Mar 25, 2025 | 5 minute read
written by Elastic Path
2025 Digital Commerce Landscape Report details legacy tech barriers to driving revenue, loyalty, and competitive advantage
March 25, 2025 – The majority (93%) of organizations say that their technology is limiting their digital commerce operations. The business implications of these technological limitations are striking, ranging from struggles to scale when demand strikes, to cybersecurity risk exposure, to lost revenue opportunities. In fact, nearly three-quarters (72%) of organizations agree their legacy technology is holding them back from being competitive.
These results come from the 2025 Digital Commerce Landscape Report released today. In partnership with research firm Vanson Bourne, Elastic Path surveyed IT leaders and business decision-makers at 200 manufacturers, retailers, and wholesalers. The goals of this research were to discover more about organizations’ digital commerce strategy, and the impact technology has on their success.
All organizations surveyed indicated that they had a digital commerce strategy, with 45% indicating it was a top-three strategic priority for the organization. Yet, outdated software is preventing many companies from doing more with digital commerce. Among those who did not list digital commerce as a top strategic priority, 37% say outdated infrastructure or technology platforms do not support their plans.
“Almost every organization is facing technology limitations that are negatively impacting their ecommerce businesses,” said Bryan House, president at Elastic Path. “We are very well aligned with respondents' sentiments that loyalty, subscriptions, and AI have the potential to be game changers going forward. To meet the needs of a rapidly evolving market, composable commerce is required to address both the integration challenges and capability needs of innovative commerce organizations.”
Let’s look at some of the top areas of focus for survey respondents.
More than half (56%) of respondents were not happy with their storefront’s repeat customer experience. As competition increases, nearly half (49%) of organizations struggle to keep customers loyal. As customer acquisition costs skyrocket, 31% of respondents are prioritizing their loyalty and customer retention strategy.
To respond to these pressures, 38% of organizations are focusing on VIP/loyalty programs. If they were going to overhaul their digital commerce system, 44% of respondents would prioritize upgrading their subscription management capabilities first. This demonstrates a commitment to profitable growth, especially in the face of ongoing economic uncertainty.
To navigate the constraints of their existing commerce technology stack, many organizations rely on integrations to add business-differentiating features or capabilities. However, organizations are underwhelmed with the integration capabilities they have today:
This lack of integration and API connectivity is creating challenges when it comes to executing on digital commerce strategy: 43% have difficulties integrating their commerce platform with third-party technology. In addition, 32% say that their rigid IT systems require time-consuming custom IT and development work.
More than two in five (45%) of organizations feel the race to adopt AI and other emerging technologies is impacting their organization’s digital commerce strategy. In addition, 86% fear that they will be left behind if they do not integrate AI into their digital storefront.
When it comes to how they’ll use AI, the top use case (for 50% of respondents) was SEO and creating web content (e.g. product landing pages or product detail pages). This was followed closely by AI for website chatbots or AI agents (49%). These priorities show how organizations are looking to ramp up iterative and personalized content, and get shoppers to the products they need faster.
Overall, 95% of organizations surveyed agree their organization’s digital commerce strategy needs improvement to support modern ecommerce. However, survey results show that while nearly half of teams are prioritizing digital commerce replatforming and technology changes in 2025, over four in ten lack the budget to invest in a new platform that completely meets their needs. This suggests big-bang transformations may not be the best solution. Smaller changes can make a big impact on average order volume, loyalty, and overall business agility.
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