#2 Website Optimization - Is Your Store Built for Shoppers Using ChatGPT?

More and more consumers are using ChatGPT for buying products online and offline. Especially as we get closer to the holiday seasons of Nov-Dec. Yet getting AI to recommend your product is challenging and assumes ChatGPT knows how to match a user query to your product pages or offerings.

But is your website even optimizing on the right queries?

Does ChatGPT skip over your products in it's algo?

Today we'll focus on changes you can make to your store front and PDP/PLP pages to get more (warm) leads sent your way.

Users Are Searching Profoundly Differently Than Before

Let's view a common searching pattern today:

Example of how users provide detailed context when searching with ChatGPT

Now that users are providing more context in their queries, the LLMs are extracting new data points to personalize the search. This means for the following query, we can assume at least several data points:

ChatGPT extracts user preferences: budget, screen size, device type, use case, portability, and target audience

The Issue

After LLMs understand all these user preferences, they will try to match them with the vendors they know of. They will look for all these texts within your PLP and PDP pages.

The issue?

Out of the 6 attributes listed here, I would assume most e-commerce stores might have 2-3 of them listed - budget, screen and perhaps device type. I wouldn't assume most laptop stores have "Call of Duty" listed in their use cases, or even college students.

But this long-tail content is essentially what is needed to create in order to be the exact match ChatGPT gives a shopper. Your e-commerce website must have this content in order to be recommended.

What Should You Do to Get Ranked?

• Enrich the PDP pages with context on how the product can be used
• Add new internal content pages that have more info on use case and link back to PDP's
• Curate new PLP pages of more common searches "Gaming Laptops for Students"

Key actions: Enrich PDPs, create use-case content, and build targeted PLP pages

Exercise

• Figure out what types of prompts users are searching for your products
• Search them in ChatGPT and see if you come up (or use Am I On AI)
• Figure out what type of content you're missing on your PLP/PDP's
• Start closing the gap by adding more context on your website
• Track to check you're being mentioned more often on ChatGPT

Lean into this trend because it's not going anywhere. As time goes on, the user queries will get even longer, and we will need to cater to longer paragraphs full of contextual details of the user need.