Launching an online business is not just about opening a store or posting on social media. The real challenge lies upstream: structuring a clear offer, choosing the right channels, and adapting your site to the new ways customers search for products. Here are the concrete levers that make a difference in strengthening your digital presence and converting traffic into revenue.
Make your site readable by AI assistants, not just by Google
You may have noticed that some responses from ChatGPT or Perplexity directly cite product sheets or service pages? This phenomenon is called agentic commerce. According to a KPMG France-Fevad study published in September 2026, 31% of French online shoppers were already using generative AI to search for or compare products in 2025. Among regular AI users, this proportion rose to 73%.
In practical terms, your SEO no longer targets only traditional search engines. Autonomous assistants browse your pages to extract structured information. If your product sheet contains a block of text without a clear price, without marked technical specifications, or without verifiable reviews, the AI agent will move on to a better-formatted competitor.
To make your site usable by these tools, several resources detail the best practices for online business, such as https://www.lesaffairesdunet.fr/, which addresses these topics from an operational perspective. The basic principle remains the same: structured data (Schema.org markup), factual descriptions, and a predictable page architecture.
Retention strategy: focus on purchase frequency rather than average basket size
Many e-commerce sites concentrate their efforts on acquiring new visitors. Advertising, partnerships, influencer campaigns – the budget goes into the top of the funnel. Why is this choice problematic? Because online market growth today relies more on purchase frequency than on basket value.
A customer who returns three times is worth more than a single high-basket customer. This changes the hierarchy of marketing priorities.
The most effective repurchase levers do not necessarily require a large budget:
- Personalized post-purchase email sequences, sent between 7 and 14 days after delivery, remind customers of your brand at the right time without seeming intrusive.
- Subscription or automatic replenishment programs are suitable for consumable products (cosmetics, food, supplies) and stabilize monthly revenue.
- Targeted follow-ups on abandoned carts, with a reminder of the product rather than a blanket promotion, recover a significant portion of lost sales.
Retention costs less than acquisition and produces more predictable results. If your dashboard only tracks unique visitor numbers, add the repurchase rate: it’s a much more telling indicator of your online business’s health.
Online service sales: the fastest-growing segment
Guides on online business often talk about physical products. The advice revolves around storage, logistics, and product sheets. This perspective is incomplete. In 2025, online service sales reached €120.3 billion in France, with a growth of 9%. Products, on the other hand, accounted for €76.1 billion, with only a 4% increase.
Services are growing more than twice as fast as products. Training, travel booking, remote services, leisure activities: these activities generate an increasing volume of transactions. If you’re hesitating between selling a product and offering a dematerialized service, this trend deserves your consideration.
Adapting your site to a service model
A service site does not function like a store. The homepage should explain the result achieved by the client, not list a catalog. The conversion path goes through appointment booking or quote requests, not adding to the cart.
Your content strategy also changes. An online training provider should publish articles that answer the questions their clients have before purchasing. This content improves organic SEO while establishing credibility that advertising alone does not build.
Digital accessibility: a legal obligation since June 2025
Since June 28, 2025, the European directive on digital accessibility applies to many merchant sites. Accessibility is no longer an ethical bonus; it is a regulatory constraint.
In practice, this means that your site must be navigable via keyboard, images must have descriptive alternative texts, and color contrasts must meet defined thresholds. A non-compliant site is subject to penalties, but more importantly, it excludes a portion of its potential clientele.
Checking your site’s accessibility does not require an expensive audit at first. Free tools like Lighthouse (integrated into Chrome) or WAVE analyze the most common issues in seconds. Priority corrections often focus on:
- Forms without labels associated with input fields, which prevent screen readers from guiding the user.
- Action buttons identified only by an icon, without explicit text.
- Videos without subtitles, which exclude hearing-impaired individuals and also reduce engagement on mobile in public places.
Correcting these points improves the experience for all visitors, not just those with disabilities. A well-labeled form converts better, and an explicit button reduces hesitation.
The online business evolves on two simultaneous fronts: search technologies are changing with AI, and the regulatory framework is tightening. Sites that integrate these constraints now gain a structural advantage over those that will address them in urgency. It is better to adapt your digital presence through small regular steps than to overhaul everything in six months.
