Research shows where digital experiences fall short on accuracy, relevance, transparency, and accountability – giving marketers a practical framework for improving the moments where trust is earned or lost and converting more visitors to buyers
MANCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE – JULY 8, 2026 — As AI changes how consumers discover and evaluate brands, the digital experiences that follow have to earn trust faster. Sitecore today introduced the Digital Authenticity Index, new consumer research and an interactive data experience that establish a baseline for how consumers judge trust across digital brand interactions and help marketers understand how to align those experiences with consumer expectations.
Developed based on research conducted by Ipsos, comprising 4,047 adults across Australia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the study found that 89% of consumers believe brands need to do more to improve digital authenticity, while 58% say they reduce or stop their engagement with brands when digital experiences feel untrustworthy.
The research gauges authenticity by comparing what consumers expect from digital brand experiences with what they believe brands currently deliver across three areas:
- Credibility: whether consumers believe a brand is accurate, honest, and dependable
- Relevance: whether a digital experience feels useful, appropriate, and aligned to the consumer’s needs or context
- Responsibility: whether consumers believe a brand is transparent, accountable, and acting with the customer’s interest in mind
Across the nine signals included in the research, consumers rated each 85% or above in importance. Accuracy and honesty ranked as the most important signal, with 96% of consumers rating it as important. Yet consumers reported a 23-percentage-point gap between what they expect and what they believe brands deliver.
The research arrives as AI is already changing discovery and decision-making. Scrunch, a Sitecore company, recently observed that when an AI platform recommends a brand to someone new, that person becomes approximately 182% more likely to search for the brand, 117% more likely to visit its website, and 185% more likely to view its products on a retailer page within the following week.
For marketers, the issue is not only how AI changes traffic volume; it is the intent behind the traffic that arrives. A consumer who searches, clicks, compares, or views a product based on an AI recommendation is already taking another step toward a brand. The experience that follows has to be credible, relevant, and responsible.
“Digital has long been central to how brands build relationships with customers. What is changing with AI is how people find, evaluate, and experience brands,” said Eric Stine, CEO of Sitecore, “Consumers are showing up more informed and have often nearly decided on or at least more intensely considered a brand, effectively compressing the funnel. Authenticity is increasingly the deciding factor, and marketers have a tremendous opportunity to use state-of-the-art technology to deliver this authenticity, and with it whole new levels of conversion. The Digital Authenticity Index gives marketers a baseline for understanding how to improve authenticity – what consumers expect, where experiences are falling short, and where to focus improvement.”
What Marketers Can Take from the Research
The Digital Authenticity Index is designed to help marketers move from broad trust language to practical decisions about content, personalization, AI, and customer experience.
The findings point to five areas of focus:
- Use the Index as a baseline
Compare what consumers expect with what they believe brands deliver across Credibility, Relevance, and Responsibility. Prioritize the areas where expectations are highest, gaps are widest, and the customer impact is greatest. - Make accuracy and honesty the quality bar
Accuracy and honesty were the highest-rated signals in the study. That should shape how teams review product information, claims, customer-service content, AI-assisted answers, and any digital experience where consumers rely on the brand to be clear and dependable. - Treat personalization as part of trust
Personalization is not only a performance tactic. When it is relevant and useful, it can make an experience feel more helpful. When it misses the mark, it can make the brand feel disconnected, intrusive, or careless. - Govern AI by use case
Consumers do not respond to all AI use the same way. For example, consumers may discern or brands may be required to identify content that is generated or modified by AI, considering it more suspect than AI-enabled personalization that leads them to more relevant content or provides a bespoke experience. Marketers should understand that individual use cases carry different expectations for transparency, accuracy, and accountability. - Understand the “new” buyer journey: Treat AI-influenced visits as high-intent moments
As AI platforms influence how consumers discover brands, form impressions, and make decisions, marketers need to understand more than whether their brand is recommended. They need to understand what happens next. The content, landing pages, recommendations, and follow-up experiences consumers encounter must match the intent that brought them there.
“Consumers do not experience a brand as a campaign, a channel, or a technology stack,” said Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek, CMO of Sitecore. “They experience thousands of interactions that either reinforce trust or weaken it. The Index gives marketers a clearer way to look at those interactions and ask the practical questions: Are we accurate? Are we relevant? Are we transparent? Are we using AI in ways that make the experience better for the customer?”
Exploring the Digital Authenticity Index
Alongside the research, Sitecore launched an interactive Digital Authenticity Index experience that allows marketers to explore findings by country, industry, generation, and other filters.
The experience is designed to help marketers look beyond aggregate findings and understand how expectations differ across audiences and markets. It is available on Sitecore.com.
Methodology
The Digital Authenticity Index is based on consumer research conducted by Sitecore in partnership with Ipsos. The study explores how consumers perceive digital authenticity across online brand interactions and what shapes trust, engagement, and loyalty.
The study was conducted between March 4 and March 19, 2026, among an online sample of 4,047 adults aged 18 and older, with equal representation from Australia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The sample was drawn from Ipsos’ online panel, partner panel sources, and river sampling. Data was weighted using standard procedures to ensure each country sample reflects the demographic profile of its adult population, based on the most recent census data. Weighting factors include age, gender, household income, region, and ethnicity, where applicable. Ipsos online polls use a credibility interval rather than a margin of error. The findings reflect consumers’ perceptions and reported attitudes at the time of the survey.