genuinely nobody talks about this months of testing AI sales tools. better leads. better follow up. cleaner CRM. by all means processor froze and none of those leads could actually pay.
the pipeline doesn't matter if checkout breaks right.
I have been researching a few niche ecommerce businesses recently and it got me thinking about how much easier SEO is when your store focuses on solving one very specific problem.
One example I came across was an online store Gift Baskets Overseas dedicated to helping people send gifts internationally. Instead of trying to compete with massive marketplaces on every type of product, the site is built around a very clear search intent. People aren't just looking for gift baskets they are searching for things like sending gifts to family overseas, international gift delivery or gifts for someone living abroad.
It seems like that kind of focused approach would make it easier to build topical authority. Rather than creating thousands of unrelated product pages, the site can invest in destination specific pages, seasonal gift guides, country based delivery information and content that answers the questions customers actually have before placing an order.
I came across a Reddit thread where a merchant asked a simple question:
“Is anyone else seeing sales slow down?”
What followed was 50+ replies from ecommerce founders sharing what they’re seeing in real time.
The answers were surprisingly divided.
Some businesses are having their best year ever. Others are wondering how they’ll make payroll.
A few examples:
A luxury limo company serving wealthy clients said revenue is up over 60% compared to last year.
A finance business targeting high-net-worth customers reported its best year in eight years.
Meanwhile, apparel sellers described sales as “tanking.”
Health and wellness brands said demand has softened across multiple channels.
One merchant nearly doubled their product catalog but is generating only half the sales they had a year ago.
The most interesting pattern wasn’t that sales are down.
It was who is still spending.
Many merchants pointed out that customers haven’t completely disappeared.
They’re just taking much longer to buy.
At the same time, businesses with referral-driven growth, loyal repeat customers, or affluent audiences seem to be holding up much better than brands relying heavily on paid acquisition.
It almost feels like there are two completely different ecommerce economies operating at the same time.
Another point that came up repeatedly was traffic.
Several merchants argued that brands with strong SEO are weathering the slowdown better because they aren’t as dependent on increasingly expensive paid ads.
Others pushed back and said this happens every summer, and that Reddit naturally attracts merchants looking for answers when business is slow.
That’s probably true too.
But the number of similar conversations popping up lately makes me wonder whether something larger is happening.
So I’m curious… Are your ecommerce sales up or down compared to this time last year?
What is the process you follow to write content with AI tools to get unique and useful content for real users?
GEO (generative engine optimization) is a huge opportunity for brands right now. Referrals from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude account for 30% of referral traffic and have a 4-25X higher conversion rate than search traffic. First movers will win here.
I've been auditing storefronts for this, and the gaps are wild. Brands with strong SEO and on-site conversion have almost no AI search presence because their product descriptions are thin, or their structured data is a mess, or their brand just isn't being talked about anywhere an LLM can find.
If you want to see where your store stands on both, I built a tool that crawls it, scores it, and gives actionable fixes. Happy to share it in the comments.
Here are my findings from the 10 most recent audits:
• Average GEO score was 37 out of 100. Lowest was 26, highest was 48. No store cleared 50.
• The schema gap is the big one. Only 1 of the 10 had a real product schema on its product pages. Not one had a review or rating schema, so none of their star ratings can surface when an AI is comparing products. Most were on Shopify, and the default theme schema just isn't rendering in a way the crawlers can use.
• The access side is what surprised me. All 10 had an llms.txt file, and none of them blocked the major AI crawlers. The engines can walk right in. There's almost nothing structured waiting for them once they do.
• Content was thin on the same axis. Not one store used question-phrased headings, the kind that match how people actually ask an AI about a product. None had a comparison table. Half had some FAQ content.
These stores convert fine and look good; however, they're sitting on a next-to-zero readiness for the fastest-growing channel.
The affiliate side of marketing for DTC has come into its own and the tooling has finally caught up so I'm just sharing what actually integrates cleanly with shopify, woo and the major ecom platforms based on real testing.
Refersion. The default for shopify based DTC. Native integration is solid, commission rules are flexible and the partner portal works. The weakest point is the search/discovery side, you bring your own affiliates.
Impact.com. Enterprise grade infrastructure with clean ecom integration through their app marketplace. Their compliance and tax handling is the strongest in the category. Pricing only makes sense at scale, it's not something for smaller projects
Tapfiliate. It's the mid market option, easier setup than impact and more flexibility on commission rules than refersion. It's a solid sleeper choice
Upfluence. The hybrid choice for DTC specifically because it handles the creator affiliate case where the same partner is doing UGC and earning commission, with the shopify integration pulling order level data per creator into the same platform that handles the relationship. Most pure affiliate tools force you to manage the same partner in two systems.
ShareASale. Its pretty established merchant network gives you broader affiliate exposure. It's less flexible on custom programs though.
GoAffPro. It's the cheapest option for shopify specifically, functional but feature light so it fits very early stage programs.
The decision tree if you can put it that way is pure affiliate program, established affiliates, mostly cash performance partners? Refersion or impact based on scale. Creator affiliate hybrid, same person earning UGC fee plus commission? A platform that handles both like upfluence. Don't run them as two separate tools, the partner data has to live together for the math to work.