Your conversion rate probably didn't drop

Over the last year, a lot of ecommerce teams have reported falling conversion rates.

The assumption is traffic quality declined.

In practice, that isn't what's happening.

What changed is decision timing.

Customers now arrive later in the decision process because AI answers, aggregators, Reddit, and marketplaces resolved most uncertainty before the visit.

Historically a product page had to both educate and confirm. Now it only confirms.

So visits look less engaged. Fewer pages per session. Shorter sessions. Lower add-to-cart rate.

But those metrics described exploration behaviour, not purchase intent.

What actually matters is decision confidence latency — how long it takes a user to verify they won't regret buying.

When discovery moves off-site, on-site behavioural metrics deteriorate even while commercial intent improves.

That's why many stores see lower conversion rate, higher average order value, and stable revenue. Nothing broke. You just stopped measuring the right behaviour.

This is usually where optimisation shifts from UX tweaks to information architecture.