Field guide · Commerce
AI for e-commerce.
AI can increase the speed of merchandising, creative, discovery work, and lifecycle operations. The leverage starts with clean product truth and ends with measured customer behavior.
Commerce system
Do not automate bad catalog data.
Catalog
Keep product facts, variants, dimensions, materials, policies, pricing, and inventory structured and accurate.
Merchandising
Translate product facts into useful customer language, comparisons, bundles, and category context.
Creative
Generate and test product visuals, hooks, scripts, and ad concepts without inventing claims.
Discovery
Make product pages understandable to search engines, AI systems, marketplaces, and comparison surfaces.
Lifecycle
Use behavior and purchase context to improve welcome, cart recovery, post-purchase, replenishment, and win-back.
Learning
Connect traffic and creative to conversion, margin, repeat purchase, refunds, and customer quality.
Product pages
Turn specifications into buying confidence.
Product truth
Start from structured facts rather than asking AI to infer specifications from a vague name.
Customer outcome
Explain what the product changes for the buyer and in which use case.
Proof
Use real materials, testing, reviews, demonstrations, certifications, or policies where relevant.
Comparison context
Help the buyer understand size, fit, compatibility, use case, and meaningful alternatives.
Questions
Answer recurring pre-purchase questions directly on the page.
Prompt rule: supply the verified product record and ask AI to transform it into customer language. Never ask the model to fill missing specifications with a likely answer.
Creative
Test reasons to buy, not endless asset permutations.
Problem / solution
Show the situation first, then the product resolving it.
Demonstration
Let the product action or result carry the message.
Use case
Show the product in a specific context rather than as an isolated object.
Comparison
Clarify a real buying decision without making unsupported competitor claims.
Story
Use founder, maker, customer, or product-origin context when it adds meaning.
Discovery
Make the product understandable wherever the buyer asks.
Use consistent names, categories, attributes, pricing, availability, and brand identity across surfaces.
Keep product pages crawlable and render important product information in accessible HTML.
Use structured data that matches visible product facts rather than filling fields for ranking alone.
Create substantive category, comparison, buying-guide, and question pages where customers genuinely need help choosing.
Earn independent reviews, mentions, and citations rather than relying only on your own product copy.
Lifecycle
The purchase is the beginning of the customer record.
Welcome
Set expectations, learn preferences, and help the subscriber reach a useful first product or category.
Cart recovery
Reduce uncertainty or remind the buyer of the value without manufacturing false urgency.
Post-purchase
Set up use, care, support, cross-sell, review, or referral based on what the customer bought.
Replenishment
Use actual consumption or replacement patterns where the product supports them.
Win-back
Give an inactive buyer a relevant reason to return instead of escalating generic discounts indefinitely.
Measurement
Optimize the store for contribution and repeat behavior, not only conversion rate.
Merchandising
Product-page engagement, search exits, category navigation, add-to-cart
Conversion
Checkout completion, conversion rate, average order value, offer uptake
Economics
Gross margin, contribution margin, acquisition cost, refunds, discount dependence
Retention
Repeat purchase, time to second order, cohort value, unsubscribe and churn signals
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