AI triples orders on Shopify

Traffic from AI services to Shopify stores tripled in the second quarter compared to a year earlier. Orders attributed to AI searches also grew threefold. According to Shopify, ChatGPT, Gemini, and similar tools aren’t replacing traditional search yet—but they are opening an extra path to products.

The figures surfaced during Shopify’s quarterly earnings presentation. The company stresses that purchases via AI are still a small slice of total gross merchandise value on the platform. Growth is rapid, though—and AI-driven visitors behave differently from classic search traffic.

Traffic alone is meaningless if visitors don’t convert. That’s why the jump in orders matters. Shopify says new shoppers from AI channels are nearly twice as likely to place an order as new shoppers arriving via other routes.

Earlier Shopify data points the same way. In Q1, visitors who landed directly on a product page via an AI service converted almost 50 percent better than organic search traffic. Their average order value was also 14 percent higher. These are Shopify’s own figures, not independent market research—but they explain why merchants are taking AI search seriously.

Notably, 75 percent of AI-attributed orders in Q2 fell outside Shopify’s top 100 product categories. Smaller brands and niche products appear to benefit disproportionately. Shopify argues that AI assistants can match a detailed need description with structured product data, while classic search leans more on popular pages and short keywords.

AI search is often framed as a threat to Google. Shopify’s numbers tell a more nuanced story. Traditional search traffic to Shopify stores grew 1.3x over the past two years and still accounts for roughly a third of all sessions. That makes the differences between an AI engine like Perplexity and Google increasingly relevant.

For now, AI traffic looks additive. Someone might use a chatbot to compare products, then click through to a store. Plus, visits from Google AI Overviews are often still logged as organic Google traffic. The line between classic search and AI search is blurrier than the stats suggest.

For news sites, an AI summary can eliminate the click. For e-commerce, it’s different: to actually buy, shoppers usually still need a product page or checkout. That helps explain why publishers report falling click-through rates while Shopify sees extra traffic and transactions.

Shopify isn’t just benefiting on the storefront side. It has made AI core to operations and previously had managers check whether AI could handle work before hiring new staff. For merchants, there’s Sidekick, an AI assistant for store setup, analytics, and task execution. Daily active merchants using Sidekick grew 3.6x in a year. Daily sessions climbed 4.8x.

In Q2, merchants conducted nearly 34 million conversations with Sidekick. They built more than 36,000 custom apps with it, up from 12,000 in Q1. Among new merchants, Sidekick’s guided onboarding led to 8 percent more entrepreneurs hitting at least five orders within 15 days.

Again, Shopify is measuring its own product. These figures don’t prove every shop will grow faster with AI. They do show AI is digging deeper into both discovery and day-to-day management of online stores.

The wrong move is to ditch classic SEO and bet everything on ChatGPT. Search engines remain far bigger, and AI often pulls product data from the same well-structured sites, catalogs, and trusted sources.

E-commerce teams can take four practical steps. First, keep product titles, specs, inventory, and prices complete and current. Next, use structured data so search engines and agents understand the product. Write unique descriptions that highlight real differences instead of copying manufacturer text. Finally, measure the fast-growing AI search traffic from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot separately—and benchmark it against organic search and other channels.

Shopify posted $3.58 billion in revenue for the quarter, up 34 percent year over year. Gross merchandise volume rose 32 percent to $115.57 billion. The stock jumped more than 18 percent after the print.

That growth can’t be pinned on AI alone. Payments, international expansion, subscriptions, and overall merchant growth all play a part. The key takeaway is narrower but meaningful: consumers aren’t just using AI to read answers. They click through, discover less familiar products, and place orders.

For online stores, discoverability is expanding from search results to AI-driven conversations—and ultimately to agentic commerce. Google remains essential, but it’s no longer the only digital doorway that matters.