In this episode of Talk Commerce recorded live from Ecom Forum in Minneapolis, host Brent Peterson sits down with Sharon Gee, Senior Vice President of Product at Commerce, to discuss how artificial intelligence and agentic commerce are reshaping ecommerce. Sharon oversees AI offerings across BigCommerce, Feedonomics, and Makeswift, bringing insights on how merchants can adapt to a world where AI agents shop alongside humans.
Key Takeaways
Episode Summary
Sharon begins by explaining her role at Commerce and immediately addresses the most significant shift in ecommerce: the rise of agentic commerce. For decades, professionals optimized data for advertising channels, working to improve conversion rates between two and five percent. Now consumers turn to answer engines with complex queries like finding a dress for a wedding in Italy in a specific color and size, delivered by tomorrow.
"Somebody came along and bopped the board game and now we get to reset all the pieces," Sharon explains. This shift requires merchants to recognize that data has become the new storefront. Answer engines need deep context to respond to long-form queries, making product discoverability critical wherever shoppers are looking.
Sharon introduces a framework for data levels. Level one includes basic information for Google ads. Level two encompasses marketplace data. Level three consists of product specifications in PIM systems. Levels four and five venture into unstructured data, including PDFs and user reviews. This creates what she calls a bifurcated experience—merchants need different versions of their sites for AI agents versus human visitors.
When asked whether sites might become pure APIs, Sharon argues for both approaches. Brand sites remain channels merchants control, but on third-party agentic channels, merchants only control the data they provide. This makes data investment critical for visibility.
Sharon sees massive potential in B2B sales assistants trained on documentation that human sales reps use. If three-quarters of the sales cycle could progress overnight, reps could focus on high-touch human interactions. B2B companies have advantages because they're manufacturers with deep data, extensive documentation, and sophisticated pricing structures.
Addressing concerns about AI reliability, Sharon explains that commerce platforms and partners are collaborating on protocols. "You've seen more open protocols released in the past six months than like the previous 10 years combined," she notes. Companies recognize that trust becomes paramount when authorizing agents to shop on behalf of consumers. Transactions now involve four parties: a shopper, a shopper agent, a merchant, and a merchant agent.
Sharon emphasizes AI's role as a growth enabler rather than just a cost-reduction tool. Merchants could rewrite entire product catalogs with a button click using generative AI. AI provides jet fuel for existing teams, unlocking capabilities never before possible. "I would love it if our generation is the last one to use a mouse and a keyboard," Sharon declares.
Brent adds that AI's greatest value might be identifying what merchants aren't doing rather than what they should be doing. Sharon confirms that Commerce customers use tools to define simulated personas and understand what queries those personas might ask, then determine what content they need to ensure their products get referenced instead of competitors' products.
Episode Timestamps