Retailers are staring down a hard truth: organic web traffic is slipping, and fast. That doesn’t mean shoppers have lost intent. It means the funnel has shifted upstream, with answers being delivered before anyone reaches your site. If retailers can’t offset this structural decline with in-store engagement they can prove, growth will flatline.
Cuebiq’s point of view: treat stores as your new performance channel and measure them as rigorously as you do online conversions.
The macro shift: demand hasn’t vanished, but clicks have
Recent benchmarks quantify the new baseline:
- 58.5% of U.S. Google searches and 59.7% in the EU ended with zero clicks in 2024 – users got their answers without visiting a site
- Bain estimates ~80% of consumers rely on zero-click results in at least 40% of their searches, driving 15–25% declines in organic traffic
- The AI search share of U.S. desktop queries reached 5.6% in June 2025, more than doubling year over year
- Even where users still click, organic click share dropped from 44.2% to 40.3% in the U.S. between March 2024 and March 2025
In other words, you can’t count on clicks alone.
What’s working now: local intent, personal context, offline proof
From industry surveys and retailer case studies, three consistent patterns emerge:
- Capture local intent.
“Near me” searches remain one of commerce’s most powerful demand signals. Hundreds of millions of these queries occur monthly in the U.S., and there has been sustained growth across categories. - Provide personal proof.
Shoppers increasingly rely on AI and reviews to shape purchase decisions. In a Yotpo-led survey, 48% said they’ve used AI to make a buying choice, and 84% said better reviews would have prevented a return - Close the loop offline.
If clicks are evaporating, the store visit becomes the conversion event you can, and must, measure. That means moving from proxy metrics like impressions or CTR to incremental visit lift, cost per incremental visit, and repeat visit rate.
46
According to Google, the number of Google searches that are “local”
A framework Finance believes
The challenge isn’t just driving traffic; it’s proving to the CFO that the dollars delivered a measurable lift. Cuebiq’s methodology centers on incrementality: showing how media exposure changes real-world behavior compared to a correctly matched control.
Example: $50,000 local media buy over 4 weeks
- Media spend: $50,000 across geo-targeted Search, Social, and Maps.
- Exposed reach in trade areas: 500,000 devices.
- Visit rate (exposed): 2.6% which yields 13,000 visits.
- Control visit rate: 2.1% converts to 10,500 expected visits without media.
- Incremental store visits: 2,500.
- Cost per store visit (CPSV): $50,000 / 13,000 = $3.85.
- Cost per incremental visit (CPIV): $50,000 / 2,500 = $20.00.
Translation for Finance: For every $20 spent, the campaign generated one incremental store visit. If the average in-store margin contribution is $28/visit, the campaign returned a 40% ROI before factoring in repeat purchases or halo effects.
Cuebiq’s reporting packages this into clear deliverables: lift percentages, CPSV/CPIV benchmarks, and DMA-level efficiency curves that make it obvious where to reallocate spend.
The case for urgency
- Zero-click dominance is permanent.
With 58–60% of searches ending without a click, your website is no longer the default entry point. - Organic traffic is structurally weaker.
Clicks to organic results dropped 4 points year over year from 44.2% to 40.3% - AI assistants are stealing share.
5.6% of desktop search traffic already flows to AI search, and it’s doubling year over year. - Local discovery remains intent-rich.
“Near me” and local inventory searches still represent hundreds of millions of monthly queries. - Shoppers demand context.
Nearly half use AI in buying decisions, and most believe stronger reviews would change their behavior.
Put plainly: digital clicks are shrinking, but demand is alive and hyper-local. Without a store-first strategy, retailers risk missing the point of conversion.
The Cuebiq playbook: store-first measurement
- Redefine KPIs: Make incremental store visits and CPIV your north star.
- Invest in high-intent channels: Local search, maps, geo-targeted social, OOH near trade areas.
- Prove causality: Always run control vs. exposed experiments. Cuebiq’s lift testing ensures results are statistically valid.
- Optimize weekly: Reallocate spend to markets with the lowest CPIV, scale creatives that show lift, and trim where efficiency lags.
- Tie to revenue: When sales data is available, link visits to receipts for blended pROAS. Where it isn’t, Cuebiq applies validated visit-to-purchase ratios by vertical to model conservative revenue impact.
Online clicks are no longer a faithful reflection of consumer demand, but store visits are. As search behavior tilts toward AI answers and zero-click sessions, the path to growth is recapturing that intent near the point of purchase and proving every dollar’s return.
With Cuebiq, retailers don’t just guess at offline impact. They quantify it, defend it, and scale it.
