AI for Ecommerce·Jul 22, 2026
The ecommerce customer journey is no longer a straight line ...
The ecommerce customer journey is no longer a straight line from a Meta ad to a Shopify checkout.
A shopper may discover a brand on Instagram, understand the product through YouTube, search on Google, compare options on Amazon, and finally buy through Blinkit or Swiggy Instamart because that is where they already shop.
That shift was one of the clearest themes at AI Native E-Commerce · Edition 01, an invite-only gathering hosted by ShopOS, Meta, and Crafeed at Meta’s Mumbai office on June 30, 2026. The event brought D2C founders, operators, and ecommerce leaders together to discuss how AI and new commerce channels are changing the way brands grow.
In the panel on omnichannel growth, performance marketing, and quick commerce, leaders from Perfora, Phool, and Swiggy Instamart explored a new reality: awareness can begin on Meta while conversion ends on a quick-commerce platform.
The discussion opened with a simple reality: awareness can begin on Meta while conversion ends on a quick-commerce platform.
For ecommerce brands, that changes the role of every channel. The question is no longer only, “Which platform generated the sale?”
It is:
What role did each platform play in getting the customer there?
For years, the D2C path looked relatively clean:
Meta ad → Brand website → Checkout
That path still exists. It is simply no longer the only one.
During Edition 01, Perfora explained that Meta remains one of the most cost-efficient ways for the brand to reach new users. But once someone discovers the product, the shopper may choose to buy through quick commerce, a marketplace, or brand.com depending on where they are most comfortable.
That is the reality of an omnichannel customer journey.
The platform creating awareness does not always receive the conversion.
A shopper can see a toothpaste ad on Instagram and buy it later on Blinkit. Someone else can discover a gifting brand through Meta but complete the purchase on Instamart because delivery speed matters in that moment.
For brands, this means an omnichannel ecommerce strategy should not force every platform to perform the same job.
One of the central ideas in the panel was the difference between creating demand and capturing demand.
Meta, Instagram, and YouTube give brands space to:
This is also where the quality of the underlying idea matters. As we explored in When Content Is Easy to Create, Brand Taste Becomes the Advantage, producing more content does not automatically create more demand. Brands still need a relevant consumer insight and a point of view worth remembering.
Quick commerce works differently.
Drawing on his experience at Swiggy and Instamart, Abhishek described quick-commerce behaviour as far more intent-led. Shoppers often enter with a clear mission and spend less time browsing.
That means the brand has to move from storytelling to cart addition much faster.
By the time someone opens Blinkit or Instamart, the brand should ideally already be:
Remembered → Searchable → Available → Easy to buy
This is why quick commerce marketing works best as part of the wider customer journey rather than as a standalone acquisition strategy.
One of the strongest observations in the discussion came from Phool:
Quick commerce is becoming the new Google search for certain purchase occasions.
Think about why someone opens a quick-commerce app.
The toothpaste has run out.
Guests are arriving.
A gift is needed today.
Something is missing from the house.
The customer is not casually scrolling. There is already a need.
This makes quick commerce fundamentally different from a platform such as Instagram.
For quick commerce marketing, visibility matters when the shopper is already close to purchase. Blinkit or Instamart is not only a fulfilment layer. It is increasingly a product search and discovery environment.
That also explains why quick commerce advertising works differently from social advertising.
The Edition 01 discussion highlighted two important formats.
Search placements appear when shoppers actively search for a product, category, or brand.
This works particularly well where category demand already exists.
Merchandising placements give products visibility through tiles and other prominent surfaces inside the app.
These can help customers discover options they were not explicitly searching for.
Which one matters more depends on the category.
An established category may benefit heavily from search. A newer category may still need education and demand creation outside the app before in-app visibility becomes effective.
Quick commerce may capture the transaction, but the brand often has to win earlier.
The panel discussed mental availability: when a customer thinks about a need, does your brand come to mind?
Phool explained that the objective is to remain top of mind before the shopper enters the commerce app.
For example, someone may not open Instamart specifically to buy incense. But if the need appears while they are already shopping and Phool is the brand they remember, previous advertising has influenced that purchase.
This is an important shift in the ecommerce customer journey.
Brands do not necessarily need to own every transaction directly.
They need to build enough familiarity that shoppers search for them wherever they prefer to complete the purchase.
That is why a strong omnichannel ecommerce strategy connects memory creation outside the commerce platform with product availability inside it.
Perfora provided one of the clearest examples of this cross-channel effect.
During the panel, Jatin discussed looking beyond direct Meta conversions to understand whether growing Meta activity was also contributing to searches on platforms such as Google, Amazon, and Blinkit.
The brand had seen a significant increase in branded searches on Blinkit even though its brand-building activity was happening largely outside the quick-commerce platform.
That tells us something important:
Marketing impact does not stop at the platform boundary.
The customer can:
See a Meta ad → Remember the product → Open Blinkit later → Search the brand → Purchase
Blinkit records the sale.
But the original demand may have been created elsewhere.
This is why the modern omnichannel customer journey cannot be understood by treating every platform as an isolated funnel.
It also changes the role of quick commerce advertising. In-app visibility becomes more valuable when external marketing has already created recognition and intent.
Another important point from Edition 01 was that quick-commerce apps are not naturally built for long-form storytelling.
They can support brand visibility, but the environment is dense and purchase-oriented.
Consumers want to find what they need quickly.
That means brands should stop asking every channel to provide awareness, education, consideration, conversion, and fulfilment at the same time.
A more practical model looks like this:
| Channel | Primary Role |
| Instagram and Meta | Awareness and demand creation |
| YouTube | Education and storytelling |
| Research and discovery | |
| Brand website | Brand experience and first-party data |
| Marketplaces | Product comparison and conversion |
| Quick commerce | High-intent conversion and fulfilment |
This is what omnichannel ecommerce should look like in practice.
Not identical experiences everywhere.
Connected experiences designed around what each channel does best.
The panel also discussed why quick commerce can unlock purchases that might otherwise be delayed or lost.
Phool gave a useful example.
Someone who needs incense or a gift immediately may not want to wait several days for D2C delivery. Quick commerce converts that existing need because the product becomes available at the moment it matters.
Perfora also discussed how the economics of quick commerce can operate differently from running a D2C website.
That does not mean quick commerce will automatically have better economics for every ecommerce brand.
The economics depend on factors such as:
On brand.com, the business may carry website costs, shipping, logistics, customer support, failed deliveries, and returns alongside acquisition costs.
With quick commerce, the platform takes a margin, while fulfilment and servicing operate differently.
The panel also discussed how high purchase intent can reduce some of the leakage associated with traditional ecommerce journeys, particularly when the shopper is solving an immediate need.
That combination of convenience and intent is why quick commerce marketing should not be treated as simply another paid-media channel.
It can change where existing demand becomes easier to convert.
There is also an important limitation.
High-intent platforms work best when demand already exists.
A new brand cannot simply list its products on quick commerce, buy visibility, and assume customers will understand why they should purchase.
The panel distinguished between categories where demand already exists and categories that still require education.
Milk, bread, or toothpaste already have clear category demand.
A newer product may need much more explanation before shoppers even know what to search for.
That demand creation may happen through:
Meta → YouTube → Creators → Google → Brand.com
Quick commerce can then capture that demand once purchase intent becomes strong.
The principle is simple:
Create demand where storytelling is strong. Capture demand where buying intent is high.
That should sit at the centre of an effective omnichannel ecommerce strategy.
The modern customer journey is not:
Awareness → Website → Checkout
It is closer to:
Discover → Remember → Research → Search → Buy wherever convenient
The exact platforms can change for every customer.
One person may go:
Instagram → Google → Amazon
Another:
YouTube → Brand.com → Blinkit
Another may see a Meta ad repeatedly and search for the brand directly inside Instamart several days later.
That does not mean the funnel is broken.
It means the ecommerce customer journey has become distributed.
The brand’s job is not to control every step. It is to stay recognisable, relevant, and purchasable as the shopper moves between channels.
The biggest change is strategic.
Brands should stop treating channels as isolated acquisition engines.
Instead, every channel plan should answer four questions:
Those answers may point to completely different platforms.
Creative planning also needs to reflect that reality.
One product campaign may need to work as a Meta ad, a YouTube story, a marketplace asset, a brand.com experience, and a compressed quick-commerce execution.
That does not mean creating five disconnected campaigns.
It means building one campaign idea that can adapt to the role of each channel.
As we covered in How Ecommerce Brands Can Build a Human-AI Creative Production System, once the campaign direction is established, teams need a connected production model that can extend the same idea into channel-ready executions without rebuilding the creative process for every platform.
The wider ShopOS model supports that connected way of working across creative, commerce, and growth rather than treating every channel as a separate workflow.
The ShopOS Edition 01 discussion made one thing clear:
Ecommerce growth is no longer about pushing every shopper from Meta to Shopify.
A customer may discover a product on Instagram, understand it through YouTube, research it on Google, and complete the purchase through Blinkit, Instamart, Amazon, or the brand website.
Quick commerce has become particularly important because it combines high purchase intent with immediate fulfilment.
But it does not replace demand creation.
Meta and YouTube can build familiarity.
Google and marketplaces can support discovery and comparison.
Brand.com can provide the deepest owned experience.
Quick commerce can convert demand when convenience matters most.
The strongest omnichannel ecommerce model is therefore not about choosing one winning platform.
It is about assigning each channel a clear role and keeping the brand connected as the customer moves between them.
That is the new ecommerce customer journey.
Turn one campaign idea into connected, channel-ready experiences built for how customers actually discover, evaluate, search, and buy today.
See how ShopOS helps ecommerce teams connect creative, commerce, and growth around the customer journey rather than operating every channel in isolation.
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An ecommerce customer journey is the path a shopper takes from discovering a product to researching, evaluating, and purchasing it. Today, that journey may cross social media, search engines, brand websites, marketplaces, and quick-commerce platforms.
Quick commerce has added a high-intent search and conversion layer. Customers can discover a brand on Meta or YouTube and later purchase through Blinkit, Instamart, or another platform when convenience and immediate fulfilment matter.
Quick commerce marketing is the process of creating visibility and driving purchases on platforms such as Blinkit and Instamart through search presence, merchandising, product availability, and in-app promotion.
An omnichannel ecommerce strategy gives different but connected roles to channels such as Meta, YouTube, Google, brand.com, marketplaces, and quick commerce so customers can move naturally from discovery to purchase.
Quick commerce advertising reaches consumers inside a high-intent buying environment, typically through search and merchandising placements. Meta advertising is better suited to broader awareness, storytelling, and demand creation before the shopper is ready to purchase.
