ShopReady We scored 36 small online stores for AI shopping readiness: every one was missing return policy markup
On October 31 and November 2, 2026 we ran the free ShopReady check on 36 small independent online stores in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Scores ran from 32 to 84 out of 100. The median was 79 and the average was 75.6. No store is named here.
ShopReady reads your homepage and a product page the way AI crawlers do, then gives you a score and your top fixes in about 15 seconds.
Run the free checkThe short version
- 36 of 36 stores were missing return policy details in their page code. The score never reached 100 for any store.
- 26 of 36 had no product IDs (GTIN, MPN or SKU) and 26 of 36 had no shipping details in the product markup.
- All 36 let AI search crawlers in through robots.txt, so the basic door was open. The gaps were in the product data behind it.
- 13 stores scored 80 or higher. Two scored under 50.
What stores fail most
| Check | Stores failing (of 36) |
|---|---|
| Return policy in the page code | 36 |
| Product IDs (GTIN, MPN or SKU) | 26 |
| Shipping details in the page code | 26 |
| Ratings in the page code | 11 |
| Return or refund page is linked | 10 |
| Homepage says who you are (Organization schema) | 7 |
| llms.txt file | 7 |
| Homepage title and description | 4 |
| Price and currency in the page code | 2 |
| Stock status (availability) | 2 |
| Product structured data (schema.org) | 1 |
Return and shipping details matter because shoppers ask AI assistants questions like "can I return this?" and "when will it arrive?". Google says it uses merchant return policy and shipping markup in shopping results. A store that does not publish them in a machine readable form leaves the assistant with nothing to quote.
Scores by platform
| Platform | Stores | Average score | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify | 17 | 78 | 46 to 84 |
| Wix | 7 | 79.6 | 74 to 84 |
| Squarespace | 6 | 76.2 | 71 to 80 |
| WooCommerce | 2 | 71.5 | 61 to 82 |
| Platform not detected | 4 | 59.2 | 32 to 76 |
The sample is small, so treat platform averages as a snapshot, not a ranking. The four stores where we could not detect the platform had the lowest average, 59.2, and included the lowest score in the set, 32.
How we did it
The stores are small independent online shops in Ohio and Pennsylvania that we found through web searches. They are not a random sample of all stores. Each was scored once with the free ShopReady check, which reads the homepage and one product page without running JavaScript, the way most AI crawlers read a site. A check can only be judged on what appears in the page code, so a store that shows return details to people but not in markup still fails that check.
What to do about it
Start with the gaps most stores share: add return policy and shipping details to your Product offers, and add real barcodes where you have them. The platform guides show where to do that on your store.
ShopReady reads your homepage and a product page the way AI crawlers do, then gives you a score and your top fixes in about 15 seconds.
Run the free checkScans run October 31 and November 2, 2026. Published November 3, 2026.