Ecom­merce trends: the new normal

It is true, the ecom­merce land­scape con­tin­ues to evolve con­stant­ly, with new trends emerg­ing that shape the way busi­ness­es talk to their cus­tomers and the way con­sumers inter­act with online brands. For a busi­ness, stay­ing up to date with the lat­est trends isn’t just nice to have, but a must. With all the new tech and changes in what peo­ple want, stay­ing on top of key e‑commerce trends means you can improve your offer­ing, explore new chances to grow, and make (a bit more) sense of the online world’s tricks, and treats. 

What is every­one else doing and why? What will the next ​“big thing” be? Which of the many new trends are worth fol­low­ing? We’ll get to all that. 

But first, a word of warn­ing to save your­self some valu­able time: Per­haps you don’t need to fol­low all of them. It is high­ly unlike­ly that you won’t need to fol­low or care about any of them, though. With so much to stay on top of, more than learn­ing about every pos­si­ble trend under the sun, the best thing is to know enough about them to know which to ignore. 

Wis­dom is fig­ur­ing out what does­n’t work and then avoid­ing it.

Shane Par­rish

In this post, we will share some wis­dom and cov­er the most sig­nif­i­cant cur­rent and future trends in ecom­merce. Even if you are not plan­ning to fol­low any of these trends in par­tic­u­lar, it can­not hurt to know what is going on, and what is like­ly to hap­pen soon.

Growth. Is that a trend?

Which are the cur­rent ‑and upcom­ing- trends in ecom­merce? Well, the first one would have to be growth. Accord­ing to Sta­tista, in 2023, glob­al retail e‑commerce sales reached $5.8 tril­lion. They are expect­ed to grow by 39%, reach­ing $8 tril­lion by 2027.

This growth is dri­ven by a vari­ety of fac­tors, includ­ing the accel­er­a­tion of the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion prompt­ed by the pan­dem­ic, and the rise of online mar­ket­places such as eBay, Ama­zon, or JD, which account­ed for over one-third of glob­al online shop­ping orders​.In addi­tion, advance­ments in tech­nol­o­gy, increased inter­net and smart­phone pen­e­tra­tion, and shift­ing con­sumer behav­ior towards online shop­ping have con­tributed to this upward trend.

• Fur­ther­more, e‑commerce sales account­ed for almost 20% of retail pur­chas­es in 2023, indi­cat­ing a sig­nif­i­cant shift in con­sumer pur­chas­ing pat­terns towards online platforms.
• Rev­enue in the eCom­merce mar­ket is expect­ed to show an annu­al growth rate (CAGR2024 – 2029) of 9.79%.
• User pen­e­tra­tion will be 36.6% in 2024 and is expect­ed to hit 44.4% by 2029.

Not a bad growth tra­jec­to­ry at all. After all, it’s only been a few decades, right? Here’s the story. 

His­tor­i­cal Overview of Ecom­merce Trends

Last cen­tu­ry

The his­to­ry of glob­al ecom­merce nat­u­ral­ly begins with the Inter­net, opened to the pub­lic in 1991. As soon as 1992, Charles M. Stack launched an online book­store that oper­at­ed as a dial-up bul­letin board and, in 1994, became Books​.com. Two oth­er things hap­pened in 1994. 

First, Netscape cre­at­ed an encryp­tion cer­tifi­cate that pro­vid­ed a means to trans­mit data safe­ly over the Inter­net, SSL, so web browsers could deter­mine if a site could be trust­ed. And some­one bought Sting’s CD Ten Summoner’s Tales in a plat­form called Net­Mar­ket, described by The New York Times as ​“a new ven­ture that is the equiv­a­lent of a shop­ping mall in cyber­space”, in the first rec­og­nized online transaction.

Then came an online book­store and dig­i­tal auc­tion house that would lat­er morph into ecom­merce giant mar­ket­place plat­forms, Ama­zon and eBay. The shift in con­sumer behav­ior was tak­ing place, and trust in online pur­chas­es was strength­en­ing, after the burst of the dot­com bub­ble, which had led to sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment in inter­net com­pa­nies, includ­ing ecom­merce, and despite hav­ing helped lay some ground­work for the ecom­merce indus­try, didn’t real­ly do a lot of good in terms of people’s trust in new media and inter­net transactions. 

This cen­tu­ry

The 2000s intro­duced us to smart­phones, devices that would fur­ther trans­form ecom­merce by unshack­ling it from desk­top com­put­ers. Along­side with more acces­si­ble Inter­net, thanks to broad­band and mobile, shop­ping became an any­where, any­time activity.

In the 2010s, plat­forms like Face­book or Insta­gram began inte­grat­ing shop­ping fea­tures, enabling direct pur­chas­es through social net­works. This trend bridged the gap between social engage­ment and online shop­ping. User-gen­er­at­ed con­tent, like reviews and unbox­ing videos, began shap­ing buy­ing habits. 

In the 2020s, mobile com­merce explod­ed, mak­ing it eas­i­er than ever to shop on the go, sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand­ing the poten­tial cus­tomer base for online retail­ers. Apps became a crit­i­cal part of the ecom­merce ecosys­tem, with com­pa­nies vying for a spot on con­sumers’ devices. 

Big data ana­lyt­ics allowed busi­ness­es to offer per­son­al­ized shop­ping expe­ri­ences, pre­dict­ing what cus­tomers might like even before they knew them­selves. Omnichan­nel retail­ing blurred the lines between online and offline shop­ping, offer­ing cus­tomers the seam­less shop­ping expe­ri­ence they have learned to pre­fer and expect.

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic cat­alyzed unprece­dent­ed growth in eCom­merce, com­press­ing years of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion into a few months. Lock­downs and social dis­tanc­ing mea­sures drove con­sumers online, with busi­ness­es, includ­ing B2B, rapid­ly adapt­ing to dig­i­tal-first models.

And this brings us to today. As you can see, ecom­merce trends catch on and spread quite quick­ly. They have not only spurred growth in the ecom­merce sec­tor, but also fueled eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty across mul­ti­ple indus­tries. and they usu­al­ly algo como que they build on from the next?

Cur­rent Ecom­merce Trends 

Hybrid Com­merce: The future is a bit of every­thing, every­where at the same time

The first trend is growth. It began and nev­er stopped. The sec­ond has to be hybrid. This kind of Hybrid.

Hybrid Com­merce (dis­am­bigua­tion)

Hybrid here means ​“the inte­gra­tion of dig­i­tal and phys­i­cal retail chan­nels to cre­ate a cohe­sive and immer­sive shop­ping expe­ri­ence. In oth­er words, Hybrid Com­merce is the com­bi­na­tion of online and offline shop­ping. Although online shop­ping has expe­ri­enced and will con­tin­ue to expe­ri­ence a mas­sive growth, phys­i­cal in-store expe­ri­ences aren’t going any­where for now. 

Most of the key trends in ecom­merce involve this inte­gra­tion in one way or anoth­er because the lines between online and offline are increas­ing­ly blur­ry, as con­sumers live in both spaces simultaneously.

Omnichan­nel

As we not­ed before, hybrid com­merce includes an expe­ri­ence of seam­less inte­gra­tion across sev­er­al shop­ping chan­nels, known as Omnichannel.

The Latin pre­fix ​“omni” means ​“every­thing,” and Omnichan­nel refers to a sales strat­e­gy that allows con­sumers to inter­act with a brand across mul­ti­ple chan­nels: web­site, social media, email, phys­i­cal stores and more. The super­pow­er of Omnichan­nel is that it allows chan­nels to talk to each oth­er. That is, a cus­tomer can start shop­ping online and fin­ish in a phys­i­cal store or research a prod­uct on the phone and then buy it from the com­put­er – all while main­tain­ing the same shop­ping cart and cus­tomer experience. 

eCom­merce Glos­sary Terms

Cus­tomers want a con­sis­tent expe­ri­ence across web­sites, mobile apps, and brick-and-mor­tar stores. That’s what omnichan­nel allows.

STAT: Omnichan­nel retail­ers retain 91% more cus­tomers than sin­gle-chan­nel stores.

Social Com­merce:

Social Com­merce, the com­bi­na­tion of social media brows­ing with instant pur­chas­ing options, is a rapid­ly grow­ing facet of hybrid com­merce, and a strong ecom­merce trend. Plat­forms like Insta­gram and Face­book allow users to pur­chase prod­ucts direct­ly through their apps and this inte­gra­tion cap­i­tal­izes on the user’s social expe­ri­ence, tap­ping into impulse buys and peer recommendations.

The cur­rent trend in social com­merce involves fea­tures that allow direct pur­chas­es from social media posts and live shop­ping events that com­bine enter­tain­ment with instant pur­chas­ing options, such as Live shop­ping, shop­pable pho­tos and videos, shop­pable ads and inte­grat­ed checkouts. 

STAT: 27% of con­sumers pre­fer to dis­cov­er new prod­ucts through social media over any oth­er channel.

source: sta­tista

Click-and-Col­lect Services: 

Cus­tomers click to order online and then pick up their pur­chas­es at a phys­i­cal loca­tion. Also known as BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick-up In Store), these ser­vices allow cus­tomers to order online and pick up pur­chas­es at a phys­i­cal loca­tion, reduc­ing ship­ping costs and wait times for cus­tomers and also bring­ing more peo­ple to stores, with an extra oppor­tu­ni­ty to upsell or cross-sell prod­ucts at pickup. 

Like BOPIS, ROPO (research online, pur­chase offline) allows cus­tomers to choose where to research for a prod­uct, where to buy it, and where to get it. Both ROPO and BOPIS require track­able data and advanced ana­lyt­ics to map out cus­tomer jour­neys and scale ser­vices to offer cus­tomers what they need, where they need it, quick­ly and effortlessly.

STAT: Click-and-col­lect rep­re­sent­ed 19.5% of mul­ti­chan­nel e‑commerce sales in 2022.

M‑commerce

The jour­ney of mobile ecom­merce, or m‑commerce, began in the late 1990s with the advent of the first mobile-inter­net enabled phone. How­ev­er, it was­n’t until the launch of smart­phones and the sub­se­quent devel­op­ment of respon­sive web design that mobile shop­ping start­ed to gain real momen­tum. Key mile­stones include the intro­duc­tion of Apple’s iPhone in 2007, which rev­o­lu­tion­ized how con­sumers inter­act with mobile devices, and the cre­ation of mobile pay­ment sys­tems like Apple Pay and Google Pay, which trans­formed the check­out process, sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduc­ing fric­tion and aban­don­ment rates, not only stream­lin­ing trans­ac­tions but also offer­ing enhanced secu­ri­ty fea­tures, encour­ag­ing more con­sumers to shop on their mobile devices.

The shift towards a mobile-first approach in ecom­merce is unde­ni­able. With an over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of con­sumers mak­ing pur­chas­es on their smart­phones, opti­miz­ing for mobile is para­mount. This means not only adopt­ing respon­sive design to ensure the web­site is acces­si­ble and user-friend­ly across all devices but also sim­pli­fy­ing the check­out process with mobile-friend­ly pay­ment options. The biggest chal­lenges include ensur­ing opti­mal mobile site speed, pro­vid­ing a seam­less and intu­itive user expe­ri­ence, secur­ing trans­ac­tions, and stay­ing updat­ed with the lat­est mobile com­merce trends and technologies.

The roll­out of 5G net­works promis­es to sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve mobile ecom­merce through enhanced speed and con­nec­tiv­i­ty. This advance­ment will enable more com­plex and inter­ac­tive mobile shop­ping expe­ri­ences, reduc­ing load­ing times and improv­ing user satisfaction.

STAT: Mobile com­merce sales are expect­ed to account for 62% of all retail sales by 2027.

Of course, AI Ecommerce

Hype and pan­ic aside, Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI) and automa­tion are no longer buzz­words but neces­si­ties in the ecom­merce land­scape. AI is here to stay and will inevitably remain a key ecom­merce trend for the next few years in two main areas: per­son­al­iza­tion and automation. 

From per­son­al­ized prod­uct rec­om­men­da­tions pow­ered by machine learn­ing algo­rithms to auto­mat­ed cus­tomer ser­vice via chat­bots, AI enhances the shop­ping expe­ri­ence by mak­ing it more rel­e­vant, fast, and con­ve­nient. This not only increas­es cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion but also boosts sales and loy­al­ty. The key to AI’s effec­tive­ness lies in its abil­i­ty to learn from data, mean­ing the more it’s used, the bet­ter it gets at pre­dict­ing and meet­ing cus­tomer needs. 

Retail­ers are now uti­liz­ing AI to per­son­al­ize shop­ping expe­ri­ences by ana­lyz­ing cus­tomer data, opti­mize oper­a­tions from sup­ply chain logis­tics to inven­to­ry man­age­ment, and enhance mar­ket­ing efforts with AI’s pre­dic­tive capa­bil­i­ties that enable retail­ers to tar­get cus­tomers more accu­rate­ly, improv­ing mar­ket­ing ROI.

Imple­ment­ing any new tech­nol­o­gy does not come with­out its risks and chal­lenges. Make sure you explore those risks and under­stand them to use the tech­nol­o­gy as a tool, not an end in itself.

STAT: Com­pa­nies embrac­ing AI and automa­tion report a 92.1% suc­cess rate in achiev­ing returns on their investments.

Ecom­merce Design Trends

Ecom­merce design trends are more than just fleet­ing fads. They rep­re­sent the evolv­ing expec­ta­tions of con­sumers and the inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies shap­ing the indus­try. Stay­ing ahead of these trends is cru­cial for any ecom­merce busi­ness look­ing to thrive in a com­pet­i­tive mar­ket. It’s not just about aes­thet­ics; it’s about cre­at­ing an engag­ing, intu­itive, and seam­less shop­ping experience. 

Gone are the days of clut­tered web­sites. Today, min­i­mal­ism reigns supreme, empha­siz­ing clean lines, ample white space, and a focus on essen­tial ele­ments. This shift not only enhances the visu­al appeal but also improves usabil­i­ty and load times. Sim­plic­i­ty is key in mod­ern ecom­merce design. Min­i­mal­ist inter­faces pri­or­i­tize con­tent and func­tion­al­i­ty, remov­ing unnec­es­sary dis­trac­tions and focus­ing on the user’s journey.

As we men­tioned ear­li­er, with the major­i­ty of inter­net users access­ing the web via mobile devices, mobile-friend­ly design is no longer option­al. Respon­sive design ensures that ecom­merce sites look and func­tion per­fect­ly across all devices, pro­vid­ing a con­sis­tent shop­ping experience.

Ecom­merce sites are becom­ing more dynam­ic, adapt­ing con­tent and lay­out in real time based on user behav­ior. This per­son­al touch enhances the shop­ping expe­ri­ence and can lead to high­er con­ver­sion rates.

Ecom­merce design trends are con­tin­u­al­ly evolv­ing, dri­ven by changes in con­sumer behav­ior, tech­nol­o­gy advance­ments, and the nev­er-end­ing quest for a bet­ter user expe­ri­ence. By embrac­ing these trends, ecom­merce busi­ness­es can cre­ate com­pelling, user-friend­ly plat­forms that not only attract but also retain customers. 

Although there are sev­er­al key dif­fer­ences between B2B and B2C ecom­merce design, the key prin­ci­ples remain. If you’re inter­est­ed, you can read our arti­cle about trends in B2B ecom­merce design.

Future Ecom­merce Trends

2020 pro­pelled ecom­merce years ahead of its time due to glob­al shifts in con­sumer behav­ior. As we look towards 2025, the dig­i­tal­iza­tion of com­merce is expect­ed not just to con­tin­ue but to evolve in ways that pri­or­i­tize per­son­al­iza­tion, effi­cien­cy, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. By 2030, we could see a mar­ket­place that is not only entire­ly per­son­al­ized but also embed­ded with­in our dai­ly devices and sur­round­ings, mak­ing shop­ping even more insep­a­ra­ble from our lives.

But then again, if you’d asked us in late 2019 what would hap­pen in the next 6 months, few peo­ple would have guessed, so take this final sec­tion with a major pinch of salt. Every­thing seems to indi­cate that in the future, we’ll see more of:

• Machine Learn­ing: As busi­ness­es seek to offer per­son­al­ized and effi­cient shop­ping expe­ri­ences, the use of AI for cus­tomer ser­vice, per­son­al­ized rec­om­men­da­tions, and inven­to­ry man­age­ment will become more prevalent.
• Voice Search Opti­miza­tion: With the rise of smart speak­ers and voice assis­tants, opti­miz­ing eCom­merce plat­forms for voice search will be essen­tial to ensure vis­i­bil­i­ty and acces­si­bil­i­ty for voice-acti­vat­ed shopping.
• Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty (AR) Shop­ping Expe­ri­ences: AR can bridge the gap between online and phys­i­cal shop­ping by allow­ing cus­tomers to visu­al­ize prod­ucts in their own envi­ron­ment before mak­ing a pur­chase, improv­ing con­fi­dence in buy­ing decisions.
• Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and Eth­i­cal Prac­tices: Con­sumers are increas­ing­ly look­ing to sup­port busi­ness­es that demon­strate a com­mit­ment to sus­tain­abil­i­ty and eth­i­cal prac­tices. This trend will push eCom­merce busi­ness­es to adopt more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly prac­tices and trans­par­ent sup­ply chains.
• Direct-to-Con­sumer (D2C) Growth: Man­u­fac­tur­ers will con­tin­ue to bypass tra­di­tion­al dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels and go direct­ly to con­sumers, facil­i­tat­ed by eCom­merce plat­forms, to offer bet­ter prices and per­son­al­ized experiences.

(As you may have noticed, some of these ​“future” trends are quite ubiq­ui­tous at the moment, which con­firms that, when we talk about ecom­merce, the future is, indeed now). 

ARe we there yet?

Emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies are set to play piv­otal roles in this trans­for­ma­tion. Gen­er­a­tive AI and AR/VR tech­nolo­gies, for instance, will like­ly become more com­mon, offer­ing vir­tu­al try-ons and immer­sive shop­ping expe­ri­ences that bridge the gap between phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal realms. 

Dif­fer­ent sec­tors will expe­ri­ence these trends in var­ied ways. For exam­ple, while the fash­ion and appar­el indus­try may offer vir­tu­al fit­ting rooms and AI-dri­ven style assis­tants giv­ing per­son­al­ized fash­ion advice based on user pref­er­ences and body mea­sure­ments, the gro­ceries and essen­tials sec­tor will look at sub­scrip­tion mod­els and drone deliv­er­ies to pri­or­i­tize con­ve­nience and time-sav­ing for con­sumers. In Elec­tron­ics, Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty man­u­als and immer­sive prod­uct demon­stra­tions could enhance the online shop­ping expe­ri­ence, pro­vid­ing con­sumers with detailed insights before mak­ing a purchase.

What­ev­er the future may bring, one thing is clear: ecom­merce will con­tin­ue to evolve, shaped by tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments and chang­ing con­sumer expec­ta­tions. Stay­ing informed and adapt­able is the only way for busi­ness­es to thrive, and pos­si­bly even survive.

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