Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

searchengineland.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 300 posts

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#11

Post by TZubiri »

charcircuit wrote: post #3

What if they made instant checkout actually instant? You ask ChatGPT to setup a website and it instantly purchases web hosting and sets up the website there. You can't beat a 100% conversion rate by actually checking out instantly. If you didn't like that host you can ask it to find it alternative and ChatGPT would automatically attempt a refund and then purchase from someone else.

What are we talking about here? ChatGPT as an interface to buy groceries? Or ChatGPT as an interface to build a website. I fail to see how these would be related other than using a specific technology

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#12

Post by Vespasian »

Lerc wrote: post #7

Is their issue that ChatGPT served their customers more than it served them?

To early to say that but it's certainly a part of the equation all vendors are currently looking at.

And given the past few decades there is no reason to not try to do that.

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#13

Post by pjc50 »

TZubiri wrote: post #10
__alexs wrote: post #5

(Good) E-commerce has been ruthlessly optimised to get shoppers to products they'll actually buy and then remove all distractions from buying. A chat interface is just fundamentally incompatible with this. The agent makes it too easy to ask questions and comparison shop.

It depends on the product, if we are talking commodities or mass produced products like groceries, sure. If we are talking custom products or complex appliances that need a lot of guidance, then maybe chat interface is appropriate.

The problem is that the chat transcript is legally binding. If the chatbot makes incorrect statements which the customer relies on for their complex purchase, then you're going to have to refund them.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/travel/article/20240222-air-canada-cha...

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#14

Post by exegete »

__alexs wrote: post #5

(Good) E-commerce has been ruthlessly optimised to get shoppers to products they'll actually buy and then remove all distractions from buying. A chat interface is just fundamentally incompatible with this. The agent makes it too easy to ask questions and comparison shop.

The article says Walmart is not abandoning ChatGPT but is going to use their own app in Chat’s ecosystem

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#15

Post by janalsncm »

This is from one of the links in the article

> Why this is happening. Two forces are slowing agentic commerce, according to Leigh McKenzie, director of online visibility at Semrush: infrastructure and trust. Real-time catalog normalization across tens of millions of SKUs is a decade-scale problem Google already solved with Merchant Center, and consumers still default to checkout flows they trust — Apple Pay, Google Wallet, and Amazon one-click.

It turns out when you step outside of “hard tech” problems like building GPT6 there are all of these details others have solved already. E-commerce has been optimized to the last decimal point for the last 30 years.

OpenAI is new to it, and if I had to guess, not that interested in getting good at it.

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#16

Post by bashkiddie »

TZubiri wrote: post #10
__alexs wrote: post #5

(Good) E-commerce has been ruthlessly optimised to get shoppers to products they'll actually buy and then remove all distractions from buying. A chat interface is just fundamentally incompatible with this. The agent makes it too easy to ask questions and comparison shop.

It depends on the product, if we are talking commodities or mass produced products like groceries, sure. If we are talking custom products or complex appliances that need a lot of guidance, then maybe chat interface is appropriate.

When I shop for special hardware (e.g. bicycle shift gear) it is usually underspecified. If the information does not exist in the text block, a chat bot is of no use.

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#17

Post by petcat »

janalsncm wrote: post #15

This is from one of the links in the article > Why this is happening. Two forces are slowing agentic commerce, according to Leigh McKenzie, director of online visibility at Semrush: infrastructure and trust. Real-time catalog normalization across tens of millions of SKUs is a decade-scale problem Google already solved with Merchant Center, and consumers still default to checkout flows they trust — Apple Pay, Google W…

> not that interested in getting good at it

I think they're interested in getting good at it. They just don't want to put in the human time and effort to do so. They expect their many failures and short-comings to be shored up by continuous model training.

But that, of course, means that in the meantime it will suck and nobody will use it.

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#18

Post by itopaloglu83 »

__alexs wrote: post #5

(Good) E-commerce has been ruthlessly optimised to get shoppers to products they'll actually buy and then remove all distractions from buying. A chat interface is just fundamentally incompatible with this. The agent makes it too easy to ask questions and comparison shop.

They practically want to funnel users like cattle and not let them think about it or compare things.

It’s like corporations are angry that they need to go through us to get our money.

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#19

Post by bko »

__alexs wrote: post #5

(Good) E-commerce has been ruthlessly optimised to get shoppers to products they'll actually buy and then remove all distractions from buying. A chat interface is just fundamentally incompatible with this. The agent makes it too easy to ask questions and comparison shop.

Why is this good? I want an impartial consistent system for shopping. If I can find it at a different site for a lower price, I should be able to do so. I should also be able to have it give me non-bot reviews and ask relevant questions about the product.

The same way I think shopping at Amazon is better than a place like Nike due to objectivity and comparison, I think a chat interface has the potential to take this to another level since places like Amazon have degraded considerably in terms of things like fake third party products and fake reviews.

Post reply on HN