AI Personalisation for Ecommerce in 2026

AI Personalisation- Our Mutual Friend

There’s nothing new about ecommerce personalisation. It’s something Magium Commerce has been doing since 2014, and the landscape has evolved, changed and grown since then in quite astounding ways.

The ability to recommend products based on algorithms generated by machine learning is something that’s permeated our lives. From buying from Temu, to receiving recommendations from Netflix and Amazon, all the way to intuitive search autocompleting with images and suggesting alternatives if our query doesn’t precisely meet a product in stock. This is all achieved through a number of data sources, such as browsing, eg. behaviour, purchase history, location, device. We’re really very used to, and comfortable with, this landscape. But 2026 is going to dial it up to 11. But first, let’s remind ourselves about why it really does matter.

Why the Dickens is AI Personalisation So Important?

It matters because it works. Most benchmarking shows it will increase an online merchant’s conversion rate from 13% to a whopping 40%. It can increase Average Order Value (AOV), by 10-30% or even 40% when hyper targeted. And some studies show AI personalisation can boost loyalty by 40%, too.

AI personalisation also helps merchants stand out in a crowd. It makes your products speak to individual users. The flip side of the coin is that if you’re not doing it, your competitors are.

You might be asking “why now”? Why is 2026 so important? AI personalisation has been around for years, so what’s new? There are some simple answers to these questions, and some not so obvious.

Hard Times

One of the principal reasons that merchants need to be ahead of the game in 2026 are arguably negative and reactive. If you’re not using AI personalisation on your site, your competitors probably are. In comparison, non-personalised sites will look lazy and outdated, causing far more friction for users engaging with the product sets on offer.

Generating traffic to an ecommerce website has never been more difficult as it is now. Spending on key channels such as Google Ads, LinkedIn and Meta is constantly rising, draining marketing budgets and diminishing ROI.

Competition is also fierce. The sheer growth and velocity of ecommerce means there are more stores like yours running online. Merchants must milk the traffic they get and build loyalty to minimise costs.

Another thing that has upset the applecart is that cookies are dead. They’re being phased out by major browsers and heavily restricted. Merchants need to rely on first-party data and behavioural signals to get the insights they need to better improve their site. And AI loves crunching the numbers required to make this data work…

The Chimes (of Success)

However, there are plenty more positive aspects as to why merchants should be willing to embrace AI personalisation (if, for any reason, the possibility of a 40% lift in conversion rate wasn’t incentive enough!):

AI was the preserve of enterprises who had the large budgets needed to run decent AI personalisation. Over time, this has changed with a range of extensions, plugins and add-ons that offer powerful functionality that won’t break the bank.
Now, AI personalisation can be neatly ‘plugged in’ to an ecommerce site without disruption and long lead times. It doesn’t tie you irrevocably into a provider or a platform. Furthermore, there is scope for a best of breed approach so you can pick and chose combinations of vendors without overloading your site or making it slow or unresponsive.
AI personalisation has really been geared towards a straightforward B2C marketplace. Previously, B2B AI personalisation was too complex and costly for a lot of wholesalers trading online. However, B2B has caught up and that has been a game-changer. Now users expect an experience tailored to their own account. Customer specific pricing and catalogues, smart reordering and predictive search all can (and should) be included in any B2B experience.

A Tale of Two Sites

So, to summarise, AI personalisation is vital to differentiate yourself or compete directly with your competition. The ecommerce site that grasps the opportunity stand to vastly improve the UX experience and potentially raise revenues by significant margins. This is because: