The Cyber Week shopping period has proved to be popular with Australian consumers using artificial intelligence (AI) to find the season’s best value.
According to the 2025 Cyber Week data from Salesforce, Australian online sales grew seven percent year-over-year (YoY) during the shopping period – which incorporates Black Friday and Cyber Monday – mirroring overall global trends.
Powered by the Agentforce Platform, Agentforce Commerce, Agentforce Service, and Agentforce Marketing, the Salesforce Shopping Index analyses the activity of over 1.5 billion global shoppers across 1.5 trillion page views.
While global markets saw varying engagement, it was quality over quantity for Australian shoppers. Purchase behaviour highlighted a distinct trend: efficiency. Traffic to local retail sites actually dipped by two per cent YoY, but sales revenue climbed seven per cent and order volume grew two per cent.
This divergence reveals an interesting pattern: while Australians visited fewer sites, they demonstrated significantly higher conversion rates upon engagement. The driving force behind this behaviour appears to be more compelling pricing strategies, with average discount rates in Australia reaching 23% — a four percentage point increase from the previous year.
In contrast, New Zealand shoppers showed more restraint; sales growth was flat (0% YoY) and order volume shrank by one per cent, despite retailers offering 14 per cent deeper discounts than last year.
Rise in AI powered shopping
Australian shoppers are leading a shift toward more purposeful, AI-powered purchasing—a trend that reflects broader global patterns. Traffic from third-party AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Perplexity has tripled year-over-year, signaling a fundamental change in how consumers discover and buy products.
More importantly, this shift is driving measurably better results. Salesforce data shows that traffic originating from AI platforms converts at eight times the rate of social media traffic. This dramatic difference helps explain a seemingly paradoxical trend: Australian e-commerce sales volumes are rising even as overall site traffic declines.
The reason is clear. Rather than browsing casually, consumers are increasingly using AI agents to research products and make purchase decisions before they ever visit a retailer’s site. By the time they arrive at checkout, they know exactly what they want—transforming casual browsers into high-intent buyers.
The global figures from this years Cyber Week support this: AI and agents drove up to $67 billion in sales, influencing 20% of all purchases through personalised product recommendations and conversational customer service
“AI agents are redefining the holiday shopping season in Australia and New Zealand; consumers are more engaged and more empowered to make more intelligent decisions.
“The businesses that will win this holiday season are those that will be able to capitalise on this rapidly changing consumer behaviour, ensuring that shopping across every channel is easy and fun, while still ensuring control of brand voice and powering greater productivity and scale,” said Timothy Waters, Regional Vice President, Retail, Salesforce.
More information:
- Catch up on all the holiday shopping data
- Find out more about how AI agents propelled this years shopping period
