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Ecommerce Pulse: What's Actually Moving This Week
August 12, 2026 • Your biweekly ecommerce briefing
Hey there,
Prime Day numbers are in, back-to-school is underway, and the AI-shopping story keeps getting weirder in the best way — shoppers are asking chatbots for recommendations, then quietly buying somewhere else entirely. If you sell online, that last part matters more than any single trend on this list.
Here's what's worth your attention this week: five stories shaping the market, five moves you can make right now, and five dates worth circling on your calendar. Stories 1–3 below, the rest in Part 2.
5 Stories Shaping Ecommerce Right Now
Shopify's Q2 numbers just confirmed what a lot of merchants were already sensing: traffic and orders arriving from AI platforms tripled year over year, helping push revenue up 36% to $3.6 billion (99minds, Aug 7). Kohl's rolled out "Ask Kohl's," a Gemini-powered shopping assistant, right in time for back-to-school, and Walmart, Ulta, and Wayfair are all quietly rebuilding parts of their sites just to rank better inside ChatGPT and Gemini answers (99minds, Aug 7). The catch every one of them is wrestling with: get discovered on someone else's platform, but keep the sale — and the customer data — on your own.
3X
AI-Driven Orders YoY
+36%
Shopify Revenue to $3.6B
4
Retailers Rebuilding for AI
TikTok Shop UK crossed 300,000 small business sellers this week, with new sign-ups up 200% year over year and live shopping broadcasts running over 6,000 times a day (99minds, Aug 7). Globally, the platform's growth rate sits around 87% year over year, and its checkout converts at roughly 4.7% — well above the average for other social platforms (Social Commerce Club). Social commerce isn't a side channel anymore. It's a growth channel with its own economics.
300K+
UK Small Business Sellers
+200%
YoY Seller Sign-Ups
4.7%
Checkout Conversion Rate
The EU's €150 duty-free threshold disappeared on July 1 — every parcel entering the EU now picks up a flat €3 customs duty per tariff code, with a separate ~€2 handling fee expected by November (Scend). It's not an isolated move: the US ended its own $800 de minimis exemption back in February alongside a 15% blanket import surcharge (eFulfillment Service). If you ship internationally, your landed-cost math from six months ago is already out of date.
€150→€0
EU De Minimis Exemption
€3
Flat EU Customs Duty/Parcel
15%
US Blanket Import Surcharge
Continue reading in Part 2 →
Stories 4 & 5, five moves worth making, and five dates to know.eMac Media — Ecommerce Pulse
5 Stories Shaping Ecommerce Right Now (cont'd)
NRF and Prosper Insights found 62% of shoppers had started buying school supplies by early July, down from 67% last year, and only half of K-12 shoppers plan to buy online this season — the lowest online share in years (Digital Commerce 360, via 99minds). That's not a shrinking category, though: eMarketer still projects total back-to-school retail sales will hit $85.42 billion, up 3.3% (eMarketer). The spend is there. It's just splitting differently between online and in-store than it used to.
62%
Started Buying by July
50%
K-12 Shoppers Buying Online
$85.42B
Projected BTS Sales (+3.3%)
Amazon's June Prime Day pulled in a record $26.4 billion across four days, up roughly 9% year over year (Retail Dive). But dig into the details and it's a value-hunting story: average order value dropped to $47.66 from $53.34, and shopper satisfaction slid to 59% from 68% the year before (SellerVisor). People are still spending. They're just being pickier about it.
$26.4B
Record Sales (+9% YoY)
$47.66
AOV, Down From $53.34
59%
Satisfaction, Down From 68%
5 Moves Worth Making Right Now
1. Structure your product data for AI, not just Google
On Shopify, 75% of AI-attributed purchases came from outside the top 100 product categories, and half of all AI-referred visits landed directly on a product page — 2.5 times the rate from traditional search (99minds). If your feeds and schema markup aren't clean, agents simply can't find you.
2. Rip friction out of checkout
Roughly 70% of carts get abandoned, and a clunky checkout is the single biggest reason. One-page checkout, guest checkout, and address autofill aren't nice-to-haves anymore — they're the difference between a sale and a bounce (Dollar Pocket, CRO Benchmarks 2026).
3. Show landed cost before checkout, not after
With EU and US de minimis exemptions both gone, surprise duties at checkout are a fast way to lose a cross-border sale. Build a landed-cost calculator into your product or cart page so shoppers know the real total before they commit (ShipperHQ).
4. Fix your returns policy before it costs you the sale
81% of shoppers check your return policy before buying, and 79% will abandon a cart if return expectations aren't clear. Shoppers expect a refund within about 5 days; most retailers take closer to 8 (Returnless, State of Returns 2026). Tightening that gap is cheap compared to the sales you're losing on policy alone.
5. Start your holiday push earlier than feels comfortable
71% of shoppers plan to begin holiday shopping before Black Friday, and 46% before November even starts. Free shipping (68%) beats discounts as the top purchase driver, followed by gift-with-purchase and loyalty perks (Retail Dive, via 99minds). If your holiday campaign calendar still starts in November, you're already behind.
5 Dates to Know
Salt Lake City eCom Summit
Salt Lake City, UT — regional DTC and marketplace strategy
Amazon Accelerate
Seattle, WA — Amazon's annual seller conference
NRF 2026: Retail's Big Show Europe
Paris, France — unified commerce and retail tech
eCommerce Expo
ExCeL London, UK — B2B and B2C ecommerce, free to attend
Shoptalk Fall
Nashville, TN — 2027 retail strategy and planning
Want help turning any of this into a plan for your store? That's what we're here for.
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