Retailers cannot prevent customers from using AI assistants, social platforms, or marketplaces for discovery. They can, however, make their own digital storefronts fast and useful enough that shoppers have fewer reasons to leave.
Onsite search is no longer just a navigation feature. It is the moment when browsing becomes intent. A shopper types what they want, expects the retailer to understand it, and waits for relevant products to appear. If the results are slow, inaccurate, incomplete, or empty, the customer does not simply try again. Increasingly, they leave the site and ask an AI assistant to find alternatives.
The search bar has become a critical point of retention, conversion, and competitive control. Even more important than a mailing list (recently we have posted What Instead of Building a Database? What Are the Alternatives?).
Consumers are turning back to AI when retailer search creates friction
Recent research from EMARKETER* highlights the growing connection between poor ecommerce search and the adoption of AI shopping assistants. Among US and UK consumers, 59% often leave ecommerce websites because of bad search experiences. Forty percent say they are likely to turn back to an AI assistant such as ChatGPT or Claude after a poor site experience, while 57% of consumers aged 25 to 34 consider AI tools more helpful than many ecommerce websites’ search functions.
The motivation is practical rather than purely technological. Shoppers want AI to help them find products faster, narrow down their choices, and interpret searches even when they cannot describe exactly what they want. Thirty-four percent want AI to accelerate product discovery, while 30% want help reducing the number of options they need to consider.
This points to a crucial shift in consumer behavior: shoppers are not necessarily looking for AI as a destination. They are looking for a faster way to make a decision. When a retailer’s search experience fails to provide that speed, the shopper takes the question elsewhere.
An empty SERP is more than a dead end
An empty search results page is often treated as a technical error. In reality, it is a direct invitation to switch channels.
A shopper searching for “waterproof black boots for winter” may not use the exact product terminology found in a retailer’s catalog. They may search for “quiet dishwasher under $700,” “dress for a summer wedding,” or “skincare for sensitive skin.” These are needs, use cases, and natural-language descriptions–not necessarily product names.
If the retailer responds with “No results found,” the customer is left with three choices:
- Reformulate the query
- Browse manually through categories and filters
- Leave and ask an external search engine, social platform, or AI assistant
Most shoppers will choose the path that requires the least effort.
That is especially important as AI assistants become product-discovery tools. A conversational assistant can interpret the shopper’s intent, suggest alternatives, compare products, and explain trade-offs. It can collapse a long browsing journey into a short conversation.
The retailer that produces an empty SERP has effectively handed the customer, and potentially the sale, to another platform.
AI Starts the Shopping Journey. Onsite Search Must Finish It
AI assistants are becoming an increasingly important starting point for product discovery. Shoppers can describe a need in natural language, ask for recommendations, compare alternatives, and build a shortlist before visiting a retailer’s website.
AI assistants and onsite search serve different stages of the journey:
- AI assistants increasingly support early discovery, exploration, and comparison.
- Retailer websites should remove friction from evaluation, selection, and purchase.
The retailer’s onsite search should not become another conversation users are forced to have. It should help them find the right products immediately. It is the place where intent arrives and where the retailer must convert that intent into a product, a basket, and a completed purchase.
The goal is not to put another chatbot on the site. The goal is to make the transition from discovery to purchase as fast and frictionless as possible.
Discovery belongs upstream. Conversion belongs on-site.
AI assistants and retailer websites do not need to compete for the same role.
AI assistants can help shoppers understand the market, explore possibilities, and create a shortlist. Retailer websites need to deliver a fast, confident path from that shortlist to purchase.
That means onsite search should not imitate the discovery experience of an AI assistant. It should capitalize on the work the assistant has already done.
Retailers that understand this will focus less on adding more conversational layers and more on making their existing commerce experience accurate, immediate, and resilient.
Because when search works, shoppers move forward.
When search fails, they go back to the AI assistant and the retailer may not get another opportunity.
* EMERKETER The Top Feature Shoppers Want From AI Search Is Faster Product Discovery, 18.09.2026 link
Discover AI Search for e-commerce from Quarticon.
