On a recent Saturday, I set out to find my two daughters flower girl dresses for an upcoming wedding. I typed “flower girl dress” into Google, a rabbit hole opened, and I tumbled in, only to emerge three hours later with a dozen tabs and thousands of options to choose from.
If this sounds familiar, welcome to online shopping in 2023. It is dull, draining work. Whether you’re buying groceries or sneakers, it entails sorting through endless pages of inventory.
Three decades into e-commerce, consumers have resigned themselves to the idea that shopping means taking on the cognitive load of processing hundreds of data points. And while retailers have made marginal improvements—like better targeted ads and product suggestions—they haven’t successfully replicated the kind of curation and discovery you might experience at a delightful brick-and-mortar store. “It’s the tyranny of the grid,” says Maria Renz, Google’s VP of commerce, who previously spent more than 15 years at Amazon.
But Renz—and other e-commerce experts—believe that change is around the corner. Behind the scenes, many companies are already experimenting with artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve the shopping experience. The dawn of generative AI is only going to accelerate the transformation. And over the last few years, brands like Stitch Fix and Hungryroot have taken radical new approaches to e-commerce, offering a glimpse into how the shopping experience could be better in the near future. The question, however, is whether consumers and retailers are ready for such a big transformation.
Recognize your brand’s excellence by applying to this year’s Brands That Matter Awards before the final deadline, June 7.
Sign up for Brands That Matter notifications here.
