Which AI model should you use for which task?

Transcript

Charles Travers: Hey guys, welcome back to another week of e-commerce marketing chats with myself Charles and Jimmy Jimmy has again mate. What’s What’s been happening over the last week in your world?

Jimmy Dalgleish: man. Another busy week as usual. And, I think we said last week we’d have a update in AI and ⁓ I say, this week, chat, GBT have actually released their new ⁓ image 2.0 and the stats showing that it’s the kind of the number one image generation model at the moment. So it just goes to show weekly models are changing in terms of out. So the top rated image generation this week was Nano Banana, which is owned by Google. And OpenAI have released ⁓ image and yeah, it’s out, outperforming what Nano Banana can do now. So it’s just, it’s crazy how fast things can change, but ⁓ what does mean for e-commerce? Well, I’ve already tested some kind of infographic type ads. the outputs that you’re getting when you’re putting your product in certain scenarios and with text in the image too, it’s a performing a lot better at the moment on open AI. So I think even last week, a lot of people were canceling their chat GPT subscription or open AI. And now the ones that rely heavily on ad creation and kind of coming back just to, guess, test this image generation tool, especially for the ones that are really heavy on, on meta ads. Uh, they’re coming back to, kind of test this, guess, but I think it’s gonna, it’s going to be a constant battle for all models that are coming, which one’s the best and, which ones aren’t I think in, um, in the coaching community I’m in, actually, I, I posted a resource this week. It’s called arena.ai slash leaderboard. So if you’re not sure what AI you should be using or which ones are kind of good for certain tasks. slash leaderboard will actually show you which AI ⁓ are best at certain tasks in terms of where they’re ranking across the board. So at the, to be honest, Claude Opus is number one on a lot of the major ones. So Claude and, and Thropic is still kind of number one in a lot of aspects, but when we’re looking at some of the creative side. So text to image chat GPT image two has now taken number one not by a small margin either. It’s pretty considerable to next kind of which is kind the Gemini 3.1 model, which Nano banana runs editing images. Chat GPT has also taken number one on that too. The other ones were thought isn’t number one. So text to video, seed dance has taken number one for text to video. So that’s kind of the number one, guess, model use at moment. ⁓ Interestingly, kind of the owned happy horse 1.0 is number there. And then Google has number three, image to video. ⁓ dance again has taken number one. I guess if, doing anything in the video realm, like you’re creating AI related videos seed dance seems to me the number one kind of to be using for that. So ⁓ I think is important because people are using AI for different things and everyone’s like, ⁓ what are you using? And people saying one model or the other, but at the moment, especially on the creative side, There is definitely one standout winner for video related things. There is a standout winner for image related things at the moment, anything text and kind of, I guess, logic related, there’s another winner too. and this is changing constantly. So I think this arena AI slash leaderboard is a really great resource for people to use to kind of just monitor what’s in the AI space and which models are going to be. ⁓ than us a model week on week, let’s just send out this resource. And when people say what AI using, because it’s changing constantly and to say, whatever’s ranking highest on arena.ai slash leaderboard is the one I’m testing for whatever tasks that I’m doing at the moment.

Charles Travers: That’s a really interesting resource, Jimmy. valuable. We’ll put it in the show notes so people can check out for sure. Am I right in thinking, I’m sure I saw a tweet as well that OpenAI had launched a new Was it 5.0? And were saying that that’s also tipped the posters potentially better than Claude. Every other week, these companies are battling against each other. And it’s, think once you’ve got familiar with, you know, core that you’ll use them frequently, you’re probably not going to want to revert back unless you have a large budget to play with, you know, some of the, the paid, paid plans. so yeah, I it depends what, like you said, it depends what it is. ⁓ that need it for. I said, perhaps there is a better LLM video production if you’re to code something. So I think it’s, yeah, ⁓ it varies, I that resource sounds like a really valuable thing to look out week on week, especially if you’re not married to a LLM that you really like and you’re using on a daily basis.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah. And especially for on the creative side, like if you’re doing a lot of meta ads, Higgs field at the moment is kind of the number one platform people are using. the interesting thing is it’s not its own LLM. It’s just the best models available currently. So it’s, it’s very confusing for people cause you’re looking at the models that the best, but then you’ve also got certain platforms like Higgs field that just use the best models available and you can use multiple. models ⁓ one platform. So outside the models, then you’ve got kind of the next tier of software companies that are just plugging into all models available and creating a product on the backend of that. So. Yeah. If you are doing, if you are doing meta ads, video and images, Higgs field seems to be the number one in that space the moment, but. ⁓ It is, it is using all the top video models available and the top kind of image models available. Just looking at the rankings to Charles, I do see chat GBT 5.5 in here, which is probably their new one. I will say just in this score, it’s definitely up there, but it’s still sitting behind anthropic. and it’s according to the.

Charles Travers: Yes that’s yeah. Interesting, interesting, yeah.

Jimmy Dalgleish: according to the text responses, still sitting behind MuSpark and it’s also sitting behind Gemini. So even they do have a new model, it seems to do well on the document creating side of things, but still behind Claude. It’s still Claude basically everything ⁓ except… the image portion, which now OpenAI seem to have taken number one spot in kind of the image editing and the image generation. So yeah, it’s interesting and it’s always changing too. But so ⁓ don’t know about you Charles, but I get asked all the time, what using and most of the time my answer’s Claude. But it’s changed this week, people like if I’m… ⁓ If you’re things for images, not using Claude for images. I’m using ⁓ AI at the moment. So I’m using different platforms for different things, but I just one resource that people can go to to say, Hey, this is what I want to do. Which model is the best for this at the moment? it’s going to be useful, for people, I guess, wanting to jump into AI. Another thing too, that I’ve seen for Claude at the moment. So. ⁓ I’ve seen this tested and I’ve seen a lot of posts about it, but it looks like Anthropic is potentially going to take Claude code out of the pro model. um, I have seen a lot of posts and Claude code is basically what people are using to, to build their apps, um, and all their advanced coding, but it’s looking more and more like they’re testing, taking that out of the pro version, but

Charles Travers: Yeah, I heard that as well.

Jimmy Dalgleish: It looks like anyone on the current pro version, they’re going to leave it there, grandfather it, but it looks like any new customers, like they’re going to move towards taking out of the pro plan. So ⁓ if are contemplating doing a lot of coding and you’re not paying for the, the pro version yet, I would jump on that now while it’s still available on the cheaper plan. Cause it looks like it’s very soon. only going to be available on kind of their, their a hundred dollar plan. So, you’re probably going to start to see this more and more as companies look to IPO, they’re going to start to, I guess, look to start offering their best products for as cheap as what they’re offering, especially if they’ve got all the data that they need to, I guess, people up to those higher tiers. But yeah, there’s a lot changing in the space at the moment. It is affecting e-commerce store owners. I think on the ad creation side, chat GBT is definitely back in the game now with image, image creation. but yeah, if you’re doing a lot of video stuff, probably Higgs field ⁓ the place that you want to play at the moment too. And if you’re, if you’re apps or a SaaS, you still want to stay in Claude, the Claude sphere at the moment, cause they seem to have the best models. So. Yeah, just to give people a quick rundown and overview, what’s happening on the AI space. think Charles and I will talk about other AI things. think you had some AI overviews in the works today too, Charles, but yeah, in terms of what models people are using, we’ll leave that there, that resource arena.ai slash leaderboard to kind of see what’s performing well.

Charles Travers: Sounds good. Yeah, no Jimmy there was a I was reading an interesting article from search engine round table a little bit of good news because I think probably for the last 12 months there’s been a lot of talk about how Google AI overviews have been eating into click-through rates and know a lot of e-commerce stores and other websites publishers have been bit disillusioned with with Google and organic search and and how traffic is is steadily kind of declining over time but this was an interesting study that was done and it basically said here that from July last year 2025 at the lows we’ve seen an increase so from July 2025 there was a click through rate of 0.57 percent Now we’re seeing it upwards of 2.4 percent. So in terms of actual Click through rates from AI overviews that seems to be moving upwards again, which is some positive science there’s always that worry Yeah

Jimmy Dalgleish: ⁓ yeah, I think those AI overviews, they first came out, they weren’t like showing a lot of links in them initially, were they? think they are doing a better job of showing resources and where they’re getting the information, which may be like, what’s your thoughts on it, Charles? Like why is the click through rate increasing? Are they showing more links in their AI overviews now or showing more resources? Like what’s the, what do you think? Cause that’s pretty significant. It’s a, it’s a pretty big increase. What do you think the driving factor behind it is?

Charles Travers: No, they weren’t. Yeah, I think that’s exactly it, Jimmy. think they are. They’ve started to show more links. You know, when you search certainly on desktop, you’re getting the links on to the right hand side of that search. And usually two or three that are prominent where they’re visible. And then within the actual AI snippet, they’re also showing more. You do have to click on the sources to kind of look through it. So I’m not sure how strong that click through rate ⁓ yeah. ⁓

Jimmy Dalgleish: ⁓ don’t know about your own search habits, but I’ve actually noticed myself clicking on those links a lot more, but I would say when it first came out, I was never clicking on those links. One, they didn’t show the resources that well. And I don’t think they snippeted the resources that well when they did do it. But now if showing a relevant snippet and giving a really strong indication of where that information’s coming from, a lot of the time I am going through to that resource. So it doesn’t surprise me. It’s an interesting stat. Cause I hadn’t actually thought about it, but it doesn’t actually surprise me that that click through rates increase because I’m just thinking of even my own search habits. And I have been thinking through on those, guess links a lot more than when I was, when the were first introduced. ⁓ will too though, with that, with the Google AI overview, I think When chat GPT first came out, I was using that a lot more for search queries and jumping off Google. But now that Google have really improved in that AI snippet, it’s like, okay, I’m getting a pretty decent AI answer and I’m seeing the organic results too. So Google’s almost providing the best of both worlds at the moment in terms of a more relevant response to what I’m searching. But also you’ve got the, you can scroll down and go the, I guess the old way you were searching to through those organic results. So I think if it’s a more complex thing, sometimes even now I’m jumping into I’m still ⁓ on the Google platform, I think for those queries rather than using chat GPT as much for that. But yeah, I think, think Google’s getting its foot back in the game a little bit. ⁓ And think use Claude basically still like all the complex things. that I’m building. ⁓ It’s funny, it’s funny. watching the landscape play out, watching your own habits, which you’re using and why. But yeah, Google did lose me for a little bit in that search, but I think it’s, yeah, it’s won me back a little bit just with the, ⁓ I guess quality of their AI overviews. So it seems like they are doing some work there.

Charles Travers: Yeah, no for sure. No, absolutely. And I’m seeing it in my own clients’ data, particularly one of my clients, we’ve really focused on building out strong kind of blog content strategy, which is still working. Like it’s driving not only clicks, but actually visibility that AI overviews. One client particular, we’ve got the one blog, which is actually driving, it’s the third, most visited page on the site now. I’m in the position where I’m weighing up. It’s got the click through rate is actually relatively low, but it’s got a lot of impressions and it’s going getting a lot of AI citations. So it’s like, do you start tweaking to improve click through rate, even though it’s the third generating still good clicks? do you think, okay, let’s just focus this as a brand asset that’s got strong visibility in AI overviews and it’s constantly being cited. So that’s kind of the balance now with, you with SEO and search organically is it’s not just about clicks, but it’s also about visibility in these, in these AI citations.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Interesting. What’s your gut feel? What do you want to optimize more towards?

Charles Travers: and that. Well, I think in this situation where it’s although to impressions aren’t the best it’s still driving a lot of clicks and getting a hell of a lot of impressions from from AI visibility. So In this for that particular blog post, I would probably leave it as is but Yeah, I think it’s case by case. It depends I think probably You know in future I’m going to be looking more about not just clicks, but okay It’s is that blog being shown is it being cited and and it’s not clicks is not just the the main metric that I’m looking at always a balancing act and then it’s also educating clients To that it’s not just all about clicks now the landscape’s changing all the time. So it’s always a challenge.

Jimmy Dalgleish: I think, one of the, one of the exercises I’ve been doing lately with some of the students that I’m coaching is ⁓ the ones with blogs on their website. I’ve been showing them how they can actually see whether the blogs are worth their time or not and whether they’re writing about the right things. So I think the process that we’re going through is quite simple actually. So we’re going to Google search console. We’re going on the performance tab. We’re having a look at the top pages and we’re typing in blog. ⁓ as a filter and then it’ll actually show well, of the time people’s link URLs will have the slash blog in it, especially if they’re done on Shopify. So we’re putting blog in there and then it’s giving a list of all the blogs that you have on your website. And very quickly you can see which ones are generating clicks, which ones aren’t. And sometimes ⁓ people writing a lot of blogs and over the last three months, They’ve got 50 blogs and they might be getting like four clicks from their blogs. So they’re just not writing about the right things. They’re not doing the process properly. The blogs are really poor quality. in that regard, like blogging for someone like that is a complete waste of time. And then you’ve got the other extreme where we in blog and they’re actually generating thousands of clicks a month from some of these articles. The articles are really media rich. ⁓ quite detailed and, just good blogs. And yeah, generating of clicks a month. And it’s like, okay, you need to take this template that you’ve built this blog on and do more of this type of thing and build that out. So I can ask this lot, like, you know, and probably you do as well, Charles about, still blogs a lot of traffic for e-commerce businesses. Now there’s another part to it as well. what I like to do from there is ⁓ so once, you know, okay, we’re generating a lot of traffic from blogs. The next thing I do is, go to a analytics and into, I’m the traffic sources and of sort that by landing page and then have a look at the where the initial traffic has actually come from Google and landed straight on a blog. And then can actually see how much revenue that page ⁓ has generated your website. So ⁓ how many have gone on to read this article and actually made a purchase? That’s the next piece of the puzzle too. So there’s no point. Even if you are getting a lot of traffic on your blogs. Now, if it’s not converting it to sales again, is it beneficial or not? You’re getting a lot of traffic, but no sales. So I think the, golden, ⁓ guess the golden goose for writing blogs is a lot of traffic ⁓ you can see it’s actually driving sales to your website. Now I’ve seen some students that have really good blog articles. They get a lot of traffic. they’re just not generating any sales. haven’t mentioned their product at all in the blog or at least to point them in the direction to make a sale for whatever they’re researching. So yeah, there’s a few caveats for writing blogs and one they be really good at driving traffic and they, and in other it’s not good at all. But then two, the second part of it. Not just traffic, it needs to drive sales for you as well, especially the really good blogs, at least from the perspective that I’m coming from, from like a performance market marketing perspective. I want to see the effort that they’re putting into this site, like convert to sales. So I know if you have a different perspective, Charles, whether you know, you’re happy for them just to generate traffic from their blog, whether that’s got any value. But yeah, from my, from like my point of view, the performance marketing side, traffic only means something to me if it’s bringing in money, basically. So, yeah, I’m keen to know your thoughts on that.

Charles Travers: Yeah, not Yeah, I’m on exactly the same page as you Jimmy like there’s no point just driving a bunch of traffic to a site if it’s if none of it’s gonna convert it’s just The the traffic is just a vanity metric otherwise So what I’m looking to do when I’m building out a kind of a blog strategy is like, okay What type of blogs are most likely to convert so things like product roundups? Maybe you might do know you ⁓ depends what you’re selling and and how know, you can do like your brand versus a competitor. There’s different ways you can spin it. Like said, I like to do kind of like for example, of my clients, they don’t just sell their own product. They sell multiple different brands So I have the option do like product roundup of like the top products within this category from various different brands and they happen to sell all of those brands. So I can then internal link from that blog and hyperlink to their collections or to Pacific products that I’m talking about in a kind of subtle way. yeah, I’m always, when I’m kind of building out that strategy, that’s what I’m always planning to do.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah. See ya! Yeah, I think you made a really good point too. think, especially when you’re comparing your brand to another brand in a blog article, ⁓ one of the few ways you can really get your competitors keywords in your own website. so you do have a competitor that is driving a lot of kind of or organic traffic, it’s one of, one of the few ways that you can actually kind of hijack a little bit of that traffic by actually putting your competitors. ⁓ like brand in a, in a blog article comparing their product directly to yours. So see it done a lot ⁓ kind software businesses. I don’t think it’s done enough in products like e-commerce, there’s definitely, there’s definitely room for it, especially if you know that your product has a really good selling point or unique selling point over your competitor. And if you genuinely know that the product is, is better than what your competitors offering. It’s a really kind of a really good strategy to, ⁓ to jump on, think.

Charles Travers: Yeah, for sure. One of the others that’s doing really well at the moment is the old kind of old school listicle posts. So top 10 best whatever, you know, product category. And especially if you’re selling a lot of different product types or different collections, you can literally create a whole list of blog posts that not only ⁓ are to drive traffic, but also start showing up in, in AI search. ⁓ Results as well and that’s what I’m finding working pretty well and it’s a quite a straightforward process You best top 10 best or five best X, know, whatever it is you’re Is is good way ⁓ to Drive, know not only clicks but get get that AI search visibility you should get getting your brand shown for Pacific recommendations because when Especially with AI search people are doing that research out there. They’re looking for the best, you know are the best? sofas sofas, are the best, you know Nike trainers for these type of things if you can be very specific when you’re writing your blog ⁓ articles about specific within your Niche and what you’re selling that those are performing really well at the moment

Jimmy Dalgleish: I had an interesting thought too on kind the ⁓ being on AI too. So I’ve got one client that I show you quite regularly, Charles, because they do all right from kind of chat to PT traffic and the, I guess AI search traffic. But one thing I forgot that I did early on is I actually, ⁓ had an SEO maybe a year and a half ago. ⁓ And it really kind of said, Hey, you need to change your, your robot text on your site to make sure that your site is crawlable from these AI kind of platforms. So I did that on that client, like really early on. I, and in the Shopify robot texts, I actually changed it and just specifically like, allow this open AI crawler bot to go over the whole site. But the reason I thought about it is because I saw another, an SEO person post this week that they finding it’s a number one issue on sites that they’re auditing at the moment that the robot texts by some platforms have like disapproved like AI, um, for all this to kind of go over their sites. So, um, I’m just thinking about that because the client that I’m thinking about, it’s the only one that I’ve done it on, but it’s by far. the one that’s getting the most of search traffic from AI. So is something that you’re doing ⁓ for clients at the moment Charles, like changing that robot text and making sure that they’ve got opportunity to, guess, be crawled by AI search platforms to found in that regard or?

Charles Travers: Yeah, we’re not we’re not playing around with it too much like I mean Shopify have kind of default settings anyway that that basically These crawl bots to to crawl site anyway And there’s a there was a lot of discussion like there was like an llm text file Which you can upload to your site as well I’ve not found it has made a huge difference. Maybe is probably one of those things is it’s a checkbox exercise, like get it done, make sure that your site certainly make sure that it’s crawlable and it’s not being not I think that’s the main thing, but it’s in terms actually having like a huge impact. It’s probably a minor thing. You still need to build out an AI search strategy that’s going to kind of drive.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Hmm, yeah.

Charles Travers: visibility. So it’s kind of the fact it’s kind of getting in the foundations. what I would describe as like, with SEO getting your foundational backlinks, like setting up your social media profiles, you know, making sure there’s links to your website, building business directories, it’s that first kind of initial step. Or even submitting your site map to Google Search Console. It’s it’s in that kind of category that I would say.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, makes sense.

Charles Travers: Like it’s important, but it’s not going to transform AI search visibility and SEO results. So that’s kind of where I see it.

Jimmy Dalgleish: No, that makes sense. think, yeah, like you said, it’s one of those things that if you can do it, do it, or at least check it. but yeah, the, the one I, the only reason I’m kind of recommending doing it because the only client that I’ve done it on, they’ve got, guess the best results from, from AI search. So it’s just something that’s in the back of my head at the moment. But, but like make sure that your, your website is. eligible to show up in these searches as much as possible. And think that client last month, they got close to a hundred sales from chat GPT alone. ⁓ yeah, ⁓ a

Charles Travers: I’d be curious to know what else they’re doing as well in terms of like, there, you know, they got blog strategy in place? Do they you know, have they got a lot of offsite signals? You know, are interacting with like Reddit It’d be curious to know if they’re doing anything that they may not even realize is actually having a positive impact on AI search. I don’t know, Jimmy, what your take is.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah. Well, I do it. I do everything for them so I can tell you that they’re not doing Reddit. They, and we’ve done little on optimizing product pages for like LLMs. and blog strategy, there’s not a whole lot of, they might have eight blogs. I think, and they’re generating ⁓ a decent amount traffic per month, but Yeah, I wouldn’t say they’ve done anything like overly special and they’re, they’re doing well in, of chat GBT at the moment. Cause I, I sometimes like I see your posts on one of your clients on the percentages ⁓ that searches is bringing in. And ⁓ when compare it to this client, like this client is bringing in significantly higher percentages. Then, kind of.

Charles Travers: Yeah, think it depends. It depends what industry you’re in. like, for example, what I’m is the most well known companies within that within a particular niche are typically doing better. you know, there be a well known forum that’s getting cited within that industry that’s

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah.

Charles Travers: getting a large share of that visibility. So it really varies, I think, from industry to industry.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, I would say that too. So I’m just looking at this client and, just over the last like 14 days, they’ve had around 30, orders chat GBT ⁓ and from Bing. So, ⁓ like chat GPT and to compare that to Google organic, 77 from Google organic. So chat GBT is chat GBT is making inroads ⁓ for this client.

Charles Travers: Interesting, yeah. Okay, yeah, so that’s very hot.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Um, percentage wise, definitely. Um, but you know what I’ve noticed this week, actually I’ve noticed, um, traffic from, uh, Claude and perplexity even increasing. So I hadn’t noticed it before, but, uh, I think we got our first sale from like a Claude search this month and, um, a couple from perplexity as well. those models perplexity surprises me. Like, I don’t know anyone that’s using perplexity. Um,

Charles Travers: Interesting, interesting.

Jimmy Dalgleish: And even a few from copilot too. they’re starting to come now. but yeah, I think being trouble because it’s just so hard to use. All my clients are getting frustrated. They can’t get their product feed on to the merchant center and being like being is just an absolute nightmare to, use the moment. So unless they clean that up, I think they’re going to really drop off.

Charles Travers: Yeah, it’s like I it’s interesting. Like I said, one of the clients that I’ve got in the automobile space being is and co-pilot is the second in terms of revenue in terms of organic sales drivers. like I said, it’s a chat GPT is lower down the list. So I guess it like, it all depends on what market you’re in. yeah, for sure chat GPT, you know, isn’t something that should be slept on.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, definitely.

Charles Travers: And it’s clear, you know from the example that you use Jimmy that it’s driving sales So certainly something to pay attention to Yeah

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, definitely. And a high, at a high conversion rate too. So I feel like the traffic that comes through from these AI engines, typically you have a, I guess a higher trust or they’ve done the research already. So they’re ready to buy, but yeah, I think we’ll wrap that up here for this week. think we’ve covered, there’s been a lot of kind of golden nuggets in this episode. It’s probably been, this episode has gone so far. It’s probably been one of my favorite. There’s a lot of gold nuggets to take from this things that people can implement. ⁓ places that they can go to see what AI model they should be using for different things, whether you should be working on a blog or not currently. yeah, there’s a, there’s a lot to take from here. So plenty of actual steps. again, if you wanting to learn more or chat to us more, feel free to join the, the Facebook group on Shopify marketing secrets on Facebook. And you can find. ⁓ all the rest of our kind of chats and podcasts e-commerce marketing chats on all the platforms. So we’ll leave it there this week and I’m we’ll have plenty to update you guys on next week and until then we’ll chat to you then.