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We surveyed 49 online shoppers about how they buy, and the headline number looks good:

80% prefer buying directly from a brand's website over Google, social media, or AI.

But when you dig into “why,” it gets uncomfortable fast.

Shoppers aren't choosing brand websites because the experience is better. They're choosing them because they don't trust the alternatives yet.

That's a trust tax. It's not loyalty.

Three things the data says to do now:

Make trust signals visible, not assumed. Put payment security, returns policies, and authenticity signals where shoppers hesitate. Like product pages and checkout, not footers.

Close the value gap. If your products are cheaper on Amazon, you're training customers to start there. Direct-only pricing or free shipping on your own store changes that calculus.

Use the post-purchase moment. The order confirmation email is the highest-leverage touchpoint most brands completely squander. Four emails over two weeks is enough to make the connection stick.

Our full data breakdown is on the blog. Including how one in-platform purchase dramatically shifts shopper loyalty, and how to prepare for AI-assisted discovery.

— Hiten

P.S. Would love to hear your thoughts in the Reddit thread on this post.

P.P.S. We also just launched a new web analytics feature: the Astro Map. We had more fun building this than anything else in a long time. Is it valuable? Probably not. But we love using it. It’s completely free, just like our entire web analytics product.

Crazy Egg, 13337 South St, #269, Cerritos, CA 90703, United States

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