How brands can turn chat intent into orders — and where SonicLinker fits
TL;DR
ChatGPT now supports native checkout via an agent-driven protocol. That means shoppers can ask, compare, and buy without leaving the conversation. If you want to sell on ChatGPT, your product facts, policies, and order flows must be agent-ready.
What “selling on ChatGPT” really means
Selling in chat is a new surface where the entire funnel collapses. A buyer says, “find me a charcoal linen shirt under ₹2,500, deliver by Friday,” and the agent does the work: it gathers options, verifies price/stock/shipping, and places the order right there.
Two implications for merchants:
- Agents need structured truth, fast. If core facts live behind JS bloat, scattered FAQs, or vague policy pages, the agent can’t confidently transact.
- Orders are machine-initiated. Your stack must accept clean, authenticated requests from agents that mirror what a human would do on your site.
How to get ready to sell on ChatGPT
1) Make products machine-readable
- Publish a lossless product fact sheet for each SKU (attributes, variants, units, compatibility, price, stock, delivery/returns, warranty).
- Keep policy snippets canonical and quotable (refund window, exchange exceptions, shipping cut-offs).
- Avoid login walls and heavy client-side rendering for the facts the agent needs to complete checkout.
2) Prove availability and price at answer time
- Expose a fresh source of truth for inventory and pricing (no scraping).
- Include fulfillment constraints (Pincode eligibility, promised dates, fragile/oversize rules) so the agent can commit accurately.
3) Accept orders from an agent
- Map endpoints for creating a cart, confirming an item, placing an order, checking payment status / canceling / refunding.
- Enforce idempotency, anti-fraud, and tax/shipping calculations just as you would in your normal checkout.
- Return human-readable receipts and machine-readable confirmations.
4) Measure agent journeys separately from bots
- Tag assistant sessions distinctly from crawlers.
- Track parse success rate, answer completeness, agentic CTR to checkout, abandoned intents, and reasons (missing size chart, unclear returns, ambiguous compatibility, etc.).
A one-week, no-drama checklist
Day 1–2: Audit
- Pick the top 50 SKUs and run an agent-readiness audit: Can an assistant extract price, stock, variants, delivery promise, and returns in <200ms without JS?
- Identify policy gaps (e.g., “refunds on customized items” missing).
Day 3–4: Publish agentic mirrors
- Generate clean, stable URLs that present the same truth your PDP shows, but in an agent-first structure (facts → policies → FAQs), with timestamps and versioning.
Day 5: Wire minimal order endpoints
- Start with single-item order flow: confirm item, address, payment token, and order creation → receipt.
- Add graceful fallbacks (“size S unavailable; M in stock with free returns”).
Day 6–7: Instrument analytics
- Separate dashboards for agents vs humans.
- Alert on broken parses (e.g., “shipping policy not found”), fulfillment mismatches, or payment declines coming from agent flows.
How SonicLinker helps you “sell on ChatGPT” (without a rebuild)
1) Track
See where assistant traffic already hits your site, what it’s trying to do, and why it fails. We fingerprint assistant sessions (distinct from crawlers) and surface intent → answerability → checkout attempts.
2) Influence (Agentic CDN)
We serve machine-readable mirrors of your priority pages: normalized specs, canonical policies, and answer blocks agents can cite. Result: fewer hallucinations, fewer token-wasting renders, faster, more accurate quotes in chat.
3) Convert (Checkout Mapping)
We align your product, pricing, inventory, and order endpoints with agent protocols so chat-native orders match your OMS. You get idempotent requests, signed receipts, and clear fallbacks — all without breaking human UX.
FAQs for teams getting started
Will this replace my website or marketplace listings?
No. Think of it as a new entry point that should use exactly the same truth your PDP uses, just packaged for agents.
Do I need perfect APIs before I start?
Start small: expose read-only product facts and policies plus a minimal create-order path for a subset of SKUs. Expand to multi-item carts, promos, and returns once you see traction.
How do I avoid fraud or policy abuse in chat?
Use the same controls you use today (payment risk signals, velocity checks), enforced at the API boundary. The agent must meet your rules; you don’t lower them for chat.
The takeaway
“Sell on ChatGPT” is about letting agents transact on the truth you already own. Brands that are agent-ready will capture the moment when intent, decision, and payment all happen in one message.
Want a quick readiness scan? We’ll run your top pages through our agent parser and send back gaps and quick wins. Book a demo with us