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130%. That is how much Adobe expects traffic from AI services to U.S. retail sites to grow this holiday season compared with last year, with the sharpest jump forecast for Thanksgiving Day itself, up 159%. The forecast, reported by Digital Commerce 360, also puts total U.S. online holiday sales at $275.1 billion for November and December, up 6.7%.
For a small online seller, the headline number is less important than what it implies: a growing share of your holiday visitors will arrive already halfway through their decision, sent by ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Copilot straight to a single product page. Thanksgiving falls on November 26 this year, which leaves about three weeks to prepare. Here is where that time should go.
What the forecast actually says
- AI-referred traffic (shoppers who click a link inside an AI service and land on a retail site) is forecast to rise 130% year over year, with Black Friday up 95% and Cyber Monday up 88%.
- In Adobe’s survey of 5,000 shoppers, 77% of people who used AI to shop felt more confident in their purchases, and 69% said they were less likely to return items.
- Mobile is forecast to account for 57.4% of online holiday sales, and 63% on Thanksgiving Day.
- Cyber Monday is expected to set a single-day record at $15.1 billion.
Note what the numbers do not say. AI referrals are growing fast from a small base, and they cover all U.S. online retail, not small shops specifically. This is not the season to rebuild your store around AI. It is the season to make sure the visitors AI sends you can buy without friction.
Why AI-referred shoppers behave differently
A shopper who asks an assistant “best hand-poured soy candle under $40 that ships by December 18” has already narrowed the field. When they click through, they are checking a short list of facts: price, size, scent notes, shipping date, return policy. If those facts are buried or missing, they go back to the chat and click the next name.
That makes AI traffic less forgiving than search traffic, but also more valuable. The confidence and lower return figures in Adobe’s survey suggest these visitors buy deliberately. Your job is to confirm, quickly, what the AI already told them.
Priority 1: Make your top ten product pages answer the questions on their own
Start with the products that sold best last December. For each one, check that the page states, in plain text near the top:
- Exact price, including any variant prices
- Size, weight or dimensions in the units your buyers use
- Materials or ingredients
- The last order date for holiday delivery
- Return window in one sentence
Plain text matters because AI services read pages much as search engines do; facts locked inside images are easy to miss. If you list products on Google, its product data specification shows which fields (price, availability, shipping) Google expects, and filling them in completely helps every channel at once. Our beginner’s guide to GEO covers the longer-term work of getting mentioned in AI answers in the first place.
Priority 2: Publish your shipping cutoffs now
“Will it arrive by the 24th?” is the single most common holiday question, and it is exactly the kind of detail people ask an assistant. Put a dated cutoff list on your shipping page and a one-line version on each product page: “Order by December 16 for standard delivery before December 24.” Update it the moment your carrier changes its dates.
Priority 3: Make your policies easy for software to read
Return, exchange and gift policies should live on their own clearly titled pages, written in short sentences without conditions hidden in fine print. AI shopping tools increasingly summarize these for the buyer before the click. We covered this in detail in your customers’ AI agents are already reading your policies, so treat that plan as the checklist for this step.
Priority 4: Measure AI referrals before Thanksgiving, not after
You cannot judge a 130% forecast against your own store without a baseline. In Google Analytics 4, open the traffic acquisition report and look at session source. Visits from chatgpt.com, gemini.google.com, perplexity.ai and copilot.microsoft.com show up there by name. Write down this week’s numbers and the conversion rate for each. Then check again after Cyber Monday.
If AI referrals convert better than your other traffic, that is your evidence for investing more in 2027. If they barely register, you saved yourself from chasing a trend that does not reach your customers yet.
Priority 5: Mobile checkout, tested by you on your own phone
With mobile forecast at 63% of Thanksgiving Day sales, the most useful 15 minutes you can spend is buying one of your own products on your phone, start to finish. Count the taps. Note anything that makes you zoom, wait or retype. Fix the worst one.
What to skip this season
- Agentic checkout integrations. Letting AI agents complete purchases on your store is promising, but the holiday rush is the wrong time to add a new payment path.
- Rewriting every product description with AI. Fix facts on your top sellers; leave the rest alone until January.
- Paid “AI visibility” packages. Nobody can guarantee placement inside AI answers, and the basics above are free.
A three-week calendar
- This week: record your AI referral baseline and audit your top ten product pages.
- Next week: publish shipping cutoffs and tidy your policy pages.
- Week of November 23: test mobile checkout, then freeze changes until December.
Most of this work pays off whether a customer comes from an AI assistant, a search engine or a friend’s text message. For quick automations to handle the rush itself, our 9 AI quick wins for the holiday rush is the companion to this plan. Which of your product pages would an AI shopper struggle with most?
