TLDR: BigCommerce is rebranding its parent company to Commerce.com, Inc., signaling a strategic shift towards AI-powered shopping experiences. The move acknowledges the declining effectiveness of traditional SEO and paid advertising as consumers increasingly turn to AI ‘answer engines’ for product discovery and purchase. BigCommerce will continue as the e-commerce platform, alongside Feedonomics and Makeswift, all focused on enabling merchants to thrive in the new AI-driven commerce landscape.
BigCommerce Holdings, Inc., the parent company of the popular e-commerce platform BigCommerce, has announced a significant rebranding, changing its name to Commerce.com, Inc. This strategic move underscores a fundamental shift in the e-commerce industry, as the company positions itself to address the burgeoning trend of AI-powered shopping experiences, often referred to as ‘agentic shopping.’ While the BigCommerce brand will remain for its core e-commerce platform, the new parent company name reflects a broader commitment to the evolving digital commerce landscape.
The company emphasizes that traditional methods of online discovery, such as SEO and paid advertising, are becoming less effective as consumers increasingly rely on ‘answer engines’ like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot to find and even purchase products. These AI-powered platforms allow shoppers to interact with AI agents that can search, compare, and complete transactions across multiple channels, often without directly visiting a merchant’s website. This paradigm shift necessitates a new approach for brands to maintain visibility and relevance.
According to Commerce.com’s press release, ‘The way consumers discover and purchase products online is undergoing a dramatic transformation. Traditional organic search is rapidly losing ground as the ‘front door’ of the internet. Instead, shoppers are turning to answer engines—AI-powered platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and Google Cloud with Gemini—to find what they need and even buy it.’ The release further elaborates, ‘In this new era, AI agents act on behalf of shoppers, searching, comparing, and even checking out across multiple channels, often without ever visiting a merchant’s website. These AI-driven experiences are seamless, contextual and increasingly the default for how consumers interact with commerce online.’
For large retail brands and technology companies, this means a tangible shift in web traffic, rendering the ‘old playbook’ of SEO and paid ads less impactful. The focus is now on regaining visibility and relevance within this new digital environment. Commerce.com will continue to operate BigCommerce, Feedonomics (which optimizes product data for AI readiness across channels), and Makeswift (an intuitive platform for marketers and developers) as distinct yet unified solutions.
BigCommerce has been actively integrating AI into its platform through its ‘BigAI’ initiative. This includes built-in AI tools and an open marketplace for third-party AI applications. The company has partnered with Google Cloud AI for its native features, offering tools such as AI-powered semantic search, which improves understanding of shopper intent, and real-time personalized product recommendations powered by Google Vertex AI. BigCommerce reported a ‘greater than 20% increase in click-through rates’ with its new AI recommendations in internal tests. Other upcoming or available BigAI features include a B2B Quotes AI Assistant, BigAI Copywriter with Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro for product descriptions, BigAI predictive analytics for customer lifetime value, and Feedonomics Generative AI for taxonomy mapping.
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The broader AI agent market is projected to grow significantly, from approximately $7.4 billion currently to over $47 billion by 2030, with an annual growth rate of nearly 45%. This growth is mirrored in retailer adoption, with 43% already piloting autonomous AI solutions, and consumer interest, as 70% express interest in using AI for managing perks like loyalty rewards. AI shopping assistants, utilizing natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), and generative AI, are becoming crucial for brands to deliver personalized, real-time support and stand out in a competitive market. Richard Bell, President and Owner of UntilGone, highlighted the value of AI tools for automating recommendations for diverse customer demographics, stating, ‘When you have a large demographic of customers, having an AI tool that automates the recommendations based on what a person is looking for is very valuable. We looked at building our own AI tools, so being able to do this with Google was a really big advantage.’
