TL;DR:Traffic from search and social is declining as AI tools absorb more of the buying journey, but influence isn’t. Every AI Overview, ChatGPT answer, and Shopping result is still built from your site’s content and product data. Ecommerce brands that pull back on their website because “nobody visits it anymore” are quietly starving the one asset every other channel – paid, email, AI visibility, depends on. Somewhere in the last few quarters, someone on your team probably said some version of this out loud: “Traffic’s down, ROAS is tighter, do we even need to keep investing in the website?”It’s a fair question. Social platforms aren’t sending you traffic either; they’d rather keep shoppers scrolling than let them leave.