AIScan.site
Retail & ecommerce

AI readiness for local shops with an online window

Someone asks what is in stock nearby today. Your stock is a photo on Instagram.

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The moment

Marta, who runs a bike shop with a small web catalogue

A commuter asks an assistant which shop within a few miles has a specific tyre size in stock today and what it costs.

What the agent needs: Do you stock it, what is the price, and are you open until six.

What actually happens: The catalogue lists the product with no price and no availability, opening hours are only on a contact page, and the item that is actually in stock was only ever posted as a photo. The assistant sends the buyer to a national chain with a stock API.

Which dimensions decide it, and why

AIScan grades five dimensions. These are the ones that carry the outcome for this kind of business.

Commerce

Availability and price are the whole query. An Offer with price, priceCurrency and availability in the served HTML is what makes a small shop comparable to a chain at all.

Content

Local intent needs LocalBusiness data — address, hours, phone — on the same domain as the catalogue, not split across a separate 'visit us' microsite.

Discoverability

Product pages that exist but are not in the sitemap are the most common reason a shop with the right stock never appears in the comparison.

The checks that matter here

Fix guides: /docs/checks/commerce · /docs/checks/content · /docs/checks/discoverability

Most sites like this run on Shopify — read the Shopify playbook for where each fix lives.

Questions we get asked

We do not sell online. Is a catalogue still worth it?
Yes, because the question being asked is 'who nearby has this', not 'who will post it to me'. A catalogue with prices and availability wins visit-driven queries.
Our stock changes hourly. Should we publish availability at all?
Publish it with honest granularity — in stock, low stock, ask us — rather than nothing. An absent availability field reads as unknown, which loses to a competitor's 'in stock'.
Instagram is where we post new arrivals. Does that count?
Not for assistants. Mirror arrivals onto the site as text and let social be the promotion channel rather than the record.
Which structured data types apply to a shop?
Product and Offer per item, LocalBusiness for the shop itself. Both, on the same domain.
Is click-and-collect worth marking up?
It is one of the strongest differentiators an assistant can quote for a local buyer, so yes — state it in text and in the offer's delivery detail.
How do we see what an assistant sees?
Run a free scan of a product URL. The report shows whether price, currency and availability were readable without executing your theme.

Scan your site and see where you actually stand

Free, no account, about twenty seconds. The report names every failing check by ID, shows the evidence we found, and gives the fix for your platform — plus a hand-off prompt you can paste straight into Claude Code or Cursor.

Run a free scan npx aiscan-cli yoursite.com

Prefer to read first? Browse every check we run or the guide library.

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Also covers: local shop, bike shop, bookshop, hardware store, garden centre, pet shop, toy shop, gift shop, boutique, clothing store, jeweller, florist, record shop, art supplies, farm shop, independent retailer, click and collect, in-store stock.