Goodbye Clicks, Hello AI: What 2026 Means for DTC Commerce
“Hey Siri, find a New Year gift for my friend — keep it under €100.”
And just like that — the decision is made for you.
That’s going to be your 2026.
It’s Tuesday. Let’s get into it!
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Welcome to Zero-Click Commerce — a world where AI quietly does the shopping for us.
Somewhere between voice assistants, AI Overviews, and predictive shopping, the act of “looking for something to buy” started fading into the background.
It sounds dramatic, but we’re already living in it.
What is Zero-Click commerce?
Zero-click commerce started as a search phenomenon: answers delivered directly on the results page with no need to click a link. Then it expanded into voice queries. Then in-app queries. And now, increasingly, it doesn’t involve a “results page” at all.
It’s becoming a behaviour:
You express a need. An AI chooses the product. You approve.
No browsing.
No comparing.
No discovery journey.
According to Bain & Company, 80% of consumers rely on zero-click answers for nearly half of their searches — a behaviour that is now quietly bleeding into shopping.
Why do we love telling our AI assistants to do our shopping for us?
It’s a human instinct finally being enabled by technology.
There are many reasons why we love zero-click commerce, and here are some:
We trust systems more than we trust ourselves.
When Google Maps asks you to turn left, you turn left. We call this automation bias and it shows up everywhere: spellcheck, Spotify playlists, Netflix recommendations.
Our brains avoid effort whenever possible.
Shopping is mentally exhausting; zero-click removes the work and gives the brain instant relief. This is the real reason why “frequently bought together” works.
We’re happiest when someone else decides for us.
If the stakes are low, we prefer outsourcing the choice. Why? We just don’t want to regret our choice.
Too many options make us miserable. It’s called the paradox of choice.
Zero-click replaces overwhelm with one confident answer — and the brain loves the simplicity.
Zero-click takes all of these pain points — effort, risk, overwhelm, and decision fatigue — and collapses them into a single moment of relief: “handled.”
Brands already winning in a Zero-Click world
Zero-click is new, but the early behaviours are here — and some brands are adapting faster than others.
Kendra Scott has expanded their content footprint massively (8,000+ new pages with AI assistance), essentially feeding the machine the structured knowledge it needs.
Their AI-powered chatbot resolves most inquiries and influences a huge portion of e-commerce sales.
When organic traffic declines, they still capture intent — because their catalog is machine-learnable.
They built AI-powered natural-language shopping: “Show me things for a beach wedding.”
This is proto-zero-click. It converts intent into curated outcomes without the user doing traditional browsing.
Machines love this because it's structured, predictable, and knowledge-dense.
Zero-party data brands
Brands collecting quizzes, preferences, style inputs, and direct user data are preparing for the world where agents shop on their behalf.
Shopify DTC brands using ChatGPT integrations
Some Shopify brands are already enabling AI browsing inside chat, meaning the storefront becomes optional. If chat is where shopping begins, zero-click isn't far behind.
Beauty brands on TikTok
Their discovery already happens inside a single interface, often inside a video. This is the behavioural precursor to full zero-click purchasing.
All of these brands are not fully in a zero-click ecosystem yet, but are the closest to being “machine-preferred”. So, what can other brands do?
The New 2026 Playbook for Brands
In one sentence: Optimize for machine comprehension. That means:
Make your catalog machine-readable.
Attributes, materials, dimensions, ingredients, compatibility, constraints — structured cleanly so AI agents understand your product instantly.
Feed the systems, not the feeds.
Brand storytelling still matters for humans, but for AI agents, you need clear signals: price logic, performance consistency, detailed descriptions, clear use cases.
Build intent-capture content.
Not for humans — for AI snippet extraction and agentic summarization.
Gather zero-party data early.
When agents shop for your customer, they will pull from whatever personal preference data exists. You want your product to be the easiest match.
Prepare for shrinking website traffic.
The top of the funnel moves upstream to the AI model. Your job is to become the brand the model recognizes as “the right answer.”
Start designing for “approve, don’t browse.”
Your human touchpoints become less about discovery, more about confirming the selection the AI made for them.
2026 is the year DTC becomes machine-mediated.
And with that, I want to say:
Merry Christmas 🌲 and a Happy New Year! 🥂
May your 2026 be full of good decisions (most of which you won’t even have to make yourself.) 😛
How's the depth of today's edition?
As always, hit reply if something in here hits home.
See you next year,
Nithya
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