Gen-AI Driven Traffic To U.S. Ecommerce Sites Up 4,700%, Adobe Reports

Traffic to U.S. retail sites that was driven by generative AI-powered chat services and browsers is showing growing momentum, and was up 4,700% year-over-year in July, according to the latest Adobe report.

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Traffic to U.S. retail sites from generative AI browsers and chat services was up 4,700% year-over-year in July, as a growing number of consumers make channels like ChatGPT their first stop when planning a purchase, Adobe reported today.

Adobe first noticed the surge in gen-AI driven clicks for retail sites during the 2024 holiday season, when it tracked a 1,300% year-over-year jump in gen-AI driven traffic for the November 1 to December 31 holiday period. That percentage has continued to climb every month this year.

“The last holiday season was the first moment that we saw this sort of traffic really bloom, from the gen-AI platforms to the retail sites,” Vivek Pandya, lead analyst, Adobe Digital Insights, said in an interview. “It’s just been growing and surging ever since,” he said.

The data, along with survey responses from consumers, show that shoppers “are really trusting the results and responses that they’re getting from the gen-AI platforms,” Pandya said. “We see over 90% [of respondents]

trust results they’re getting back from the gen-AI platforms,” he said.

“What it’s doing is it’s allowing and facilitating and supporting this very optimized, urgent, efficient journey that consumers want,” Pandya said. “They want to be able to put in all the criteria around what they need, and then have the guidance distilled back to them with all that criteria met.”

More engagement, Lower Bounce Rates with Gen-AI

Because of the comfort consumers have with gen-AI platforms, Adobe not only is seeing the uptick in traffic, “but then we’re also seeing them spend longer periods on the site,” and lower bounce rates, Pandya said. The bounce rate – the percentage of customers who leave a site immediately after clicking on it – is 27% lower for shoppers who arrive via a gen-AI source.

Adobe data shows shoppers who come to a site through gen-AI sources are 10% more engaged, with 32% longer visits.

“You have a very conscientious user who is wanting to do all their pre-research on the gen-AI platform, and then also spend time getting all that validated once they hit the site,” Pandya said.

The conversion gap – the number of consumers who make a purchase when they visit a site – between AI-driven traffic and no AI also is decreasing, according to Adobe data.

In July, traffic from generative AI-sources was 23% less likely to convert than non AI-sources, down from 49% in January and 38% in April. The conversion gap indicates that AI is being used more during the research and consideration part of the shopping journey, before shoppers are ready to “hit the buy button,” according to the Adobe report. But the shrinking gap this year “shows that consumers are increasingly comfortable completing a transaction directly after an AI-powered interaction”, the Adobe report concludes.

AI-driven revenue up 84%

Revenue from AI-driven traffic has increased by 84% between January and July, compared to non-AI sources, Adobe reported.

“This is also expected to increase as consumers use generative AI tools on mobile, where more impulse shopping tends to happen,” Adobe reported. In July, 26% of traffic from gen-AI sources came through mobile (versus desktop), up from 18% in January.

Adobe’s report is based on Adobe Analytics insights drawn from over 1 trillion consumer visits to U.S. retail sites. Adobe also surveyed 5,000 consumers this month about their gen-AI use.

The survey found that 38& of consumers have used gen-AI for online shopping, with 52% planning to do so this year. The shopping tasks consumers are using AI for include conducting research (53%), receiving product recommendations (40%), seeking deals (36%), creating shopping lists (30%), finding unique products (29%) and virtual try-on (26%).

Of those who have used AI for shopping, 85% said it improved their shopping experience, with 73% citing it as their primary source of product research.