Shopify says traffic and orders from AI shopping channels grew in the third quarter, while the overall volume remains small. Management discussed the figures on its November 3 earnings call.
The big change
- Agents can offer participating merchants another discovery and purchase route.
- Shopify’s catalog lets agents search products and retrieve offers from multiple merchants.
- Shopify did not disclose an absolute number of AI-channel orders in the cited call.
The figures
On the earnings call, management said AI traffic was 2.6 times its year-earlier level and orders were 3.3 times an unspecified comparison.
How discovery can work
Shopify’s catalog documentation describes an agent searching across merchants or looking up known product identifiers. The agent can retrieve product details, variants, pricing and seller checkout links, giving it structured information to present to a buyer.
Separately, Shopify’s October Shop MCP release describes a connection for product search, carts and checkout. For a signed-in shopper using saved Shop Pay details, the shopper confirms the total and payment method before the agent completes the purchase.
Management said AI channels sent shoppers directly to product pages more often than organic search and reported higher conversion. That flow offers merchants a discovery and purchase route. Small volume and the unspecified order baseline cannot establish incremental sales or market-wide change.
BIG CHANGE previously published a guide to connecting a shopping agent to Shop MCP.
