, as AI is redefining how users discover, consider and then continue to engage with branded content. 

Intent is the new buzzword. It’s no longer enough to be found, in AI-driven search businesses need to be chosen.

In order to stand out, brands need to know what an audience actually wants from them to drive personalised engagement, often across multiple platforms or via a zero-click buyer journey. 

But while AI-driven outcomes present new challenges for brands of all  sizes, for SME eCommerce brands looking to scale, AI tools also offer the ability to compete with larger players by working smarter, faster, and more efficiently.

The importance of understanding audience intent

In an AI-driven search world, understanding your audience is crucial for several reasons. AI algorithms are designed to personalise search results and content based on user behavior and preferences. Without a deep understanding of your audience, you risk your content being overlooked, even if it’s relevant and valuable.

It is vital that brands know what the customer ACTUALLY wants from them; what their pain points are, what resonates with them and ultimately what triggers a purchase. 

Successful brands are now supercharging their  SEO  for visibility and structure, and using AI optimisation  for speed, personalisation, and scale.

But they don’t stop there and in our upcoming webinar, we’ll demonstrate how you can use AI tools to  support every phase in the customer journey, from discovery, through consideration, to decision, and how it can create greater impact post-purchase, to deliver sustainable, scalable growth through improved customer lifetime value.

Register here: How AI Optimisation Can Supercharge Your eCommerce Growth

1. The discovery phase: how to capitalise on the ‘Zero-Click’ era

The buyer journey starts with discovery; that moment when a potential customer becomes aware of a need or desire. 

The discovery phase is undergoing a fundamental transformation as buyers shift from traditional keyword-based searches to more conversational, intent-driven queries.

A growing trend in the ecommerce landscape is the shift toward AI Overviews and Large Language Models (LLMs) during the research phase of the buyer journeys at the top of the funnel stage.

Using new AI platforms, users receive answers directly within the search interface, often completing purchases or taking action without ever clicking through to a retailer’s website, exemplifying the rise of zero-click eCommerce.

Over 60% of Google searches now end without a click (SparkToro/SimilarWeb, 2024), driven by answer-led results, featured snippets, and AI Overviews 

This “zero-click” environment poses a major challenge for brands; how do they influence decisions when their digital shop window may never be seen?

SEO and AIO are different 

There is a silver lining here, however, Google’s AI Overviews often highlight sources that demonstrate clear Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust (E-E-A-T) – with 94% of cited links differing from the top 10 traditional organic results.

ChatGPT’s responses are powered by Google’s index, which is shaped by both traditional SEO techniques and newer strategies focused on building brand authority. 

As a result, strong search visibility, driven by effective SEO principles, can still significantly influence a brand’s prominence within LLMs, especially when reinforced by offsite signals.

It’s clear that strong SEO doesn’t automatically mean your brand will be dominant in AI Overviews and LLMs, but it’s a great starting point!

But, it means that it’s no longer enough to get found, you have to get chosen.

Find out how: How AI Optimisation Can Supercharge Your eCommerce Growth 

LLMs drive higher conversions 

Your digital strategy must focus on visibility and alignment and that means prioritising clarity, messaging, and conversion paths as much as rankings.

ChatGBT engaged 1m users within five days after launch and is now estimated to receive 5.19 billion visits per month

With an estimated 1.5bn monthly users of its own per month, Google’s AI Overviews are also learning, and fast. 

Based on an estimated 5 trillion searches a year, more and more Google is able to understand context and user intent, and in return delivers concise, actionable insights that align with each user’s specific goals or challenges.

The result is that both ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews and other AI-powered search engines are significantly decreasing clicks to traditional organic listings, especially for non-branded, informational queries.

But, despite this reduction in organic website traffic and subsequent a drop in click-through rates (CTR) there IS an up-side. 

While LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, provide users with answers directly within their system the resulting website traffic is converting at a much higher rate than any other source. 

For one of our eCommerce clients, we are seeing an 11% conversion rate from LLM traffic, compared to an overall figure of 2% conversion. 

This trend clearly indicates that users are typically more qualified and ready to convert when arriving at a website from an LLM, because LLMs enable users to compare options and understand value before visiting a website.

Optimise for AI-powered search

To capitalise, brands must be visible which increasingly depends on the quality, clarity and authority of their content.

To stand out eCommerce brands must optimise for how AI curates and presents information. 

In this webinar, we will show that creating insightful, well-structured content, whether it’s timely thought leadership, clear product descriptions or simply providing quality answers to pressing buyer questions, can significantly improve a brand’s chances of being surfaced in AI-generated responses. 

Watch this video  from our Head of Search on what SMEs need to do to adapt, stay visible, and thrive in Google’s AI Overviews 

Beyond Google: multi-channel visibility is now essential

Another clear evolution ecommerce brands need to adapt to is that customer search is no longer confined to traditional search engines.

While Google still dominates overall search traffic, many other platforms are gaining traction as search engines, and in some age groups and product categories even surpassing Google. 

Specifically, short form video platforms like YouTube and TikTok are emerging as preferred platforms for Gen Z for product recommendations and “how to” searches, while Reddit and LinkedIn are increasingly being indexed and referenced within AI models and traditional SERPs. 

This shift means a traditional search strategy won’t cut it anymore. Ecommerce brands must now show up across multiple touchpoints, meaning they need content created in multiple formats for multiple social media channels, paid ads and email marketing which all work in unison. 

But with budget and capacity restrictions in place and margins tight, this type of multi-channel content plan is often beyond small marketing teams.

This is where AI can achieve some real gains by supercharging your discoverability with smart, automated strategies. 

How AI helps capture attention

• Keyword Strategy at Scale: AI tools like ChatGPT, Jasper, or SurferSEO can identify potential (seed) keywords and search patterns early, giving you an edge over competitors
• Automated Content Generation: Natural Language Generation (NLG) tools can produce SEO-friendly blogs, product descriptions, and landing pages at speed
• Search Intent Mapping: AI can analyse thousands of queries to understand what users really want and ensure your content delivers
• Topic Clustering: AI can build interconnected content hubs, helping you dominate niche areas in search results
• Smart Chatbots for Search: AI-driven chatbots can suggest content to users at the awareness stage based on minimal input

A note of caution however, while AI might change the format of discovery, it doesn’t change the need to connect with your audience on a human level. 

While AI can support the ideation and creation phase, it can’t replace it, nor can it (yet) provide the overall strategic thinking needed to create the right type of content, meaning SMEs should think of AI as a co-pilot, not the captain.

Our AIO services allow your brand to gain visibility at scale, a key part of any digital growth strategy.

2. Consideration Stage: AI-driven personalisation

In today’s crowded eCommerce marketplace, buyers are able to evaluate more options than ever at the swipe of a screen. This makes not just visibility, but personal relevance the key to moving prospects from browsers to buyers.

During the consideration phase, AI can play a crucial role by cutting through the noise and enabling brands to surface their products to customers that are looking for and ready to buy them. 

In an AI-curated ecosystem, consideration content is no longer confined to your own website. Buyers engage with summaries, reviews, and aggregated opinions presented by LLMs or surfaced through Google’s AI interface.

Leveraging deep data analysis, AI tools surface personalised product recommendations, insights, and comparisons that align closely with a buyer’s unique needs and context.

This streamlines the decision-making process and creates a more intuitive, less overwhelming experience, something modern buyers increasingly expect.

To stay competitive, businesses must deliver content on and off page that feels to the buyer at least is tailored to their challenges and scenarios. 

AI optimisation makes it possible to serve long-tail, intent-driven content that directly answers nuanced questions like “Is this the right solution for me?”

With a rising cost per acquisition, brands have typically spent more to get traffic to a website. The goal at this stage is to keep users there.

Improved performance in this phase hinges on how well content resonates with a prospective customer, optimised through deeper engagement, longer dwell times, and higher interaction rates. 

Simple improvements, like the addition of a product video can improve conversion by anything from 30-80% ,while serving up at least five product images on a page, it increases conversion by 15-20%.

By aligning AI-powered content strategies with buyer intent, brands can foster trust and guide buyers confidently toward a more personalised purchasing decision.

How AI turns visitors into buyers

• Product page optimisation: AI analyses user behaviour to adapt page layouts and messaging in real time. It can also create product content at scale, while enriching listings with unique summaries, USPs, and lifestyle copy in minutes
• Automated comparison content: AI can quickly generate product comparison pages to aid decision-making
• Content clustering & internal links: AI builds content ecosystems that improve on page SEO and guide users through your site logically
• Smart recommendations: Machine learning suggests products, upsells, and content based on browsing patterns
• Predictive Engagement: Tools can determine what content a user is most likely to engage with next, and serve it up to them automatically
• Image generation: Custom visuals generated by AI help products stand out

• Product video: create on-brand videos, hosted by avatars that can guide a customer through product features and benefits
• Review mining: use AI to scrape recent reviews to understand buyer sentiment towards your products and use it to understand whether your value proposition matches their need and expectations
• Translation/localisation: Instantly scale into new markets with translated and localised content.

Find out how to turn your browsers into buyers with the help of AI.
Register here: How AI Optimisation Can Supercharge Your eCommerce Growth

3. Decision Stage: AI driven conversions

In the decision stage of the eCommerce buyer journey, generative AI is becoming a powerful gatekeeper, shaping final choices by analysing vast datasets and recommending solutions that best align with buyer needs. 

Rather than scanning pages of search results, buyers are now provided with AI-generated answers that synthesise relevant information in real time, and increasingly deliver precise, highly ranked, recommendations.

Alternatively, when users reach the near bottom of the funnel and their decision making stage, this is when they’re more likely to actively search out specific businesses and brands that have been cited in the LLM-driven research phase. 

This could therefore prompt an increase in ‘branded’ searches, and thus it’s important for SMEs to consider their brand authority and trust (e.g. Google map reviews) and to ensure their website is sufficiently prepped through a mixture of fast load speed, CRO and UX to effectively nurture their target audience when they do arrive at the website to enquire and or make an actual purchase.

Again the upside for many businesses is that as AI-generated summaries are more personalised, SMEs should effectively expect to see more qualified leads arriving to their website, as a lot of the prior research and journey may have occurred offsite.

AI Optimised sites should make the final conversion easier.

But, to improve conversion rates, at the bottom of their funnel, brands must focus on creating content and messaging that reduces friction, builds trust and delivers proof. 

Data-driven success stories, case studies, and real-world outcomes now serve as critical assets, not just for persuading buyers, but for satisfying the algorithms that determine which solutions get surfaced. 

At this critical stage, small details make a big impact. AI can fine-tune the purchase experience to reduce friction and drive conversions.

Generative AI favors content that emphasises Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EEAT) along with measurable personal value. 

By aligning messaging with both buyer intent and AI evaluation criteria, businesses can remain visible, and influential, even when the bulk of the buyer journey takes place entirely within an AI-curated ecosystem.

One of our clients, Cotswold Collections, uses Clerk.io which is a fantastic tool for this. We typically see customers that use an AI smart search tend to convert 10x more.

How AI helps reduce friction and boost conversions:

• Zero-Click Search & Schema Markup: AI ensures your product info is available directly in search results, increasing click-through rates and visibility
• Smart product recommendations: AI driven advanced search functions suggest, upsell and cross-sell based on behaviour and preferences.
• AI-driven A/B testing: AI can optimise CTAs, headlines, and layouts automatically for a more personalised experience
• Chatbots as personal shoppers: AI bots can answer queries, recommend products, and guide users through checkout. 
• UX Analysis at Scale: AI-powered tools like Hotjar interpret session data to suggest real-time UX improvements. Microsoft Clarity for example can utilise Copilot to provide consolidated observations and recommended next steps from multiple captured video recordings and heatmaps. No more trawling through videos of users browsing your website, trying to draw reliable conclusions from the data
• Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO): Automated A/B testing and AI-generated variations help fine-tune pages for maximum conversion
• Checkout Flow Automation: Optimising your checkout process can dramatically improve revenue without increasing ad spend. AI minimises cart abandonment with personalised reminders, auto-filled forms, and dynamic incentives
• Bottom-of-Funnel Content: AI can generate persuasive copy tailored to each user’s buying stage, from urgency prompts to guarantees

Find out how to boost your conversions with the help of AI. Register here: How AI Optimisation Can Supercharge Your eCommerce Growth

4. Post-Purchase stage: AI driven engagement to maximise Lifetime Value (LTV) 

The buyer’s journey shouldn’t end at checkout. 

80% of customers are more likely to repurchase from brands that offer a personalised experience.” – McKinsey & Company

As brands wake up to the stark reality that the cost of acquiring (CPA) a new customer is steadily rising, ecommerce businesses must focus on maximising lifetime value (LTV) and this is where, in the post-purchase stage, AI can deliver some of its most strategic impact. 

AI helps brands maintain relevance by analysing post-purchase behavior and delivering personalised content, offers, and support to keep customers engaged over a longer period.

Nowhere is this more powerful than in email marketing. At SOZO we are using AI with client brands to create automated, personalised email journeys that adapt to each customer’s habit.

We are able to suggest complementary products, timing re-order reminders, and offer more tailored incentives based on buyer behaviour, purchase signals, seasonality and predicted needs.

From tailored product recommendations and automated interactions across multiple touchpoints, AI enables brands to nurture long-term loyalty with personalised precision. 

This continuous value-add builds trust, strengthens relationships, and directly supports metrics tied to LTV, such as retention rates, repeat purchases, and average order value. 

By using AI to anticipate evolving customer needs and measure transaction outcomes, brands can create meaningful, ongoing experiences that extend well beyond the initial sale. 

Optimising for post-purchase engagement through AI isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s a key strategy for sustainable growth.

How AI helps nurture relationships

• Personalised email journeys: AI tools like Klaviyo or Mailchimp’s Smart Recommendations send relevant emails based on purchase behaviour.
• Churn prediction: AI identifies customers likely to disengage and triggers automated win-back flows.
• Dynamic subscription and reactivation flows: Predictive models suggest ideal re-order times, upsells, or complementary products.
• Omnichannel consistency: AI ensures your tone and personalisation are consistent across email, ads, and social media.
• AI Chatbots for support: Deliver 24/7 assistance with intelligent bots trained on your product and policy data.

• Lifetime value modelling: AI segments customers by value and tailors offers, rewards, and messaging accordingly.

Improve your LTV with smart AI tools and techniques – learn how. Register here: How AI Optimisation Can Supercharge Your eCommerce Growth

AI is transforming the buyer journey

As eCommerce continues to evolve, so too does the way buyers discover and engage with products and services.

The shift from traditional keyword searches to intent-driven, AI-powered interactions, is reshaping the entire customer journey.

AI tools are now able to deliver tailored, context-aware insights that streamline decision-making and reduce purchase friction.

For ecommerce brands aiming to scale, embracing this transformation isn’t optional, it’s essential.

By integrating AI optimisation into your strategy, you’re not just keeping pace with innovation; you’re positioning your business to lead in an increasingly intelligent, intent-driven marketplace.

4 final strategic takeaways

1. Discovery: Optimise to be included in AI Overviews. Focus on authority, structure, and relevance.
2. Consideration: Use AI to create persuasive, scalable content rooted in real user needs.
3. Decision: Reduce friction, test rapidly, and ensure your product feed supports AI Mode surfacing.
4. Post-Purchase: Retain with predictive flows, LTV modelling and seamless omnichannel personalisation.

But, simply adopting AI tools isn’t enough; to truly harness their power, brands need a strategic approach that aligns with their customer journey.

Partnering with an agency like SOZO ensures you’re not just applying tools, but building a strategic ecosystem for sustained success.

If you would like to know more about how to integrate AI into your content creation, product descriptions and page optimisations please join us on our webinar. Register today. How AI Optimisation Can Supercharge Your eCommerce Growth

Conclusion: build smarter, not just bigger

From the first click to the fifth purchase, SEO and AIO work better together. Where SEO provides structure, reach, and authority, AI adds speed, personalisation, and scalability.

By aligning both with the customer journey, your eCommerce brand can tackle scalability challenges, deliver integrated digital strategies, and unlock lasting, smart growth.

Partnering with an agency like SOZO ensures you’re not just applying tools, but building a strategic ecosystem for sustained success.

Still not convinced, here are the top benefits of attending this webinar:

1. Learn how to scale smarter, not just bigger
   Discover how aligning SEO and AI with the customer journey, from discovery to post-purchase, can drive scalable, sustainable growth for your eCommerce business without consuming all of your ad spend.
2. Master intent-driven marketing
   Move beyond basic demographics and learn how to target your audience based on what they actually want using search intent and AI-enhanced insights for better conversion and relevance.
3. Leverage AI for greater speed, scale, and personalisation
   Understand how AI tools can rapidly produce content, enhance keyword research, personalise experiences, and help you respond to emerging trends faster than your competitors.
4. Navigate the Zero-Click search landscape
   Learn how to maintain visibility even when users aren’t clicking through to your site, thanks to AI-powered search changes like Google’s AI Overviews and ChatGPT integrations.
5. Build a Cross-Channel Content Strategy
   Explore how SMEs can use AI to maintain a strong presence on Google as well as YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit.
6. Improve conversion rates
   See how SEO can get customers to your site and how AI and CRO strategies can ensure they convert, using smart product recommendations, chatbots, and personalised CTAs.
7. Retain more customers and maximise lifetime value (LTV)
   Discover how to nurture post-purchase relationships using AI-driven retention tools like hyper-personalised emails, reactivation flows, and customer/product support-focused content.
8. Access proven tools and strategies from a leading AI agency
   Benefit from SOZO’s hands-on expertise in combining SEO and AI to help eCommerce brands grow from startup to scale-up through smart, integrated strategies.

Register today. How AI Optimisation Can Supercharge Your eCommerce Growth