For years, retailers treated the homepage as the most valuable real estate on the site. It was the front door, the brand canvas, the navigational anchor. But 2025 data tells a different story. Shoppers are no longer starting their journey on homepages. They’re arriving deeper in the funnel, often on PDPs, with expectations shaped long before they ever see a hero banner.
AI is accelerating this shift, but it didn’t start with the premiere of ChatGPT. Search algorithms, natural-language queries, and comparison-heavy buying behavior have been eroding the homepage entry model for years. Now, with AI-specific shopping tools like ChatGPT’s Shopping Research, the trend has reached a tipping point.
Shoppers Aren’t Entering Through Homepages Anymore
Across our latest datasets and external benchmarks, one conclusion is clear: the homepage is no longer the primary onramp to your business.
Retail has been talking about this shift for years. Both organic and paid sources are increasingly sending shoppers to PDPs instead of homepages, creating new pressure on product content and page speed to carry what used to be homepage responsibilities. Google continues to drive some homepage landings, but even that share is shrinking.
AI is designed for natural-language, long-tail queries with multiple conditions, not short keyword prompts. ChatGPT even launched a new Shopping Research tool, where shoppers describe exactly what they want and AI returns options, specs, tradeoffs, and specific products. By the time a shopper clicks through, they’re way past brand browsing. They expect to land on a product that matches their criteria.
AI-Referred Traffic: Nearly All Entrances Now Bypass the Homepage
Here’s how this new behavior showed up in Yottaa data, tracked across nearly 700 websites during Cyber 5 2025:
- 77% of AI-driven sessions landed directly on PDPs.
- PDPs received 28× more visits than homepages.
- Only 2.6% of AI-led shoppers entered through a homepage at all.
While AI discovery is accelerating the decline of homepages, Google has been pushing shoppers deeper into sites for years. Natural-language search, long-tail intent, and continued algorithm updates mean product and category pages are far more common entry points than a homepage.
Across Google Search traffic tracked by Yottaa over 2025 Cyber 5, product pages accounted for roughly 61 percent of all entrances, and category pages drove about a third. Only 4.8 percent of search sessions began on a homepage — reinforcing that top-level navigation is no longer where most journeys start.
Declining homepage traffic ties this directly to search behavior: long-tail intent queries lead search engines to surface pages that answer specific questions, not the broadest page on the site. Shoppers click the page that solves their need immediately, not the page that asks them to start over.
PDPs Have Become the New Entry Point
Because shoppers arriving on PDPs are already closer to a decision, the cost of friction rises sharply.
Consider Yottaa’s Cyber 5 performance data:
- AI-driven shoppers landed on PDPs at a rate of 77%, significantly higher than Google’s rate of 60%.
- AI sessions saw p75 LCP between 1.4s and 1.6s, nearly 20% faster than Google referrals, potentially in part because PDPs tend to be leaner and more structured.
- Interaction times were also faster for AI shoppers, reflecting fewer layout shifts and less script contention.
Shoppers who land deep in the funnel don’t have patience for unstable performance, unclear specs, or heavy UI elements. PDP experience now determines whether the visit converts or bounces.
If all of that is happening on the PDP, what’s going on with the homepage? Today, the homepage functions more like:
- A trust and credibility surface for returning customers
- A navigational fallback when users want to reorient
- A brand anchor for those exploring multiple categories
But it is no longer the primary entry point for discovery — and it shouldn’t be your primary focus for performance and content investment. If most shoppers never see the homepage, then revenue lifts come from optimizing the pages they actually touch.
How Retailers Should Respond to This Shift
Treat PDPs as your front door.
Elevate PDP content quality because these pages now serve many of the roles homepages once did. This aligns with our data: PDPs carry the buyer’s first impression more often than any other page type.
Make content LLM-friendly.
AI tools rely on clean structure, helpful explanations, and up-to-date product details. They surface pages they can parse easily. Use clear headings, short paragraphs, and direct answers to common questions.
Prioritize performance on templates that matter most.
Because AI and Google both land shoppers deeper in the funnel, retailers must optimize PDPs, as well as category pages and any landing pages with promotional relevance. Speed and reliability matter here.
Monitor AI-driven traffic patterns carefully.
Ai tools can create demand spikes for specific SKUs or categories. Teams should watch for off-hour conversion anomalies or unexpected surges tied to AI-produced buyer guides. Real user monitoring and anomaly detection can help prevent lost revenue during these shifts.
The Homepage Isn’t Dead, But Its Role Has Changed
Shoppers no longer begin at the top of your site. They arrive informed, filtered, and further down the funnel than ever before. AI accelerates this trend by interpreting long-tail natural-language queries and delivering product-specific results instantly. As a result, the PDP has become the true front door of eCommerce.
Retailers that embrace this shift and build performance resilience where shoppers now land first will see higher revenue from the traffic they already have.
