What happens: Australian online sales grew 7% year-on-year during Cyber Week, while site traffic fell 2%, according to Salesforce data analyzing 1.5 billion global shoppers.
Why this is important: This shift signals a fundamental change in consumer behavior, with traffic from AI platforms like ChatGPT converting at eight times the rate of social media traffic.
Australian shoppers have embraced artificial intelligence during Cyber Week, boosting online sales by seven percent despite visiting fewer shopping sites.
This shift reveals a fundamental change in purchasing behavior, with consumers using AI platforms to research products before purchasing, resulting in higher conversion rates and more purposeful shopping patterns.
According to 2025 Cyber Week data from Salesforce, online sales in Australia grew 7% year-on-year during the shopping period, which includes Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The figures reflect overall global trends followed by 1.5 billion shoppers and 1.5 trillion page views.
Timothy Waters, Regional Vice President for Retail at Salesforce, says AI agents are reshaping the holiday shopping season.
“AI agents are redefining the holiday shopping season in Australia and New Zealand; consumers are more engaged and empowered to make more intelligent decisions,” said Waters.
“The companies that will win this holiday season are the ones that will be able to capitalize on this rapidly changing consumer behavior, making shopping across any channel easy and fun, while still ensuring control over the brand voice and enabling greater productivity and scale.”
Conversion over traffic
Traffic to Australian retail sites fell 2% year-on-year, but sales revenue rose 7% and order volume grew 2%. The difference highlights a clear trend towards efficiency over casual browsing.
Although Australians visited fewer sites, they showed significantly higher conversion rates on engagement. Average discount rates in Australia reached 23%, an increase of four percentage points from the previous year, delivering attractive prices that drove purchasing decisions.
New Zealand shoppers, on the other hand, showed more restraint. Sales growth remained flat at 0% year-on-year and order volume shrank 1%, despite retailers offering 14% deeper discounts than last year.
AI platforms are tripling their reach
Traffic from third-party AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Perplexity has tripled year over year, signaling a fundamental change in the way consumers discover and purchase products.
Salesforce data shows that traffic from AI platforms converts eight times faster than social media traffic. The dramatic difference helps explain why e-commerce sales volumes in Australia are rising, while overall site traffic is declining.
Instead of casually browsing, consumers are increasingly using AI agents to research products and make purchasing decisions before visiting a retailer’s site. By the time they get to the checkout, they know exactly what they want, turning casual browsers into high-intent buyers.
Global figures from this year’s Cyber Week support this pattern. AI and agents drove $67 billion in sales and influenced 20% of all purchases through personalized product recommendations and conversational customer service.
Quality over quantity
The shift toward purposeful, AI-powered purchasing reflects broader global patterns in consumer behavior. Australian shoppers are at the forefront of this transition, showing measurably higher purchase intent compared to traditional browsing patterns.
The Salesforce Shopping Index, powered by the Agentforce Platform, including Agentforce Commerce, Agentforce Service and Agentforce Marketing, tracks activity across global retail sites to identify emerging trends in digital commerce.
Efficiency was the defining characteristic of purchasing behavior during Cyber Week. Shoppers did more research before visiting sites, arrived with a clear purchase intent, and converted at higher rates than in previous years.
The data suggests that retailers that can take advantage of AI-enabled shopping behavior, while maintaining brand voice and ensuring seamless experiences across all channels, will be best positioned to meet holiday demand as consumer purchasing patterns continue to evolve.
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