Earn Early Trust to Win the Longer Consumer Consideration Cycle, with Daniel Reid, Principal Insights Analyst at Similarweb

Transcript

Our transcripts are generated by AI. Please excuse any typos and if you have any specific questions please email info@digitalshelfinstitute.org.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (00:00):

Welcome to Unpacking the Digital Shelf, where industry leaders share insights, strategies, and stories to help brands win in the ever-changing world of commerce.

Peter Crosby (00:22):

Hey everyone, Peter Crosby here from the Digital Shelf Institute. The holiday shopping season is always the perfect Petri dish for how consumer behavior is shifting, and the data from their journey should be listened to. Daniel Reid, Principal Insights Analyst at Similarweb, joins Lauren Livak Gilbert and me, armed with that hot off the holidays data that highlights the extended consumer shopping journey, how earning confidence and trust early and often can get you into that shopping cart ready for your promotions to inspire the actual sale. Welcome to the podcast, Daniel. We are so delighted to have you here. Thank you so much for joining us.

Daniel Reid (01:01):

Pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

Peter Crosby (01:04):

Well, we love data here at the DSI. And so as we kick off 2026, we wanted to reflect, you've done a lot of work analyzing the 2025 holiday shopping season and what lessons we might take from that for brands in 2026. So it's going to make for a super interesting conversation. I thought one that we had talked about in our prep is that winning in 2026 isn't about louder promotions, but rather earning credibility and demonstrating clearer value. And I'd love to dig into that with you because I think where consumers are going right now, that seems to resonate with what we've heard. So I want to hear what your data is telling you.

Daniel Reid (01:52):

Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, what we are seeing with the ongoing cost of living affecting many, and it kind of continues to exert pressure on household spend is that consumers are being far more deliberate about how and when they spend. So blanket discounting events and promotions just don't hold the same weight that they used to have or have the same impact that they used to. People are conducting deeper research, they're making comparisons earlier, often weeks or months before they actually buy. So what tends to happen, and we've seen plenty of instances of it across 2025 and across the holiday period, is that the consumer has already decided what they want and that discount is kind of the moment that they act, but not the moment that they start considering the product, or the holiday period is the moment that they act, but not the moment that they start considering the product.

(02:49):

So if you think about events like Prime Day, they're a good example. Shoppers know a deal is coming and they wait for it, but the evaluation phase has already happened well in advance of that event. I think that dynamic has been amplified as well by how competitive and often these events occur through the year. So Amazon extended their July Prime Day event from two days to four in 2025. Walmart and plenty of others are also pushing their own tempole events to compete with the likes of Amazon. And all of this means that consumers really have more time and more choice to look at what it is that they want and find the best pricing, et cetera. So they really have that time to actively weigh up whether a discount is worth it or a product is worth it. And if they don't think it is, they have time to hold off for an alternative event like Black Friday.

(03:44):

And I think that kind of shifts the focus for brands that credibility needs to be built earlier now so that product features, benefits, all of that needs to be clearly communicated ahead of time. Brands also need to stay visible outside of these big promotional windows and be very clear about the value that they offer rather than relying on the discount itself to do all of the work essentially.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (04:08):

Yeah. As you were saying that, Danielle, I'm just thinking about my own habits. I add a lot of things to my cart and they just kind of sit there for a bit and I'm like, oh, I think I want to buy this. Or maybe when it comes time or it's summer, or for example, I'm buying a house, so I'm trying to think about all the things that I might need. So I feel like ... Or have you seen a trend towards certain categories where people might do the discovery earlier, might keep things in their car, it might take longer to decide? I'm curious if, for example, electronics, it's even longer, but for personal care, paper towels, they just kind of purchase or have subscribe and save.

Daniel Reid (04:46):

Yeah. I mean, you're sort of bang on really. It does depend on the category. If you're thinking in terms of consumer electronics, they generally tend to be higher ticket items and there is a lot of competition between brands and they compete on sometimes very minute different specification details. And what you'll often find is people, as you say, saving those items. Car, you talk about your own behavior, I do the same thing with all of the apps that we have, in particular Amazon as an example, if you're saving stuff to look at later, you'll get a notification if there's a discount. So I mentioned those kind of tent pole events from Amazon's being Prime Day, but there've plenty of discounts outside of that. So just saving things in your car, knowing that you want to purchase them, but you don't necessarily want to pay the price that is there.

(05:43):

I think when you think about some of the other categories you mentioned, personal care, but also fashion is much more style led and personal fit where perhaps the price isn't the main sway as it is for some of the other categories. So they probably tend to see that kind of behavior exhibited slightly less than the higher ticket items.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (06:11):

And would you say, for example, for Prime Day in July, if it's months beforehand that they're considering, is it even earlier that brands need to prepare their content to get ready for Prime Day? What is your guidance there on that?

Daniel Reid (06:26):

I think the main focus is visibility, as I mentioned before, visibility throughout the year. It's not we need to be targeting visibility for Prime Day or we need to be targeting visibility for Black Friday. We need to be visible through the entire year. We need to be being picked up and being thought about by consumers at every point in the year. I mean, there'll be certain products that people saw through the holiday season, didn't purchase, but they'll be revisiting those again come July when those discount events start up again. So

Peter Crosby (07:05):

Am I mistaken when I think visibility sounds expensive to me? What makes up visibility that brands want to make sure that they're doing? And is it all the sort of paid sponsored ads or what does that look like?

Daniel Reid (07:21):

Yeah, it's that, but it's also, I say visibility, but it's also being talked about. There's plenty of different drivers for a brand's visibility, as it were. If you think social as an example, people talking about your brand on the likes of Twitter, influencers talking about your brand on Instagram, that kind of stuff. There's obviously the visibility in terms of search results, the kind of things like paid search, that kind of thing. And then there's visibility within new, I say new, relatively new technologies like AI, people using that and being visible within the responses that the AI comes up with. So it kind of is a broad spectrum. You want to be as visible on all of the touchpoints as you possibly can. And then there's visibility within the platforms themselves, again, being visible on Amazon, being in the sponsored products there, for example, or being in the related items of a product page, all of that kind of stuff.

Peter Crosby (08:24):

So it's really the full marketing basket of options, but instead of just focusing your full firepower only at the seasonal times, you're saying because the consumer is considering for a longer time and being more cautious, you'd better start investing in those off times preparing so that you're top of mind when your discount shows up or you're-

Daniel Reid (08:50):

Yeah, don't put all your eggs in one basket, essentially, just because you perhaps weren't top of ... Well, I'd say not top of mind, perhaps you didn't perform quite as well as you wanted to. During Prime Day, that doesn't necessarily mean to say that that consumer doesn't have to- It's over.

Peter Crosby (09:09):

Yeah. Yeah.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (09:10):

So Daniel, we know that price is a really big factor for consumers. So beyond just slashing the price, because maybe not every brand can compete on price, what are other things that are triggering consumers to put an item in their basket right now?

Daniel Reid (09:26):

Yeah, I mean, I think, don't get me wrong, price is still probably the biggest consideration for all of us at the end of the day, but that doesn't mean that the cheapest option always wins. And again, you'll know that from your own purchasing behavior. Consumers need to feel that the price that they're paying is justified by the features or the overall appeal of the product to them. And that calculation does look very different depending on the category that you are operating in. I've already mentioned fashion as an example, but here's style and the fit of the product play a huge role. So you can be affordable, well-made, widely recognized, but if that product doesn't resonate with the consumer's taste, i.e., How they see themselves or even what they're seeing from those creators and influencers that they trust on social, they simply won't make it into their basket.

(10:19):

So inspiration and validation can often come from those other platforms rather than necessarily the kind of attributes and story that you are particularly able to control. And then if you compare that with something like consumer electronics, the decisions are far more driven by those specifications and performance. And in those categories, features tend to be weighed side by side. And I guess design and aesthetics can often come second, but I think that's why clear attribution really matters. Brands need to be quite explicit about what it is that their product does, how it compares to competitors, where they have an edge, especially if you're not the most well-known name in the space.

(11:07):

Reviews are a big part of this too because they can act as a shortcut for that reassurance and tip the balance. But yeah, I think clarity is key, whether that's clearly articulating the features, straightforward comparisons with competitors, or again, in the case of fashion, like detailed sizing and measurements that consumers can look at, the more informed a consumer feels, the more confident that they are in their decisions. So while price is often that final trigger, winning again happens much earlier, it's about shaping perception, building confidence and influencing that decision before that pricing moment ever even arrives.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (11:51):

And do you feel that the brands need to do that on the PDP and their images? Is there any trends that you're seeing in terms of where they can provide that clarity? We know that a lot of people don't scroll down on their mobile phone, or I'm just curious if you have any inclination as to where that clarity is much more powerful than in others.

Daniel Reid (12:13):

You see quite a lot of brands starting to really be quite clear in their product features or even ingredients. I mean, if you think about, I think a good example is the ordinary as a beauty brand, they name their products based on the ingredient and the active ingredient that is in it. So consumers know straight away if they're looking for this specific ingredient that's been recommended to them through various research and skincare, this is the product for them. And you're also seeing it in those PDPs, you're seeing descriptions be, I think, slightly less narrative, if that makes sense, and slightly more descriptive as to actually what is the main advantages of the product. And then just again, even in terms of having more detailed FAQs or product information pages, all of these things, again, feed into that whole perception, making sure that the consumer is as well-informed about your product as they can be.

(13:18):

And I think consumers, when they're doing that research, if they are unable to find that information as easily, again, will probably be less confident on that product and might lean towards modern that does give them that information.

Peter Crosby (13:37):

And speaking of information, this is our contractually obligated AI block, so prepare yourself, but the depth of information needed for the new shopping journeys that are beginning, and it's a much bigger iceberg that a conversation or a chat requires or an agent requires to do a whole shopping journey and a chat, then does a consumer that's looking at a PDP and making their own ... They've already made to some degree narrowed down their choices in a way. And I'm just wondering how you're seeing, and in the data about the shopping season, where did you see AI playing a role in this consumer evolved expanded journey?

Daniel Reid (14:27):

Yeah, I mean, we are definitely already seeing it make meaningful impact across consumer choice, and there's two streams, one of which is very visible, and the other which is harder to see. So on the visible side, we can see referrals from AI services like ChatGPT and Gemini into retail sites growing across categories, and that's quite a tangible, measurable shift from what we'd seen before. I think the less visible impact is arguably the more important impact, and that's that these tools are shaping those consumer journeys well before someone ever even visits a physical store or runs a Google search or lands on a brand or retailer website. Consumers are using AI as their own personal shopping assistant to ask very personalized questions, get tailored recommendations around the product fit for them, and also being able to tailor these recommendations by budget. On top of that, they're using it to do things like summarize ratings and reviews, or even understand pricing trends and price history to, again, to speak to what I was talking about before, validate how good is this discount?

(15:47):

How good is this product as a fit for me? And I think that means that AI is touching every stage of the consideration journey from that early exploration through evaluation and right up to the point of purchase. It's effectively, I guess, compressing what had become quite a long fragmented process into something that's far more efficient and confidence led. And you're also seeing retailers reacting to this in very different ways. So Amazon, for example, has largely tried to limit access for these services, I guess betting that it's a big enough destination that consumers will come as part of their evaluation process anyway, whereas Walmart has seemingly taken the opposite approach and lent into these AI partnerships, particularly with OpenAI. And as a result, you're seeing significant growth in that referral traffic from ChatGPT in particular. And then you have the AI arbiters themselves, as it were, and you have Google, which again, I think as of yesterday, announced a whole suite of AI-led shopping initiatives that will allow users to purchase directly within an AI mode or a Gemini session without even leaving that experience.

(17:12):

I do think it's important to take a moment to mention that we are still very early in this space, and there are open questions as to how advertising and marketing and brands and retailers will continue to shape these environments over time. But I think it's pretty clear that consumers who are using these tools are seeing real value from them and speeding up decision-making or validating their choices. And in doing so, they're kind of reshaping the retail landscape for consumers, brands, and retailers.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (17:46):

And you saw in your report that AI was like, you're calling it a confidence layer in terms of telling a consumer, yes, this is a good product, I should spend money on it. Can you talk a bit about that? Because I think sometimes the word confidence and trust are not always in the same sentence when it comes to AI.

Daniel Reid (18:06):

Yeah, sure. I mean, I think there's still a lot of debate around how these sources are sourcing their information as it were, but I think what is becoming clear is that it's pulling together signals from a wide range of sources rather than relying on any single input. Again, just speaking to how that makes the users of these services feel that are aware of that, they know that they're not having to go and visit a product page and a ratings and reviews and an independent ratings and reviews and a Reddit site, for example. They're kind of working with a tool that is looking to merge all of these things into the same space and therefore they're, again, speeding up the time taken, giving them a bit more confidence about their choices rather than thinking that they may have missed out on an important area of that evaluation cycle.

(19:20):

I think what these systems are really trying to do is synthesize that entire product research landscape into a single response. You have to remember that they don't have firsthand knowledge of the products that they're recommending. So they work with what they can find and interpret and reconcile across the information that already exists. If that information is vague, inconsistent, or even incomplete, that recommendation will reflect or even ignore that. So I think when we talk about AI acting as a confidence layer, it's about how well a brand story, proof points, real world validation show up across the entire digital ecosystem, and the clearer and more consistent those signals are, the easier it is for AI to return something that feels trustworthy and helps the consumer feel confident in their decisions. Well,

Peter Crosby (20:19):

I think so much of ... Recently, there's an article about OpenAI getting some of their early adopter brands live in shopping there has been delayed because they don't have the product information or somehow AI. OpenAI has not been able to get the product information they feel they need to be able to provide this level of confidence. And I'm sort of sitting here like, "Well, it exists." So I think like every retailer, although they may or may not be the retailer in this scenario, every retailer has had to work out or knows they need to work out how to collaborate directly with brands to make sure that they're getting the core fundamental data that they need and can be trusted. Because I think right now the confidence layer is a little bit ephemeral because they're dragging, like you said, they're sort of scraping it from wherever they can get it and kind of presenting it, presuming it's right or doing their best with what they've got.

(21:27):

And so my hope is that they will start really investing in the serious infrastructure that it takes to be able to make sure they have the best data, which I think then they'll be able to earn their confidence in my one man's opinion.

Daniel Reid (21:47):

Yeah, I think there's definitely something in that. I think, again, I talked about it being early in the journey, but again, you have to almost cut these retailers and brands a little bit of Slack in the way that they have structured all of this content and worked towards how to get their products in front of consumers has generally been focused around SEO and the traditional world. And this is the way these services work is very different to an extent. So it's about working out the best strategy for this so- called new world, I guess.

Peter Crosby (22:31):

Yeah, I totally agree. The way they work is differently. But if everyone steps back and thinks if we focus on the consumer experience, then what's necessary becomes very clear. And I understand right now they're in just this make it all, grab as much white space as possible, and then we'll sort out the rest later. And that's understandable, that's fine. But I think when I think about the path over the next few years, I think that gap has to get closed because there's going to be, somebody's going to get hurt searching and making buying decisions about something where the data was presented, even if ultimately it's the retailer, the end retailer or brand executing the payment when the experience happens on their platform, it's a little more important than I think it's getting credit right now. And one of the things we've been thinking about is just over the different shelves of commerce, of omnichannel commerce, the first shelf, of course, being the physical shelf, huge amounts of control to the brand in terms of what the consumer had in front of them and then what the experience was.

(23:53):

And then the digital shelf, sort of more autonomous, less control, but that from the beginning, brands had a way to play. I think this Agentic shelf as the third shelf that we're adding on is going to be a lot less control for the brand at that level. Just they don't own the experience.

(24:23):

They can't control necessarily if their data is sourced, et cetera. It's like, we're going to make this data available to you, hope you pick it up. So I think that confidence layer for our listeners is going to have a lot to do with how good are they at doing the massive amounts of data across the entire journey that needs to be generated to make sure they steal that attention from some other place. And sorry, that was a long horroring, but I think that the idea of how it has evolved and the level of control over experience is going to get less and less, stepping up with the data is going to become even more important, I think.

Daniel Reid (25:06):

Yeah, I totally agree with you. And I think not to keep saying the same statement, but we're very early and this is the time to work out what works and what doesn't, and also be the ones to make that information, get your brand story that you want to tell picked up by these services, and don't rely on the retailers that you're currently stopped with to be the ones that provide this information or that the AI agents scraped the information from. All of this stuff is, to an extent, stuff that you can start to exert control on now, when it becomes bigger and bigger, that control may become less and less, but this is where you can try and fail, I think.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (26:07):

And I think the time piece is really important to talk about. When you think about SEO, it takes about 30 days or less to see the benefit of what you're working on. When we're talking about AEO or answer engine optimization or insert acronym you choose, it's like 60 to 90 days that you're seeing some of the effects of that work. So I think that point is really important that you need to start now because it takes time for the LLMs to pick that up and to see your citations and to actually see those results. So figure out what works so when it is much more democratized across all of consumers, you're ready for that.

Daniel Reid (26:45):

100%. Yeah.

Peter Crosby (26:47):

And I think there's two ideas going on here. One is that overall, and Lauren, you talk a lot about this, there is a transformation that will need to happen on the scale of digital transformation in the terms of how we work, the scale of which we work, how that's-

Lauren Livak Gilbert (27:06):

How we think, how we make decisions, how we work.

Peter Crosby (27:07):

Exactly. And so that transformation is definitely there. But I think when we look at the fundamentals at the layer below of the technology and the data, it's more about expansion because our listeners are already experts at gathering the data, getting it from everywhere, normalizing it, making it work for all the different endpoints, all of that. And now the expansion is, one, the scale and the scope of data, and also to the degree that it can be quote unquote personalized, different use cases, all of that is expanding across as many PDPs as possible. And then the other expansion is the customer for your data, that there's now these answer engines that need to be able to absorb it in some way, but that's going to get worked out because I think it's going to be in the answer engine's best, as I already said, that their best interests to figure out how to get it from the people who know their products best.

(28:18):

So I think that's going to work itself out over time. But I think if you think of those in the two layers, one is a transformation layer that's going to be a multi-year, probably decade-long process, and those who choose to go on it will bear the fruit of that. And then there's the expansion layer, which is working your way, as you've been talking about, Daniel, to be able to serve these new use cases and then just keep it focused on the consumer.

Daniel Reid (28:46):

Yeah, totally.

Peter Crosby (28:48):

So to earn that early trust, Daniel, to kind of close this out with a bang, if we asked for one single thing a brand should do right now to earn that trust and make sure that they are on the consumer's radar earlier, better, stronger, faster, what might that be?

Daniel Reid (29:12):

I think it's a difficult question because I think the right answer does change depending on- It depends. ... on who you are, how established you are and the category that you operate in. But I think if I had to generalize it down to one thing that applies to everyone, I think it would be to stay relentlessly focused on what's happening right now and be willing to adapt to it. And what I mean by that is we've been talking about it, consumer journeys are changing, consumer priorities are shifting, and brands that earn that early trust are the ones that align to those changes rather than resisting them. And that might It might mean rethinking how and where you show up in the case of AI as an example, or how clearly you communicate value or how you support consumers earlier in their research process. And I think fluidity is a big part of all of that.

(30:15):

For some brands, it means broadening the range of the products or price points that they offer. So they're not only appealing to a narrow audience that worked for them before. Having a suite of options gives consumers a clear entry point that fits their budget or their needs without forcing them to compromise. And you see this from brands we typically associate with at the very top of the market, Apple is a great example. They offer various different tiers across their products. I think AirPods with options that vary on features like noise cancellation, allowing consumers to trade up and down based on what matters most to them. But I think also listening closely to feedback, whether that's through these kind of areas that they have a bit less control over, like reviews or social discussion, or again, emerging behavior in how people research and compare. I think overall, brands that treat all of these as live signals and react to them rather than potentially quarterly insight or yearly review cycles, for instance, are far better positioned to build that credibility early.

(31:35):

I think that the common thread essentially here is adaptability. Those brands that do all of this and are adaptable, well, they'll be the ones that win in 2026 and the ones moving with the consumer, not the one trying to pull the consumer back to how things used to be and used to work.

Peter Crosby (31:56):

Yeah, that never works, does it? No. I've been thinking about that a lot, that again, the combination of the three shelves that make up now omnichannel commerce and that the consumers really, with the onset of e-commerce, consumers for the first time really turned to be were in charge of their own shopping journey because all of a sudden they had a shelf that was twenty four seven unlimited and a search bar that unleashed them on discovery and et cetera. I think Agentic is that Agentic Shelf is just even more under their control.

Daniel Reid (32:47):

With the next iteration.

Peter Crosby (32:49):

Yeah. And they're going to pop back and forth wherever the heck they want to at whatever point in their journey, to your point, they might think about it today, put into their shopping cart a month from now, and then buy it when you just don't know where that's going to lead. And so expanding your capabilities in this time to be able to play on all three of those shelves is going to help you be able to capture that growth and that sale wherever the consumer decides their whims or needs take them. So it's exciting times. It's cool, but doing it is really hard, and that's why we appreciate having people like you on the podcast to talk about this. So Daniel, thank you so much for bringing that. Oh, I think your actual full published report on this data that you got from the shopping season, I think we'll be out in March.

(33:46):

Is that the plan?

Daniel Reid (33:47):

Yeah, yeah. We'll be releasing a report in March looking at how a lot of what we've been talking about, how the consumer trends have shifted over 2025 and specifically focused on holiday shopping for how to plan for 2026, but kind of weaving through all these threads that we've been talking about.

Peter Crosby (34:07):

So to keep track of that and keep an eye out on that, certainly subscribe to the DSI channel because Lauren will spread the news, but also follow Daniel on LinkedIn or similar web because I'm sure Danny, you'll be shouting about it when that research comes out.

Daniel Reid (34:24):

Very much so.

Peter Crosby (34:25):

Great. Awesome. Thanks again, Daniel. Great having you on.

Daniel Reid (34:28):

Thank you for having me both.

Peter Crosby (34:30):

Thanks again to Daniel for giving us an early peak at this consumer behavior data. Tap into the humans and the data that will power the upcoming Digital Shelf Summit in Atlanta in May. Our three-day agenda is now live at digitalshelfsummit.com. Thanks for being part of our community.