At Azoma, we believe mastering AI-first discovery is the new frontier of ecommerce. As ChatGPT evolves from answer engine to answer & action engine, brands must optimize not just for clicks, but for conversions inside every AI conversation.
Why ChatGPT’s New Shopping Features Matter for Ecommerce
ChatGPT’s newly introduced product carousels transform it into a discovery-to-purchase channel, selecting items based on user intent, structured metadata, and its own reasoning engine (OpenAI). This shift means that AI assistants no longer just point shoppers to links—they influence decisions with visual carousels, ratings summaries, and “budget-friendly” or “most popular” labels all within chat. With Gartner forecasting generative-AI spending skyrocketing to $644 billion in 2025, representing 76.4% year-over-year growth, early adopters who own “AI shelf space” will capture disproportionate market share (VentureBeat).
How to Optimize Your E-Commerce Store for AI-Powered Shopping Platforms
The integration of large language models (LLMs) into shopping experiences is transforming how consumers discover and interact with products online. To ensure your brand remains prominent in this evolving landscape, consider the following actionable steps:
1. Join OpenAI's Merchant Program
OpenAI's merchant program allows brands to submit product data directly, enhancing visibility within ChatGPT's shopping feature. By participating, your products can appear in AI-generated recommendations, reaching users during their shopping journey. You can join the interest list here.
2. Implement Bing Index Now
Bing's Index Now protocol enables faster crawling and indexing of your website's content, ensuring that updates to product listings and metadata are promptly reflected in Bing's search engine. This is also, potentially, significant for getting mentioned in ChatGPT. The reason for this is Microsoft owns Bing and has a significant investment in OpenAI. You can read the documentation for Index Now here, and see if it easily integrates with your CMS here.
3. Optimize Product Metadata
Structured and detailed metadata enhances the discoverability of your products by AI systems. Ensure that product titles, descriptions, and attributes are comprehensive and accurately reflect the item's features, benefits, and use cases. This aids LLMs in understanding and presenting your products effectively. You can see if your listings are optimized for AI by using a tool like Azoma. Since we're an end-to-end solution, you can also use our software to generate optimized meta-data site-wide across all your listings.
4. Adopt the llms.txt Protocol
The llms.txt file is a proposed solution for websites to provide LLM-friendly content, the same way a robots.txt file is used for web crawlers. It is proposed, because there is no clear indication GPT search providers have adopted this protocol. However, a growing number of sites are adopting llms.txt, and it is one of the first 'easy wins' we recommend to all our SaaS clients, as if this protocol is ever adopted they will be far ahead of the curve.
You can generate an llms.txt file for your site by using a free tool like Adsbys LLM.TXT Sitemap Generator. Just provide your existing sitemap and they'll generate a file that fits the protocol. You can then past the file under a sub-directory like https://yourwebsite.com/.well-known/llms.txt.
Want Your Product to Appear First on ChatGPT?
Azoma’s enterprise-grade AI visibility platform is built for AI-native commerce—delivering optimized metadata, high-impact visuals, and real-time learnings so your brand stands out in every AI conversation. If you want to prepare for the future of search, reach out to us today.
Get in touch → sales@azoma.ai