CE Phoenix Cart Forum

Where is our business/traffic headed?

https://www.practicalecommerce.com/geo- ... t-checkout

Dan

Chit Chat thread from a few months ago.
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2918

We desperately need that API up and running, without it we're toast.

burt wrote: ↑Wed Oct 08, 2025 4:35 pm Chit Chat thread from a few months ago.
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2918

We desperately need that API up and running, without it we're toast.

Can you connect the dots regarding the need for an API Gary? I'm getting the impression that we are heading to a world where orders will be taken and paid for right from within Open AI or something similar and the need to visit ecommerce sites will be greatly reduced or even eliminated. I'm not sure how an API fits into that.

Dan

Yep, the chatgpt `system` would need to understand your shop. What it sells and how it sells those things, how a customer can sign up and so on.

For a human this is easy as we (usually) like a graphical interface (ie, a website to click around on).
For (eg) GPT, they need to access all that data in a more logical format, then they do their stuff with just the data, with none of the graphical interface.

In a small way, kind of related, look at your product page. It has text, images, nice design.
Look at the underlying source code for "Schema" (header tag). That is machine readable data of (some of) your product.

Basically we need the whole site to be machine readable. Does it sort of make sense?

burt wrote: ↑Thu Oct 09, 2025 11:58 am Yep, the chatgpt `system` would need to understand your shop. What it sells and how it sells those things, how a customer can sign up and so on.

I hope you're right but I suspect we'll all be adding data to say chatGPT via feeds of some sort and shoppers won't ever find their way to our sites. There would be no need too. I also expect we'll pay for that privilege.

Dan

Instead of having ChatGPT learn how to talk to the shop, they want each shop to add a new feed (because the existing open standards weren't their standard) and support a new API to place orders. Stripe collects the payment. OpenAI takes a commission. You can either pay the commission or charge it to the buyer. Of course, the higher your price, the more likely that the buyer will choose a different vendor.

I would point out that the whole site is already machine readable. However, it doesn't matter. They created an "open standard". It doesn't require the whole site, just the touchpoints defined in the standard. They expect us to adapt to them. They won't adapt to us.

Some additional possibilities on where our businesses and web traffic might be headed.

https://www.practicalecommerce.com/chat ... c-browsing

Dan