The state of agentic storefronts: How AI agents guide shoppers on frictionless, full-funnel journeys

01 Understanding AI-powered shopping experiences 02 Agentic commerce tactics and strategies 03 The emergence of agentic storefronts 04 Cost, bandwidth are primary barriers to agentic commerce adoption 05 The future of agentic storefronts 06 About Swap This State of the Industry report, sponsored by Swap, explores how brands, retailers and agencies are adopting agentic commerce, including agentic storefronts, to enhance shopping experiences.

Artificial intelligence is the new entry point in e-commerce, as more shoppers rely on AI-powered summaries and assistants to discover products. Beyond discovery and product recommendations, AI agents are also helping shoppers evaluate options, make decisions and even complete purchases.

According to Salesforce data, AI and agents drove 20% of all retail sales and accounted for $262 billion in holiday spend during the 2025 holiday shopping season. To keep up, brands and retailers are implementing agentic tools to better personalize shopper experiences and drive growth.

Others are rethinking the traditional e-commerce model from the ground up — shifting from static websites to agentic storefronts with conversational experiences that guide customers every step of the way. For this new State of the Industry report, Glossy and Swap surveyed 80 brand, retailer and agency respondents to learn how they are adopting agentic tools.

Ninety percent of respondents are already using AI to improve their consumers’ shopping experience, the survey found. “Most people hear ‘agentic commerce’ and think about the discovery moment: how does my brand show up when someone asks an AI what jacket to buy?” said Juan Pellerano-Rendon, Chief Marketing Officer at Swap.

“That’s a real and important question to surface in LLMs, but it’s only the entry point. “What makes our first agentic storefront genuinely transformative is what happens after discovery. A real agent doesn’t just surface a product and hand the consumer off to a static website,” he said.

“It understands context, it asks questions, it remembers what you looked for last time. That continuity is what changes the economics.” 01 Understanding AI-powered shopping experiences As AI becomes more deeply embedded in everyday life, including e-commerce, new (sometimes similar) terms have emerged to describe different capabilities.

AI agent: A tool that uses a large language model to browse and perform actions on the internet. Agentic AI: Refers to assistants that will be able to act autonomously without follow-up questions and user intervention. Agentic commerce: The ability to purchase goods or services with the help of an AI agent.

Agentic storefronts: AI-native, immersive, conversational experiences that guide shoppers from discovery to purchase. Typically on a brand-owned. ai domain.

02 Agentic commerce tactics and strategies In 2026, brands and retailers are catching on and adapting their online presences in response to dramatic shifts in consumer use of AI — embracing the presence and even use of AI agents.

More than half of respondents (56%) are primarily using an internal agentic AI tool, while 33% are primarily working with third-party tech providers. Eleven percent are deploying their agentic AI tools through an about even split of internal tools and third-party providers.

Additionally, the majority of respondents (71%) report that their e-commerce sites are set up to be discoverable by AI agents. However, 20% are unsure if that is the case, while 9% do not have an AI-discoverable e-commerce site.

According to 2025 Glossy+ Research, more than 1 in 5 brand and agency pros said their companies have seen decreases in upper-funnel search traffic (37%) and lower-funnel search traffic (21%) as a result of AI. “The window to get ahead of this is narrower than most brands realize,” said Pellerano-Rendon.

“Discoverability in an agentic world isn’t just about SEO anymore. It’s about whether your product catalog, your brand context and your customer data are structured in a way that an AI agent can actually work with.” Discovery is just one part of agentic commerce, however.

As AI tools become more accessible to both consumers and businesses, they are becoming more ubiquitous across e-commerce sites themselves. When it comes to engaging consumers via agentic AI, more than 4 in 10 respondents are doing so through AI-native/conversational product discovery (46%), in-chat purchasing (46%) and virtual try-on (41%).

Brands, retailers and agencies are also using agentic AI to provide personalized recommendations based on user preferences (39%). Less common applications include voice-to-checkout (31%) and hyper-individualized homepages (30%). Major players such as Google and Amazon have also introduced similar capabilities to reach consumers.

As reported by Glossy, Google rolled out new shopping features throughout 2025, such as price comparisons and virtual try-ons, for its Gemini AI platform. In October 2025, Amazon