AI is rewriting the rules of omnichannel retail
AI is rapidly reshaping the rules of retail – from how customers discover products to how purchases are completed.
Google Insights
In Google’s latest Omnichannel Index, developed in collaboration with IMPACT Commerce, Tanja Winterberg, Head of Search+ in the Nordics, illustrates how much progress many brands still need to make to meet future requirements for a data‑driven, seamless, and AI‑enabled customer experience.
Retailers today face a brutal dilemma: while the foundations of e-commerce – technical performance and fast fulfillment – have reached maturity, they are no longer enough to win. These have become "hygiene factors", the mere entry ticket to play the game. The biggest challenge for the industry is no longer just connecting online and offline channels; it is keeping up with rapidly shifting consumer expectations in an age where the bar is set by the best experience a customer has had anywhere, on any device.
To uncover how brands are navigating this shift, Google and IMPACT Commerce collaborated on the fifth edition of the Omnichannel Index. This 2026 report represents the most comprehensive evaluation of European retail to date, analyzing 373 brands across 11 industries and 6 markets. Using 27,602 data points collected via mystery shopping, desk research, and AI-assisted collection, the Index measures the ground truth of the consumer experience across 74 touchpoints. Specifically, this year’s study introduced AI as a standalone discipline to benchmark how effectively brands are preparing for a future of agentic commerce.
The Index highlights a stark reality: the average performance score is just 38% out of 100%, and AI is the lowest-scoring discipline at a meager 19%. However, this gap creates a massive opportunity. By looking at how leaders like IKEA (who scored 80% in AI) are pulling away, the Index points to three critical strategic priorities for the next three years.
"The brands that treat AI readiness as today's infrastructure will be the ones that own the customer relationship of tomorrow."
We are moving from AI as a tool to AI as an agent. Agentic commerce – where AI systems actively complete tasks like tracking price drops or executing purchases – is becoming the new standard.
The Machine-Readability Mandate: Only 42% of brands currently have product pages structured well enough for AI agents to reliably "read" them.
The Visibility Shift: If your content isn't structured for AI to interpret, your brand will simply vanish from the curated shortlists AI is creating for potential customers. Clean, machine-readable data is the new vital infrastructure.
Choice paralysis is a conversion killer: 63% of shoppers abandon purchases because finding and deciding became too much work. AI must be deployed as an intelligent curator to guide the journey.
Move Beyond the Transaction: Most retailers have optimized for the "buy" button (Purchase scores 53%) but neglected the Evaluation phase (34%) where customers are actually won.
Personalization at Scale: While 77% of brands capture first-party data, only 27% actually activate it to drive personalization. Leaders use AI to tailor recommendations in real time, making the experience feel personal rather than generic.
AI cannot replace the physical store, but it must complete it. Omnichannel shoppers spend an average of 73% more than single-channel shoppers, yet many journeys remain broken.
The Seamless Handoff: Retailers must treat their store network as a highly visible fulfillment asset. This means enabling "ship-from-store" and allowing staff to use data-driven insights to guide customers face-to-face.
Empower the Floor: Only 5% of evaluated brands offer Mobile POS, a massive missed opportunity to close sales anywhere on the shop floor.
