Essays from the Kinect team on AI shopping, intent, and what happens to commerce when every surface can answer questions.
AI product recommendations use product data and shopper signals to rank the items a visitor is most likely to consider. This guide covers the methods, placements, data, and measurements behind them.
Aug 12, 2026 · 7 min read
Every AI shopping assistant on the market quotes a conversion multiple. Nearly all of those numbers compare shoppers who engaged to shoppers who did not, which measures who opens a chat window more than it measures what the chat window did. We have published a version of this number too. Here is what it can and cannot support.
Aug 4, 2026 · 7 min read
Every AI-readiness guide tells you to enrich your product data and add metafields. Almost none of them tell you which fields an agent can actually filter on. Read the two specs that matter and the answer is the same on both: taxonomy-backed values, not your custom metafields.
Aug 4, 2026 · 7 min read
Everyone selling catalog enrichment right now is running an LLM over product descriptions and calling the output structured data. Almost nobody publishes how they check it. Here is the scoring harness we use at Kinect, including the part where our own numbers are not yet strong enough to conclude anything.
Aug 4, 2026 · 8 min read
Most "best AI shopping assistant" lists rank the same tools and skip the thing that determines whether any of them make you money: does it know your catalog? Here are the 8 worth evaluating in 2026 — and the half of the problem most of them leave unsolved.
Jul 29, 2026 · 12 min read
AI traffic converts better than anything you've ever measured. The problem is you can't measure it. As discovery moves inside the chat, the most valuable part of the customer journey is disappearing from your analytics — and your own site is the last place you can get it back.
Jun 10, 2026 · 11 min read
For a year Amazon walled itself off from AI agents and sued the companies trying to get in. Last week it started selling the wall to everyone else — running on a model from a company it part-owns. The reversal is the loudest signal yet about where commerce is heading.
May 29, 2026 · 9 min read
The AI search layer
Generative Engine Optimization gets your brand into the AI conversation. But the conversation doesn't end at the click — it's just getting started. Why GEO and intent-aware commerce are complementary, not competitive.
Apr 19, 2026 · 8 min read
Amazon got a federal injunction against an AI browser. They've blocked 47 bots. They built Rufus. They're not playing defense — they're rewriting the rules of who gets to be the discovery layer for commerce.
Apr 14, 2026 · 7 min read
OpenAI killed Instant Checkout. Walmart's conversion rates were 3x worse inside ChatGPT. Now every major retailer is building their own AI — and the implications for commerce are enormous.
Mar 24, 2026 · 12 min read
Shopify gave a million brands their own storefront. It also gave them all the same shopping experience. The next era of e-commerce won't be about products — it'll be about who makes finding them feel different.
Feb 21, 2026 · 10 min read
The billion-dollar difference between what customers type and what they mean. Why closing this gap might be the biggest unsolved problem in online retail.
Feb 14, 2026 · 9 min read
What if finding the right product felt as natural as asking a friend? The technology to understand intent just arrived — and it changes everything.
Jan 6, 2026 · 7 min read
You have AI everywhere except where it matters most. We've spent years building sophisticated ways to get people to click — then they land on dropdown menus and price sliders from 2015.
Jan 5, 2025 · 8 min read
