Shoppers who chat convert at 12.3 percent. Those who do not, 3.1 percent.
That is roughly four times, from the same traffic.
And the ones who come back and chat again spend 25 percent more.
Talking to a shopper sells more than showing them a page.
Rep AI, 2025.
Two thirds of shoppers now expect online shopping to feel like a conversation. Among younger ones, closer to 80 percent.
They want to be guided the way a good shop assistant guides you. Ask a question, get a real answer, land on the right thing.
A catalog cannot do that. A character can.
Coveo, 2026.
@Helika_AI gives your store a character and your brand a voice, the kind of help a good shop assistant gives, at the scale of every visitor at once.
Half of shoppers walk away from a purchase because nobody answered their question fast enough.
It is rarely about price or shipping. It is the question that just hangs there.
Answer it and conversion climbs 157 percent.
Forrester, PowerReviews.
HELIKA retweeted
🧟 MASK HAS ENTERED THE DISCORD.
One of the survivors from Undead Blocks, Mask, has joined our Discord as part of a new AI character pilot with @Helika_AI.
Got questions about Undead Blocks? Mask is always around to help or just hang out & chat.
Come by & say hello to Mask. 👋
Heading into Black Friday, shoppers used the assistant in about four of every ten sessions.
They made two thirds of the purchases.
Almost all of the season's growth came from them.
When the day is hardest, the shoppers with help are the ones who leave with something.
Sensor Tower, 2025 holiday.
Shoppers who used one retailer's online assistant spent close to five times more.
Part of that is intent. People who open a chat often arrive ready to buy.
The rest is what the assistant does with that intent. It listens, then it shapes the whole visit around what it heard.
A search bar cannot do that. A character can.
Shoppers do not leave over the product.
They leave over a surprise.
Among shoppers who abandon for a reason they can name, about half blame a cost that showed up at checkout. Shipping, tax, fees.
The shopper trusted a price, then watched it move.
Seven in ten carts get abandoned.
2006: 59.8 percent.
2025: 70.19 percent.
Retail spent twenty years making checkout faster. One page checkout, express pay, wallets, one tap.
Paying got easier. Deciding did not.
The Michelin Man has been around since 1898, one of the oldest brand characters still in use. He started out plump and almost sinister: cigar, glass in hand, nicknamed the road drunkard.
Over the decades he dropped the cigar, the drink, and the pince-nez, took up sport, and turned friendly. The look and attitude were reinvented again and again, and the character held. By Michelin's own count, around 90 percent of the world still recognizes him.
That is the difference between a character and a logo. One marks a product. The other carries a relationship you can update for every era.
In 2018, the Philadelphia Flyers introduced Gritty. Within 24 hours he was the number one trending topic online.
A 7-foot orange monster became a city symbol, a meme, and a merch machine. That's what a character with a real personality does.
🤖 Made with AI
🦁 Cannes Lions is underway, and Anton @BHelika and Max @bigdog_max are on the Croisette. A whole festival about creativity and what audiences want next, and we brought the part where the characters talk back. Around? Come find us.
In January 2023, Mars put the M&Ms spokescandies on an "indefinite pause" and handed the brand to Maya Rudolph.
The internet revolted. A sibling brand "sent thoughts." A petition to save Green topped 20,000 signatures.
Three weeks later the candies returned at the Super Bowl. Planned all along.
That's the leverage of a character your audience will defend.
Helika is heading to @Cannes_Lions. Anton @BHelika and Max @bigdog_max are on the ground June 22-26.
If you work on brand characters, fandom, or keeping audiences engaged between releases, come find us.












