Oct 10, 2024 | 12 minute read
written by Seamus Roddy
The topsy-turvy economy and major advances in technology – especially generative artificial intelligence (AI) – has made the future of digital commerce hard to predict. Despite global economic uncertainty and continued technological advances, the global digital commerce market is believed to have exceeded $6 trillion in 2024.
The result of this ever-growing digital commerce market share is huge opportunity for businesses that sell online, but also more competition and higher customer expectations for online shopping – across industries and buyers – than ever before.
Your business needs to be prepared. What eCommerce trends should you prepare for in 2025 – and beyond?
Learn what 2025 eCommerce trends are forecasted by commerce experts. Here are 11 trends to be prepared for in the coming year.
Our Chief Experience Officer, Bryan House, has written widely and often about how the traditional commerce catalog is getting a much-needed overhaul. Examples of the risk of a rigid catalog include…
In 2025, the rigidity imposed by legacy ERP systems is giving way to a more flexible, component-based approach. This transformation will allow merchandisers greater freedom to adapt their offerings, creating more dynamic and responsive shopping experiences.
Expect to see more personalized and varied product displays, streamlined shopping processes, and innovative collaborations that seamlessly merge various brands. Merchandisers will get – and should expect – the ability to create separate pricing structures and promotions, bundles, and other options without extensive IT work or custom development.
B2B eCommerce was once the province of clunky user experiences and cumbersome, slow buying portals. That no longer cuts it. B2B buyers now have similar expectations to B2C and D2C buyers: fast checkout, appealing visuals, instant help if they need it, and personalized, account-based order management.
We’ve said before that “B2B commerce is B.S.” – and it means that if you sell to other businesses, and you have an attitude that your commerce experiences are just good enough for those buyers, you’ll be left behind. Remember, your buyers may represent a business, but they’re modern internet users who are used to and expect strong experiences when they buy online.
Even more complex commerce experiences – such as supplier or reseller-based B2B2C solutions with more touchpoints and advanced supply chain needs – now feature strong, captivating user experiences. A commerce solution that doesn’t provide value and an enjoyable experience for online buyers won’t keep, win, or expand on new business.
The “growth at all costs” approach to business broadly – and commerce specifically – has been left behind in the 2010s and early 2020s. In 2025, your loyalty experiences need to be optimized for profitability.
Fortunately, optimizing loyalty programs for strong margins doesn’t have to mean giving up on strong emotional bonds with customers. Product drops, pre-order access, specialty products for loyalty members, brand collaborations – all are high-margin efforts that drive profitable revenue.
More broadly, a strong commitment to profitability is likely to be emphasized in all aspects of online selling in 2025. Dynamic bundling, customized promotions, and generative AI product landing page blitzes are all examples of merchandising and promotions strategies that can drive profitable growth.
See how Elastic Path enables smart merchandising, simplified composable commerce, improved campaign conversions, and empowered devs by viewing our product demos and live customer storefronts.
Commerce is commerce, and your customers want great experiences whether they’re buying online, in a store, or in a mix of both. In 2025, businesses should expect that the traditional line between in-store and online shopping experiences will continue to blur.
Examples of this “adaptive retail” in action include:
The upside to prioritizing “blurred” in-store and online commerce is huge – Gen Z customers are already known for shopping on their phone while in stores.
In 2025, the terms “speed” and “fast” are going to mean more in commerce than they ever have.
The first way speed is increasingly important relates to your site performance. Fast sites win business, and slow sites squander it, as slow-loading and poor performing websites cost retailers $2.6 billion in sales per year. In 2025, it’s vital that you monitor and optimize your online store’s speed and performance to boost conversions and revenue.
The second way the speed matters is in your ability to make changes to your commerce tech stack and storefronts fast, without huge amounts of custom development or a backlog of IT tickets. A strong commerce architecture should accelerate your business initiatives, not slow them down, meaning that a flexible architecture is imperative to getting fast time-to-value from your commerce work.
As privacy concerns and regulations become more prominent, personalization in retail is changing. The demise of third-party tracking cookies means that brands need to rely on direct relationships with customers to personalize shopping experiences.
Technology such as customer data platforms (CDPs) help retailers turn to first-party data. The key in eCommerce personalization in 2025 will be trust and consent. The rise of first-party data, collected with customers’ permission, may mean targeting fewer consumers but prioritizing deeper, more trusting customer relationships that drive long-term loyalty and high-value purchases.
Our integration with Twilio Segment and our partnership with Klevu both provide the ability to operationalize first-party data and offer 1:1 commerce and marketing personalization that boosts revenue.
The use of generative AI will continue to be a major eCommerce trend in 2025.
One major use of AI to be aware of is the optimization of product detail pages. Already, AI is greatly affecting commerce search results – 16% of commerce searches returned an AI overview in the results, and 13% of total search volume from Google goes through AI overviews. To get your products in front of high-intent searchers, you should explore scaling and optimizing detailed product descriptions through AI.
Generative AI is also useful for merchandisers looking to create frontend experiences. In particular, developers can now use OpenAI and other AI tools to generate AI APIs. Custom GPTs can learn from the data in these APIs and user instructions to produce custom frontends without requiring coding.
Whether improved frontends, optimized product detail pages, or better shoppable landing pages, generative AI will have a strong influence on the creation of commerce descriptions, frontends, and experiences in 2025.
Commerce APIs are great, but in 2025, they won’t be enough to bring extraordinary shopping experiences to life for your customers. In fact, our Chief Technology Officer, Riccardo La Rosa, says that to truly harness the benefits of a composable architecture, leveraging an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) and a database as a service (DBaaS) becomes imperative.
APIs have revolutionized commerce platforms, but integrating a set of APIs for every component – such as CRM, ERP, and marketing tools – takes effort to learn, integrate, and manage.
An effective iPaaS provides a cloud-based platform for integrating and managing applications and services. A DBaaS creates, stores, and manages data to support bespoke data requirements. Riccardo’s advocacy for an iPaaS and DBaaS are an indication that commerce APIs aren’t enough – you need orchestration and management tools that de-risk commerce and enable you to focus on extraordinary shopping experiences.
Get a free Elastic Path trial today to see our flexible commerce solution in action.
Buyers will expect enhanced shopping experiences in 2025, and what once may have seemed revolutionary or differentiating is probably now table stakes.
Examples of user experiences that are becoming more common include augmented reality (AR), voice commerce, interactive experiences, plentiful customer product reviews, one-click checkout, and offering multiple payment methods. All of these experiences enhance and elevate online shopping experience for customers, and all are widespread throughout industries and business models. Failure to offer these table stakes experiences risks repelling shoppers, and falling behind your competitors.
Some brands and businesses that sell online still don’t offer subscriptions, because it’s too difficult to manage. In 2025, this will continue to change, as shoppers across industries and business lines come to expect a subscription offer when they buy online.
Two of the most common types of subscriptions that customers expect are…
B2B and even B2B2C sellers are likely to institute more of their own subscription models in 2025, whether that’s membership to receive recurring maintenance on a product or a subscribe and save model in which a distributor grants a predetermined discount for the highest-value end buyers.
A few years ago, social commerce emphasized customer acquisition. In 2025, due to rising customer acquisition costs, the phaseout of third-party cookies, and major platform changes, social commerce will be de-risked, and focused on awareness and first-party data.
Keep in mind that on social platforms, 43% of consumers browse to find goods and services, yet only 14% ultimately purchase them on a social site. Your social campaigns, then, will typically focus on awareness.
To counteract the phaseout of third-party cookies, shrewd marketers will deploy first-party data for hyper-personalized social campaigns that are linked to actual buyer behavior.
Wondering if your commerce solution is equipped for success in 2025? From flexible catalog management to lightning-fast storefronts to unlocking D2C-level experiences for B2B businesses with unique needs, Elastic Path Composable Commerce can help you boost conversion rates and revenue, manage a multi-vendor solution without stress, and deliver exceptional customer experiences. Best of all, Elastic Path helps you get high-value commerce experiences in front of customers fast. Talk to an Elastic Path expert today about your digital commerce solution and 2025 aspirations.
The honest answer is that it depends on your level of digital maturity, your industry and business model, and your current solution. But all businesses, no matter their product or service, need speed and flexibility to tackle tough commerce challenges.
Yes, absolutely. Global digital commerce sales in 2024 were forecasted for $6.3 trillion, a roughly 9% year-over-year increase. Estimates are that by 2027, digital sales will exceed $8 trillion. That growth is 2X faster than physical retail sales.
We suggest testing your online store’s performance for free with our Storefront Grader™. You’ll get a detailed, actionable storefront performance report so you know where your online store is leaving conversions and revenue on the table. Plus, you can highlight the value of site performance to your broader organization.
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