96 cited findings
What the research says
Independent studies from Australia Post, Amazon, eBay, Adobe, McKinsey, Baymard, Salesforce and others on how better listings, images, delivery, multichannel selling and AI move visibility, traffic, sales and costs. Every figure links to its source.
Exposure & visibility
40%Optimising content for generative engines boosted source visibility in AI-generated answers by up to 40% in controlled tests.
Aggarwal et al. (Princeton), GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, KDD 2024, 2024Traffic & clicks
76%76% of shoppers say high-quality product images are extremely or very important to their decision to click on a product page from search results.
Salsify, 2024 Consumer Research Report, 2024Conversion
54%54% of shoppers dropped purchases because of conflicting product information.
Salsify, 2025 Consumer Research Report (press release), 2025Sales growth
2.3xRetailers deploying AI and machine learning achieved sales growth 2.3 times higher and profit growth 2.5 times higher than competitors.
IHL Group, Retail Inventory Crisis Persists Despite $172 Billion in Improvements, 2025Lower overhead
12 million+Independent sellers created more than 12 million sales-ready listings using Amazon's generative AI in 2025.
About Amazon, A record number of independent sellers in Amazon's store surpassed $1 million in sales in 2025, 2026Exposure & visibility
Be found in marketplace search, Google, AI assistants and social feeds.
Pure online marketplaces captured $18.9 billion in 2025, 23% of all Australian online spending, making them the largest online category.
Australia Post, eCommerce Report 2026, 202629% of Australian shoppers start their product discovery on online marketplaces, so marketplace listings directly drive visibility.
Australia Post, Category Insights: Online marketplaces (eCommerce Report 2026), 202641% of shoppers will scroll up to page three of search results to find the right product, so visibility beyond page one still drives traffic.
Salsify, 2025 Consumer Research Report (press release), 2025More than 58% of Australians use social media for brand and product research, close to search engines (62%) and well ahead of brand websites (37%).
We Are Social, Digital 2025 Australia, 2025Highly consistent social posters received five times more engagement per post than inconsistent posters across more than 100,000 accounts.
Buffer, Consistent Posting Means 5x More Likes, Comments, and Shares, 202575% of Australians aged 18 to 39 have discovered brand information from an influencer or content creator they follow.
IAB Australia, Australian and New Zealand Commerce Report 2025, 2025Optimising content for generative engines boosted source visibility in AI-generated answers by up to 40% in controlled tests.
Aggarwal et al. (Princeton), GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, KDD 2024, 2024Nestlé measured an 82% higher click-through rate on pages shown as rich results, enabled by structured data.
Google Search Central, Introduction to structured data markup, 2025Traffic & clicks
Turn impressions into visits with better images, titles and content.
73% of Australian online shoppers made a purchase on a marketplace in 2025.
Australia Post, Category Insights: Online marketplaces (eCommerce Report 2026), 202676% of shoppers say high-quality product images are extremely or very important to their decision to click on a product page from search results.
Salsify, 2024 Consumer Research Report, 2024Placing a product in a lifestyle context in a mobile Sponsored Brands ad can deliver click-through rates 40% higher than ads with standard product images.
Amazon, Amazon rolls out AI-powered image generation to help advertisers, 2023Pinterest sees over 80 billion searches a month, most of them visual, generating 1.7 billion monthly outbound clicks.
Pinterest, Q4 2025 earnings call transcript, 2026Traffic from generative AI tools to US retail sites rose 693% year on year in the 2025 holiday season.
Adobe, AI traffic surges across industries, retail sees biggest gains, 2026Traffic to US retail sites from generative AI tools rose 693.4% year on year in the 2025 holiday season.
Adobe, Holiday Shopping Season Drove a Record $257.8 Billion Online, 2026Conversion
Turn visits into orders with complete information, delivery promises and speed.
THE ICONIC reports a 3-10% decrease in conversion for every additional day added to the delivery time shown at checkout.
Australia Post, eCommerce Report 2026, 2026Large e-commerce sites can gain an average 35.26% increase in conversion rate by fixing documented checkout design issues.
Baymard Institute, Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics 2026, 2026eBay Australia says listing titles of 60 to 80 characters are 2.1 times more likely to sell.
eBay Australia Seller Centre, Listing an Item, 202654% of shoppers dropped purchases because of conflicting product information.
Salsify, 2025 Consumer Research Report (press release), 202544% of consumers have abandoned a purchase because of insufficient product information.
Syndigo, 2025 State of Product Experience Report, 2025According to Shopify merchant data, products with AR and 3D content see conversion rates up to 94% higher than comparable products without them.
Shopify, 6 Digital Transformation Trends in Retail, 202656% of users' first action on a product page is to explore the product images, before reading titles or descriptions.
Baymard Institute, Ensure Sufficient Image Resolution and Zoom, 202042% of users try to gauge product size from images, yet 37% of sites provide no 'in scale' image.
Baymard Institute, Product Page UX 2026, 2026On 73% of mobile web pages the Largest Contentful Paint element is an image, so image delivery largely decides how fast a mobile page feels.
HTTP Archive, Web Almanac 2024: Performance, 202470% of shoppers say poor delivery communication at checkout makes them less likely to complete a purchase.
Australia Post, eCommerce Report 2026, 202639% of shoppers abandon a checkout because of additional fees such as delivery charges and taxes.
Baymard Institute, How to Reduce Cart Abandonment, 202645% of Baby Boomer and Builder shoppers say they would abandon their cart and shop elsewhere if their preferred payment method was not offered.
Australia Post, eCommerce Report 2025, 2025A product with five reviews had a 270% greater purchase likelihood than a product with no reviews.
Spiegel Research Center, How Online Reviews Influence Sales, 201760% of Australian shoppers say customer reviews on social media influence their buying decisions.
DHL eCommerce, Clicks, carts & conversions in Australia, 2025AI referrals to US retail sites converted 31% more than other traffic sources in the 2025 holiday season.
Adobe, AI traffic surges across industries, retail sees biggest gains, 2026AI-referred sessions on Shopify stores convert at nearly 50% higher rates than organic search, with 14% higher average order values.
Shopify, AI-referred shoppers convert better and spend more, 2026A 0.1 second improvement in mobile site speed was associated with an 8.4% increase in retail conversions and 9.2% higher average order value.
Deloitte, Milliseconds Make Millions, 202053% of shoppers typically abandon their cart and go elsewhere after an unsuccessful search on a retail website.
Google Cloud, New research: Search abandonment continues to vex retailers worldwide, 2023Shoppers referred to retail sites from AI-powered search channels converted nine times more often than shoppers referred from social media.
Salesforce, Salesforce Reveals 2025 Holiday Shopping Data, 2026Sales growth
Sell on more channels, stay in stock and grow order value.
When an item is out of stock, 80% of Australian online shoppers turn to a competitor.
Grant Thornton Australia, Value, Speed, and Reliability: What's Driving Australian Retail, 2025Social media accounts for 11% of Australian online sales, and 67% of businesses now sell through social platforms.
IT Brief Australia, reporting PayPal eCommerce Index 2026, 2026Sellers active on two or more marketplaces averaged 17.5 times the GMV of sellers on a single marketplace ($10.07m vs $575,093).
Mirakl, The marketplace revolution: Key insights from our 2026 Seller Report, 2026Sellers using Mirakl's AI catalogue tool to classify products and standardise listings across marketplaces generated 88% higher GMV than those who did not (vendor-reported).
Mirakl, The marketplace revolution: Key insights from our 2026 Seller Report, 2026BIG W's eCommerce gross transaction value, including third-party marketplace sales, rose 26.7% to $956 million in F26, more than double the growth of its own online sales.
Woolworths Group, F26 Full Year Results Announcement, 2026Amazon product detail pages that added their first shoppable video saw an average 24% increase in sales compared with those without videos.
Amazon, Let Amazon product videos show customers what images can't, 2025Basic A+ Content (enhanced images and comparison charts) can increase Amazon sales by up to 8%, and well-implemented Premium A+ Content by up to 20%.
Amazon, A+ Content, 2026Australian retailers offering same- or next-day delivery grew 3.5 to 4% faster during Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2025.
Shippit, Fast delivery won peak, 202575% of shoppers say an easy returns process makes them more likely to buy again.
Australia Post, Trends and insights: Quarterly eCommerce Update, 2026Australians spent $18.9 billion through pure online marketplaces in 2025, up 13% year on year and almost a quarter of all online spending.
Australia Post, Why marketplaces are a powerful growth channel, 2026Three in five Australian shoppers have made a purchase on social media, and 53% say it could become their top shopping destination by 2030.
DHL eCommerce, Clicks, carts & conversions in Australia, 2025Correcting inaccurate inventory records increased sales by about 4% to 8% across seven large retailers.
ECR Retail Loss / Cardiff University, Measuring the sales impact of improving inventory records, 2019Rakuten 24's Core Web Vitals-optimised site converted 33.13% better and earned 53.37% more revenue per visitor in an A/B test.
web.dev (Google), Rakuten 24 case study, 2022AI and agents influenced 20% of global Cyber Week 2025 orders, worth US$67 billion, through personalised recommendations and conversational service.
Salesforce, AI and Agents Propel Cyber Week to Record $336.6B in Global Spend, 2025AI and agents influenced 20% of global online holiday sales in 2025, about US$262 billion.
Salesforce, Salesforce Reveals 2025 Holiday Shopping Data, 2026AI-driven forecasting can reduce supply chain forecast errors by 20-50% and lost sales from product unavailability by up to 65%.
McKinsey & Company, AI-driven operations forecasting in data-light environments, 2022Retailers deploying AI and machine learning achieved sales growth 2.3 times higher and profit growth 2.5 times higher than competitors.
IHL Group, Retail Inventory Crisis Persists Despite $172 Billion in Improvements, 2025Well-adopted dynamic pricing typically delivers sales growth of 2-5% and margin increases of 5-10% for retailers.
McKinsey & Company, How retailers can drive profitable growth through dynamic pricing, 2017Lower overhead
Less manual work, fewer errors and fewer costly returns.
Customers using the AusPost tracking app are up to four times less likely to raise delivery-related cases during peak, reducing support costs.
Australia Post, eCommerce Report 2026, 2026Inventory distortion (out-of-stocks plus overstocks) costs retailers an estimated $1.73 trillion a year, 6.5% of global retail sales.
IHL Group, Retail Inventory Crisis Persists Despite $172 Billion in Improvements, 2025eBay Australia sellers rated Below Standard, for example through out-of-stock cancellations, pay an extra 5.5% fee on sales, rising to 6.6% after four months.
eBay Australia, eBay Pro selling fees, 20261.3 million third-party sellers had used Amazon's generative AI listing tools, which Amazon says can produce about 70% of a product listing.
CNBC, Amazon introduces AI agent to help sellers with tedious tasks, 2025Independent sellers created more than 12 million sales-ready listings using Amazon's generative AI in 2025.
About Amazon, A record number of independent sellers in Amazon's store surpassed $1 million in sales in 2025, 2026European small-business owners estimated AI could cut time spent writing product descriptions from an average of eight hours to one hour.
About Amazon EU, Amazon announces expansion of generative AI listing tools to sellers across Europe, 202471% of shoppers have returned items over inaccurate product descriptions.
Salsify, 2025 Consumer Research Report (press release), 202562% of consumers say more accurate product information upfront would reduce their likelihood of making a return.
Akeneo, Akeneo Releases New Data Detailing Consumer Behavior & the Rationale Behind Product Returns, 202545% of shoppers returned an item in the past year because of incorrect product content, such as images that didn't match the product.
Salsify, 2024 Consumer Research Report, 202480% of surveyed users of Google's AI-powered Product Studio have been, or expect to be, more efficient creating product images and videos.
Google Merchant Center Help, About Product Studio, 2026The last mile generates 60 to 70% of overall parcel delivery costs in a home delivery network, and raising parcels per stop from one to five can cut delivery costs by more than 50%.
McKinsey & Company, Out-of-Home Delivery: Mapping its evolution, 202459% of accountants make several financial errors a month, and 18% make errors at least daily, with errors linked to capacity constraints.
Gartner, Survey Shows That a Third of Accountants Make Several Financial Errors Per Week due to Capacity Constraints, 202439% of finance functions using AI apply it to anomaly and error detection, and 44% to intelligent process automation.
Gartner, Survey Shows 58% of Finance Functions Using AI in 2024, 2024A generative AI assistant for budget variance insights at a global consumer goods company saved an estimated 30% of finance professionals' time.
McKinsey & Company, How finance teams are putting AI to work today, 2025Top-quartile organisations complete the monthly close in 4.8 days or less, about half the time of the bottom quartile (10+ days); the median is 6.4 days.
CFO.com / APQC, Metric of the Month: Cycle Time for Monthly Close, 2018Each chargeback costs merchants an average of $128 in third-party fees and internal costs, often more than the value of the disputed item.
Mastercard, What is the true cost of a chargeback for businesses?, 202583% of social marketers say AI helps them create significantly more content.
Hootsuite, 60+ social media statistics marketers need to know in 2026, 2026About 60% of roughly one million SKUs analysed across around 100 stores had inventory record inaccuracies.
ECR Retail Loss / Cardiff University, Measuring the sales impact of improving inventory records, 2019Retailers using integrated platforms rather than scattered point tools achieve 95%+ inventory accuracy.
IHL Group research via British Retail Consortium, Fixing Inventory Distortion, 2025Smaller companies that automate report success more often than large ones (65% vs 55%).
McKinsey & Company, The imperatives for automation success, 202094% of SMB automation users report benefits, led by fewer errors (44%) and cost savings (44%).
Zapier, 76% of SMB owners are automating work, 2026Single manual data entry produces error rates of around 1%, and visual checking is no more accurate.
UNLV, Data Checking (Barchard & Pace studies), 2017Walking between pick locations takes 55% of a warehouse picker's time, the largest share of picking effort.
Oracle NetSuite, 55 Expert Warehouse Order Picking Tips (citing Georgia Tech), 202046% of Australian multichannel commerce organisations report inventory not synchronised in real time, the most common omnichannel failure point.
Salesforce, State of Commerce ANZ data 2026, 2026Customer support agents using a generative AI assistant resolved 13.8% more issues per hour, with no significant change in customer satisfaction.
NBER, Measuring the Productivity Impact of Generative AI, 2023AI can reduce distributors' inventory levels by 20-30% through better demand forecasting.
McKinsey & Company, Harnessing the power of AI in distribution operations, 2024Service reps using AI spend 20% less time on routine cases, freeing about four hours a week.
Salesforce, AI Expected to Resolve Half of Service Cases by 2027 (State of Service), 2025Delivery experience
Fast, tracked delivery that brings shoppers back.
73% of Australian shoppers say a good delivery experience makes them more likely to shop online instead of in-store.
Australia Post, eCommerce Report 2026, 202632% of Australian shoppers would choose one retailer over another if it offered out-of-home collection such as Parcel Lockers.
Australia Post, eCommerce Report 2026, 2026Amazon says tracked orders have 60 per cent fewer order defects and that tracking helps reduce buyer enquiries.
Amazon Seller Central Australia, On-time delivery, 202673% of shoppers say a great delivery experience makes them more likely to buy again.
Australia Post, How delivery experience drives repeat sales, 2026Market trends
Where Australian e-commerce is heading.
48% of Australians have used AI when shopping online, mainly for price and product comparisons, so structured product data affects whether products are surfaced.
PayPal Australia, eCommerce Index 2026, 2026Online reached 26% of total Australian retail in the July-September 2026 quarter, with online spend up 17% year on year.
Australia Post, Quarterly eCommerce Update FY27 Q1, 2026Australians spent $18.9 billion on pure online marketplaces in 2025, up 13% year on year and 23% of all online spending.
Australia Post, eCommerce Report 2026, 2026Bunnings and Kmart marketplaces added more than 400,000 online SKUs and 700 sellers by June 2026, widening the retailer-led marketplace channel for third-party sellers.
Wesfarmers, 2026 Full-year results briefing presentation, 2026Australians spent $18.9 billion on pure online marketplaces in 2025, up 13% year on year and 23% of all online spending.
Australia Post, eCommerce Report 2026, 2026Australia Post Parcel Locker usage grew 20% year on year, with more than two million registered users and locker returns up 36%.
Australia Post, Parcel Lockers in Australia: Locker Land insights, 2026Online marketplaces drove 39% of Australian online spend growth in 2024.
Australia Post, eCommerce Report 2025, 2025Online payments made up around 20% of all Australian consumer payments in 2025, up from 18% in 2022 and 4% in 2007.
Reserve Bank of Australia, Consumer Payment Behaviour in Australia, 2026Inadequate cash flow is the most cited cause of business failure among Australian company insolvencies.
Reserve Bank of Australia, Financial Stability Review April 2025: The Recent Increase in Company Insolvencies, 2025Australian social commerce reached $4.9 billion in 2024 and is expected to grow to $8 billion by 2029.
Australia Post, eCommerce Report 2025, 2025Meta's average price per ad rose 14% year on year in Q3 2026, making organic reach and stronger creative more valuable.
exchange4media, Meta's ad revenue jumps 26% to $63 billion as AI boosts conversions, ad prices, 2026Australian SMBs moving from basic to intermediate AI use are modelled to see a 45% increase in profitability.
Deloitte Access Economics, The AI edge for small business, 202588% of retailers say unified commerce is very important or critical, but only 15% have implemented and measured it.
Salesforce, Connected Shoppers Report (6th edition), 2025About 12% of Australian businesses used AI in 2024-25, up from about 1% in the previous survey.
Australian Bureau of Statistics, Business adoption of Artificial Intelligence accelerates in 2024-25, 2026About these figures
Each finding comes from a published third-party study, report or official seller guide, and links to it. Some come from overseas samples or earlier years, and the source says so. They describe the market and what better content, delivery and automation tend to achieve; they are not results promised by eComChannels. For the full context, read the insights guides that discuss each study.