Agentic Commerce Is Forcing a Rethink of Digital Differentiation
Announcement of Google’s new UCP at NRF signals a shift from page-based experiences to capability-driven differentiation.
Google’s announcement of the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) at NRF sparked a familiar wave of reactions: Is this the end of the website? Is Google trying to own checkout? Is this another retail-only experiment that won’t translate elsewhere? What does this mean for my business?
As first reactions, those questions make perfect sense. But they miss the more important shift hiding in plain sight. What UCP really signals isn’t where commerce will happen, but where differentiation will be evaluated.
Decisions Are Moving Upstream of the Page
Agentic commerce changes the sequence of decision-making. Products are discovered, filtered, compared, and sometimes purchased before a human ever encounters a branded experience. That doesn’t make the website irrelevant, but it does mean it’s no longer the default place where value is established. For many organizations, that realization is uncomfortable because it exposes how much differentiation was doing work only at the surface.
What’s emerging is a pre-experience layer of commerce. AI agents increasingly act as intermediaries, translating intent into action. In that context, the website often becomes a confirmation surface rather than the starting point. Buyers arrive not to explore, but to validate. They want reassurance, clarity, and confidence that what an agent has already recommended will hold up under scrutiny.
What Agents Actually Evaluate
Agentic systems don’t evaluate brands the way humans do. They don’t respond to clever navigation patterns or bespoke micro-interactions. They look for coherence. They test whether product data is complete and consistent, whether pricing logic is predictable, whether availability claims align with reality, and whether checkout can execute cleanly without human intervention.
This is where lazy differentiation gets exposed. Many organizations have invested heavily in custom digital journeys that feel distinctive but are tightly coupled to a single surface. The differentiation lives in choreography rather than capability. As long as the website was the primary interface, that worked. When agents enter the picture, it doesn’t. Differentiation that can’t travel breaks down quickly.
Why UCP Matters Even If You Never Use It
UCP matters here, but not because everyone should rush to adopt it. Its significance lies in what it rewards. Standards like UCP privilege businesses whose commerce logic is legible and reusable. They favor organizations that have externalized decision-making around products, pricing, fulfillment, and policies instead of burying it inside page flows.
Whether UCP becomes the dominant protocol is less important than the direction it points. Intermediated buying is no longer hypothetical, and systems that assume a human-controlled interface as the default are already under strain.
Custom Experiences Still Matter, Just Not Only at the Surface
This isn’t an argument against custom digital experiences. It’s an argument for relocating where “custom” lives. Customization that exists only in the front end becomes fragile in an agent-mediated world. Customization expressed through intent-aware merchandising, intelligent bundling, adaptive pricing, and responsive fulfillment logic becomes more valuable because it shows up wherever a buyer engages.
For teams planning 2026 investments, the question isn’t whether to keep investing in digital experience— of course you need to, now probably more than ever. The question is which kinds of experience investments will compound over time. Work that depends on a single channel to justify its value carries more risk than work that strengthens the underlying system.
Control, Delegation, and Strategic Choice
There’s also a governance dimension that’s easy to overlook. Agentic commerce doesn’t take control away from brands. It forces them to decide where control actually resides. Which decisions can be delegated? Which promises must remain tightly governed? Which parts of the buying journey should be automated, and which should always involve human judgment?
Organizations that haven’t made those decisions intentionally will experience agents as a loss of control. Those that have will see them as leverage.
Importantly, these implications extend well beyond retail. Any business that relies on intermediated buying, from B2B procurement to subscriptions to marketplaces, faces the same pressure. If a system is acting on behalf of a buyer, page-based differentiation weakens and capability-based differentiation strengthens. That shift is already visible in how discovery, comparison, and support are evolving.
What This Means for the Year Ahead
The most practical takeaway isn’t to chase protocols or replatform yet again. It’s to reassess where differentiation actually lives today. If it’s concentrated in presentation, it’s brittle. If it’s embedded in how decisions are made and promises are kept, it’s durable.
Agentic commerce doesn’t eliminate the need for great digital experiences; it raises the bar for what those experiences are built on. The real risk isn’t that agents will replace websites. It’s that organizations will continue to over-invest in surfaces while under-investing in the capabilities that make those surfaces meaningful. UCP simply makes that reality harder to ignore.
Importantly, these implications extend well beyond retail. Any business that relies on intermediated buying, from B2B procurement to subscriptions to marketplaces, faces the same pressure. If a system is acting on behalf of a buyer, page-based differentiation weakens and capability-based differentiation strengthens. That shift is already visible in how discovery, comparison, and support are evolving.
Leigh Bryant
Editorial Director, Composable.com
Leigh Bryant is a seasoned content and brand strategist with over a decade of experience in digital storytelling. Starting in retail before shifting to the technology space, she has spent the past ten years crafting compelling narratives as a writer, editor, and strategist.