Agentic commerce: 8 prompts to assess your readiness for AI-driven eCommerce

For years, eCommerce has evolved around a single goal: optimizing the human experience. Polished visuals, persuasive copywriting, efficient conversion channels, everything was designed to capture attention and trigger purchases. But a more subtle transformation is now redefining these foundations.

Increasingly, purchasing decisions are no longer made solely by consumers, they are influenced, or even delegated, to intelligent agents. These systems analyze, compare, and recommend products in seconds, without ever interacting with an interface the way a traditional user would.

This shift is profound and largely underestimated, because it’s not just a new touchpoint. It’s a fundamental change in how products are discovered, evaluated and selected.

In this context, the question is no longer: “Does my site convert?” but rather: “Can my offering be understood and selected by an artificial intelligence?”

Commerce is entering a “machine-first” era

As these agents take on a growing role in the buying journey, some traditional pillars of eCommerce are gradually losing influence. Traffic becomes less central, the user experience moves outside the site and the role of the brand is partially mediated by third-party systems. At the same time, new structural criteria are emerging: the clarity of product data, the ability to be compared automatically, the quality of information structuring and the speed at which a machine can interpret an offer. In other words, it’s no longer just about persuading, it’s about being understood, processed and selected.

Prompts to kickstart your thinking around AI-first eCommerce

Here is a series of prompts designed to initiate strategic thinking about your positioning in an agentic commerce environment. These prompts act as levers for reflection, helping you better understand how your offering, your catalog and your experience could be interpreted and potentially arbitrated by intelligent systems. They are meant to help you step back, identify blind spots, and better grasp the implicit criteria that may influence your visibility and performance in increasingly AI-driven environments.

1. Understanding how an AI makes a purchase decision

Act as an autonomous purchasing agent.

Here is the context:

• product type: [product]
• customer profile: [target, needs, constraints]
• available options: [list of products or merchants]

Explain how you would analyze these options before making a choice. Detail the criteria used, their relative importance and the elements that could eliminate an option from the outset.

This type of reflection often reveals that AI criteria are far more rational, explicit and comparable than those of humans, highlighting blind spots in how products are currently presented.

2. Evaluating your site’s readability for artificial intelligence

Analyze this eCommerce site based on the following:

• URL: [site]
• catalog type: [simple, configurable, B2B, etc.]
• target market: [B2C, B2B, niche, etc.]

Identify the elements that facilitate or hinder its understanding by an AI. Focus on information structure, clarity of product data and the ability to compare offers.

This simple exercise often reveals that while sites may perform well at converting visitors, they are less effective at being understood by automated systems.

3. Rethinking the product page as a data object

Here is a product page: [paste description, attributes, variants]

In the context of:

• product category: [category]
• purchase type: [impulsive, considered, recurring]

Compare this page to a version optimized for AI comprehension. Identify missing, ambiguous, or hard-to-use information, as well as elements that would facilitate comparison with other products.

In an agentic world, a product page becomes less a persuasion tool and more a usable data block. This distinction fundamentally changes how catalogs should be structured.

4. Understanding how an AI arbitrates between merchants

An AI must choose between multiple merchants for the same product.

Context:

• product type: [product]
• merchants: [A, B, C with their differences]
• constraints: [price, delivery time, quality, return policy, etc.]

Explain how you would compare these options and which factors would influence your final decision. Also indicate what could disadvantage a merchant even if their offer appears competitive. Then propose a list of relevant direct competitors for this product and market. Finally, present a concise comparison table of merchants (including the identified competitors) based on the key decision criteria.

This prompt highlights a critical point: you are no longer just competing on experience, but on the readability and comparability of your offer.

5. Anticipating a zero-click world

Describe a purchasing experience where:

• the customer uses an AI assistant
• no eCommerce site is directly visited
• the purchase is completed automatically

In this context, explain how products are discovered, compared, and selected. Specify what is required for a merchant to be included in this process.

“Zero-click commerce” implies rethinking the very role of the transactional site in your strategy.

6. Decoding complex customer intent

Here is a purchase intent: “[customer query]”

Context:

• customer type: [profile]
• purchase situation: [gift, urgency, specific use]

Break this intent down into explicit and implicit criteria. Identify the information needed to respond effectively, as well as potential ambiguities an AI would need to resolve.

Queries are becoming richer, more contextual, and more nuanced. The ability to match these intents with your catalog becomes a major competitive advantage.

7. Imagining a conversational buying journey

In the following context:

• product type: [product]
• level of involvement: [simple vs complex]

Describe how a conversation with an AI could replace a traditional buying journey. Identify the key steps, decision points, and the information required at each stage to enable a seamless transaction.

This exercise helps uncover unnecessary friction in your current channels that can become critical in an automated environment.

8. Questioning the structure of your offering

Analyze this commercial offer: [offer description, pricing, bundles, terms]

In the context of:

• market type: [B2C or B2B]
• complexity level: [simple, configurable, custom]

Identify the characteristics that facilitate or complicate its understanding and comparability by an AI.

Highlight elements that may be interpreted ambiguously or are difficult to compare.

Also identify potential friction points and structural issues that could hinder interpretation, comparison, or selection by an AI agent.

In a world where everything is compared in real time, simplicity and transparency become powerful levers.

That said, these reflections do not replace human expertise, quite the opposite. As intelligent systems play an increasing role in purchase decisions, the role of experts, strategists and eCommerce teams becomes even more critical in interpreting signals, prioritizing actions and aligning transformations with business objectives. This is the logic of “human in the loop,” where the most successful companies combine the analytical power of AI tools with strategic, contextual understanding tailored to their reality.

This is precisely where we can support you to adapt your eCommerce so that it performs not only for humans, but is also understandable and selectable by intelligent systems.

The importance of asking the right questions

Agentic commerce won’t replace eCommerce overnight, but it is already redefining its foundations.

The companies that will stand out won’t necessarily be those that adopt AI tools the fastest, but those that understand that the real challenge is to become the clear, structured, and selectable option in an environment where decisions are increasingly assisted by intelligent systems.

This challenge is even more critical in B2B. In contexts where catalogs are more complex, commercial conditions more nuanced, and purchasing processes often rationalized, the ability to be understood by AI becomes a major strategic lever, both for being recommended and for being integrated into automated procurement flows.

This transformation doesn’t start with a complete overhaul, but with something much simpler: asking the right questions.

Looking to partner with a Novatize specialist for your shift to unified commerce?

Pierre-Olivier Brassard

Vice President - Products and Technology, Partner

contact@novatize.com+1 844 932-6682

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