How To Master Your Data And Outpace The Omnichannel Shift

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The market demands that commerce leaders move with precision. When Michael Longauer of Athos Commerce recently spoke at the IMRG Weekly Data Show, the discussion centered on one non-negotiable reality: success in the age of social commerce and GenAI depends on mastering the fundamentals.

The takeaway is clear: shoppers move fluidly from discovery to purchase. Your strategy must reflect this reality with precision.

The New Default Omnichannel is Standard

The market has shifted. Customers don’t distinguish between TikTok, Instagram, Amazon, or your site. They discover in one place, evaluate in another, and purchase somewhere else. This is simply how people shop now.

Social commerce is no longer experimental; it’s mainstream and accelerating. TikTok and Meta aren’t just ad platforms anymore. They are full-blown marketplaces with native checkout and trusted fulfillment. The numbers prove it: 48% of product discovery for Gen Z now starts on social platforms, not Google. And since mobile generated 63% of BFCM revenue last year, social platforms have become the natural entry point for shopping.

The good news is that the barrier to playing in these channels has collapsed. Tools like Athos Commerce let even small teams push their product feeds to dozens of marketplaces and social platforms without hiring specialists. These capabilities used to be enterprise-only.

Conversion Starts with Data Clarity

Playing in these new channels requires more than just showing up. It demands that you achieve precision in your product data.

With GenAI now part of peak trading, you must proactively provide complete, structured, enriched product data everywhere GenAI looks. Whether it’s Google’s Search Generative Experience, TikTok Shop search, or GPT-style answer engines, these systems primarily rely on clean, structured data to make confident recommendations.

If your feed data is vague or incomplete, you will significantly reduce your chances of appearing in those results. Products with complete, structured metadata see 32% more impressions on AI-assisted surfaces.

The most practical step you can take right now is to improve the quality of your product data feeds.

You need to push high-quality data into your Merchant Center, Meta catalog, and marketplace feeds. Clean attributes, rich variant data, and good categorization allow GenAI to match shopper intent to your products with high clarity. Everything else, from on-site generative search to personalized recommendations, works better once the data is right.

Performance Wins The Non-Negotiable Fundamentals

You can embrace AI and new channels, but none of it matters if your core site experience is slow, broken, or confusing. AI can’t fix bad product data or poor user experience. The fundamentals of performance, relevance, and merchandising remain the primary drivers of whether shoppers convert once they land.

Across these trends, focus on reducing friction.

Focus on site performance and reliability: A one-second delay reduces conversion by 7%. Make sure everyone in your technology stack is ready for peak traffic. If a page takes longer than three seconds to load, 53% of mobile users abandon.
Keep merchandising essentials front and center: Strong search relevance, clean filters, and personalized recommendations still drive AOV and conversion. Search users convert $2.4times$ higher than non-searchers.
Remove friction everywhere: Simplify the checkout flow, especially on mobile. Most abandoned carts come from friction: long forms, redirects, or slow pages.

Athos Commerce Precision Tools for Measurable Impact

Success requires maintaining the precision required to fuel AI visibility and the reliability required to convert shoppers on your site.

Athos Commerce brings together purpose-built capabilities for product discovery, search, merchandising, personalization, and product data management. We provide the precision tools and modules to ensure your products are AI-ready and conversion-optimized, allowing you to pull ahead without taking on a team of experts.

Focus on performance, relevance, reliability, and a clean path to purchase. These are the biggest levers for measurable revenue impact.