Have you made an online purchase lately? Chances are AI played a role somewhere along the way. More often than not, shopping journeys now begin within AI-driven chat experiences like ChatGPT or Meta AI. Before long, these journeys might end there too.

Platforms like ChatGPT are rapidly experimenting with integrated commerce, serving products directly in chat as instant answers to your queries. This raises a critical question: what happens to brand websites? Will shoppers still visit them? The debate is polarizing, but our perspective is clear. Websites won't disappear (shopping is inherently visual), but they'll need to evolve significantly to meet new expectations.

The familiar purchasing flow of Google search → browse blue links → compare products across multiple browser tabs → visit brand websites → finalize purchase — is rapidly being disrupted. This transformation directly impacts shoppers, user experiences, and most critically, brands themselves.

Why would customers revert to slow, keyword-driven searches and static storefronts when AI can deliver instant, personalized conversational answers? At New Generation, we’re building tools that help brands capture and leverage this emerging consumer behavior, which we call the AI User Journey.

Defining the AI User Journey

Let’s clearly define what we mean. The AI User Journey describes the consumer path that begins with conversational AI interfaces like ChatGPT or Claude, rather than traditional web searches. This journey fundamentally reshapes how brands engage customers, build relationships, and drive sales.

Historically, websites began as static catalogs that were rigid, limited, and impersonal. Most dynamic sites today remain generic and unable to intuitively anticipate individual user intent, optimized primarily through SEO.

The AI User Journey changes this entirely. User interactions become fluid, conversational, and personalized, spanning multiple conversational touchpoints such as AI chat interfaces, voice assistants, and soon, fully agent-driven shopping scenarios.

What’s Different?

Today, initial buying stages, including research and discovery, are conversational and driven by instant answers. Traditionally, brands measured success through proxy metrics like clicks, time on site, and funnel drop-off points, attempting to identify why users abandoned journeys.

Increasingly, customer research and decision-making occur entirely within AI chat interfaces, not through fragmented searches across multiple websites. Those blog posts created purely for SEO? Fewer people read them now. This shift centralizes interactions, feedback, and data within AI platforms. While convenient for consumers, it significantly reduces brands’ direct visibility and control.

When a user exits a highly personalized AI conversation and clicks through to a traditional brand website, they are greeted by static, impersonal experiences. At that moment, the conversational experience effectively stops, and purchase momentum falters.

The opportunity lies in ensuring seamless conversational continuity. Traditional chatbot widgets fall short. At New Generation, we believe the entire website should be intelligent, conversational, visually rich, and transaction-ready. Brands must urgently move beyond basic chatbots toward dynamic conversational experiences powered explicitly by structured, real-time APIs.

Imagine a user asks ChatGPT, “What’s the best lightweight running shoe for marathon training under $150?” After receiving personalized recommendations in chat, they click through to ai.nike.com, a dedicated AI address we envision for every brand. Instead of static pages, the conversation continues effortlessly, remaining intelligent, visual, personalized, and instantly actionable.

But there’s another critical scenario: what if users never click through to your website at all? Brands must ensure products remain discoverable and purchasable directly within conversational platforms. At New Generation, we address both scenarios by establishing structured, conversational API connections between AI platforms (offering broad distribution and reach) and brands’ real-time, shoppable product catalogs. Unlike traditional approaches focused purely on AI visibility, our approach enables direct conversational interactions and seamless agent-based transactions.

Why Brands Should Embrace the AI User Journey

We’re moving rapidly toward a future where conversational AI platforms become complete marketplaces, seamlessly managing entire shopping experiences. Brands relying solely on static SEO content or traditional storefronts will soon face significant disadvantages or risk invisibility.

Brands must establish direct, structured connections between their real-time product catalogs and conversational AI platforms. This two-way integration enables AI platforms and agents to query brands instantly for precise, up-to-date product information while allowing brands to maintain direct control over how their products are presented and sold.

Personalized, meaningful conversations powered by real-time structured data foster deeper trust and significantly increase conversions. Early evidence confirms this: AI-powered shopping experiences deliver notably higher conversion rates than traditional keyword-driven searches or static browsing. Embracing this AI-driven future isn’t just advantageous; it’s becoming essential.

How the Journey is Evolving

Websites won’t disappear, but they must fundamentally evolve to remain relevant. Brands must:

• Connect programmatically to AI-driven distribution surfaces and conversational agents through structured, real-time APIs.

• Offer conversational, generative interfaces capable of delivering instant, personalized responses and transactions.

Brands need to actively participate in conversations, not merely observe them. They hold valuable first-party data essential to both AI platforms and customers. The journey is rapidly transforming from linear, click-driven flows into an intelligent, conversational network. Content and experiences previously locked into static websites will become dynamic, portable, and conversationally seamless, available wherever customers choose to shop.

Imagine a customer exploring Alo Yoga products directly within ChatGPT. Instead of outdated blogs, ChatGPT dynamically queries Alo’s structured API endpoint, instantly retrieving precise details and even dynamically generating personalized offers or discounts. Such real-time conversational connectivity ensures customers always receive accurate, current product information exactly when needed.

At New Generation, we’re building precisely this infrastructure, seamlessly integrating brands into conversational, AI-driven user journeys. Our mission is to empower brands to meet customers exactly where they are, through intuitive, engaging, conversational experiences wherever interaction occurs.

If your team isn’t actively exploring how to navigate and leverage this AI-powered landscape, now is the moment. Brands embracing the conversational transformation today will lead tomorrow.

Interested in learning more? Email us. We help the world’s top global and emerging brands build for the AI-native future.