Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by danlitt » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 10:19 AM UTC

throwaway290 wrote: post #32

bko wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> impartial consistent system for shopping > for a lower price Catalog is impartial, chatbot is ads pretending as advice.

I do agree with your conclusion, but the catalog in most online shops is certainly not impartial. Amazon sells the entire first page of search placement, for example.

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

#52

Post by froggit » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 10:21 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #26

__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.

> (Good) E-commerce has been ruthlessly optimised to get shoppers to products they'll actually buy and then remove all distractions from buying. The only e-commerce site that fits this standard is that old one for buying (IIRC) nuts and bolts or such, that pops up on HN every other year, and whose name sadly escapes me now. Everyone else is ruthlessly optimizing their experience to fuck shoppers over and get them to…

Not sure you're aware but you initially sound like you disagree with the post you replied to, only to follow up by enthusiastically reiterating that author's words as if in agreement.

You realize what shoppers and vendors each consider to be "good" e-commerce sites are fundamentally opposed concepts?

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

#53

Post by jaapz » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 10:23 AM UTC

busymom0 wrote: post #29

TeMPOraL wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (Good) E-commerce has been ruthlessly optimised to get shoppers to products they'll actually buy and then remove all distractions from buying. The only e-commerce site that fits this standard is that old one for buying (IIRC) nuts and bolts or such, that pops up on HN every other year, and whose name sadly escapes me now. Everyone else is ruthlessly optimizing their experience to fuck shoppers over and get them to…

https://www.mcmaster.com/

Wow, that's amazing

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

#54

Post by brador » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 10:23 AM UTC

Original AI was sourced from university level text books, stack, wiki. Average iq around 140.

The latest AI is trained on the average citizens social media output. Iq 90.

That’s why AI seemed smart. The bar will not be raised again. We’re cooked.

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

#55

Post by bandrami » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 10:23 AM UTC

busymom0 wrote: post #29

TeMPOraL wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (Good) E-commerce has been ruthlessly optimised to get shoppers to products they'll actually buy and then remove all distractions from buying. The only e-commerce site that fits this standard is that old one for buying (IIRC) nuts and bolts or such, that pops up on HN every other year, and whose name sadly escapes me now. Everyone else is ruthlessly optimizing their experience to fuck shoppers over and get them to…

https://www.mcmaster.com/

Just made an order from them. It's weirdly comforting to know there's a company that knows I need clevis bolts and is willing to sell them to me for a transparent price.

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

#56

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 10:23 AM UTC

rvz wrote: post #36

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…

Also having to wait for ChatGPT for a "thinking" response to search for information that is slower than a Google search loses them lots of money. I believe that it can still work and I won't claim about being unsurprised about this failure. But this is a great opportunity to execute this problem really well if OpenAI and others are not interested in getting good at this. Perplexity also attempted this, got sued by Am…

> Perplexity also attempted this, got sued by Amazon and it appears semi-abandoned.

Any details on that? I feel the answer is more likely there than in "friction".

Hardly any purchase of consequence is so sensitive to friction that the difference between Google Search and an LLM response matters (especially that in reality, we're talking 20+ manual searches per one LLM response). I.e. I'm not going to use LLMs advise on some random 0-100$ purchase anyway, and losing #$ on a ##$ purchase due to suboptimal choice is not that big of a deal - but I absolutely am going to consult it (and have it compile tables and verify sources) on a $500+ purchase and for those I can afford spending few more minutes on research (or rather few hours less, compared of doing it the usual way).

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

#57

Post by wrqvrwvq » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 10:24 AM UTC

TZubiri wrote: post #11

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

> Because most people can't read. Wait for agents generating personalized websites/self checkout apps.

> You ask ChatGPT to setup a website and it instantly purchases web hosting and sets up the website

Multiple comments deflecting from the original shopping conversion failure to recommend ... building a whole new website (with hosting for some reason?). W/o bothering to look through commenter history, one has to assume there are a lot of chatbots on this site or else the people using this stuff have been lobotomized.

I'm sure it'll start happening too, and when that fails, the bots will, i don't know, invent a new macarena. We are definitely headed for an irredeemably stupid future.

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

#58

Post by NicoJuicy » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 10:24 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #39

petcat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think they're operating beyond their current (human) capacity, trying to test out too many things at a time. But a dreamer in me entertains another idea: perhaps they're just holding back, because they realize that actually succeeding at this will instantly kill (or at least mortally wound) e-commerce as we know it. (This is a more narrow version of my belief that general AI tools like LLMs fundamentally don't fit…

> perhaps they're just holding back

Considering the money they need, they over promise and under deliver.

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

#59

Post by latexr » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 10:25 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #39

petcat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think they're operating beyond their current (human) capacity, trying to test out too many things at a time. But a dreamer in me entertains another idea: perhaps they're just holding back, because they realize that actually succeeding at this will instantly kill (or at least mortally wound) e-commerce as we know it. (This is a more narrow version of my belief that general AI tools like LLMs fundamentally don't fit…

> But a dreamer in me entertains another idea: perhaps they're just holding back, because they realize that actually succeeding at this will instantly kill (or at least mortally wound) e-commerce as we know it.

Sam Altman doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself and has time and again shown he has no restraint for trampling over others to further his own goals. Why would e-commerce be where he draws the line?

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

#60

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 10:27 AM UTC

froggit wrote: post #52

TeMPOraL wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (Good) E-commerce has been ruthlessly optimised to get shoppers to products they'll actually buy and then remove all distractions from buying. The only e-commerce site that fits this standard is that old one for buying (IIRC) nuts and bolts or such, that pops up on HN every other year, and whose name sadly escapes me now. Everyone else is ruthlessly optimizing their experience to fuck shoppers over and get them to…

Not sure you're aware but you initially sound like you disagree with the post you replied to, only to follow up by enthusiastically reiterating that author's words as if in agreement. You realize what shoppers and vendors each consider to be "good" e-commerce sites are fundamentally opposed concepts?

Maybe? I'm not sure which way the OP is arguing, in particular because of that "(Good)". So perhaps I misread the comment as arguing the opposite of what it is.