What it is
In plain words, before anything else.
A checkout built for a human assumes a browser, a session, sometimes a phone for a code. An assistant acting for a customer meets that and stops, tells the customer it could not, and moves on.
The fix is not to remove your normal checkout. It is to publish a route alongside it that software can complete, for the things where that makes sense.
What it costs you
The loss you never see happen.
The customer hears I could not complete that one, shall I try another. You never learn you were the one it could not complete.
This is the check where the gap between being found and being bought from is widest, and being found is the half most businesses have been working on.
Check it yourself
Do not take our word for it. Look.
This takes about a minute, costs nothing, and needs no account with us or anybody else. A finding you have confirmed with your own eyes is the only kind worth acting on.
- 1
Walk your own checkout as if you had no hands: no browser, no clicking, no receiving a code on a phone.
- 2
Count how many steps need a person. Almost always the answer is all of them.
- 3
If you run a shop platform, check whether it publishes a machine-readable product feed. Having one is a start, and it still leaves the purchase itself out of reach.
What we found
Out of 186 businesses we checked ourselves.
- 186 of 186
gave an assistant no way to get from choosing something to paying for it. Two had a machine-readable product feed and still could not be bought from.
Counted from our own checks of 186 real businesses, measured on 2026-09-10, one count per business. No business is named and none of their reports is public. The full write ups are in what we found.
How we fix it
What we do, and what we leave alone.
We open a storefront agents can query, quote and pay, built from your catalog, settling directly to you. Your existing checkout stays exactly as it is for the customers using it.
You choose what is available through it. Anything you leave out is simply not offered.
Next
The checks closest to this one.
- P1
When software is ready to buy, is there a door for the money?
An agent with funds and an instruction to buy needs somewhere to put the money. Most businesses have nowhere. - P4
When an agent asks how much, does your business have an answer?
A price list is a document. A quote is an answer to a question somebody just asked. - L6
A direct line an assistant can use to ask your business a question
Reading a website is guessing. An interface is asking, and getting an answer that is not a guess.
Is this one open on your site?
The free check runs all sixteen against your own address and tells you which came back clean, in the same plain words as this page.
Free. No signup. Takes about a minute.