AI agents send 1% of traffic to retailer All Star Elite

All Star Elite, a streetwear retailer with about 60 US stores, got about 1% of its site traffic from AI agents in the last month. Abhishek Bora, its head of growth, tells that there was almost none before. Adobe expects AI traffic to US retail sites to double on Black Friday and Cyber Monday compared with last year.

What the team does

The team adds data to each item page that a bot can read. The data tells, for example, if a shoe is good for a marathon or a night out. Bora tells that this can help an item show near the top when a person uses ChatGPT to find a shoe.

The numbers

• About 1% of site traffic came from AI agents.
• Digital sales are about a quarter of the revenue.
• Adobe tells that AI traffic converts to sales more frequently than other traffic.

What is not known

The company gave no number for the sales from agents. Bora tells that customers use ChatGPT to find items, but they want to check the items and pay without the agent.

Insight: Agents find items, but persons still pay

Walmart gives external agents tools to finish purchases. Amazon blocks them and pushes its agent, Alexa. Human Forward, a UK firm, found that 98 of 200 US retail sites blocked its web page reader or gave no page. This reads as a fight for control of the step where a bot picks an item. A small seller that opens its data can get this traffic. A site that blocks agents by accident cannot.