Between evolving technologies, shifting consumer behaviours, and new market opportunities, ecommerce merchants need to stay agile and informed to remain competitive. From the rise of Everywhere Commerce to the increasing significance of AI transparency and sustainability, we’ve identified areas where ecommerce merchants and retailers can focus their strategies for 2025 as Q2 approaches. 

In this blog, we’ll list the top ecommerce industry trends we’ve seen so far in 2025 and the consumer behaviour that is powering them. Here’s what our ecommerce agency believes will be the basis for our–and your–decision-making in the next year and beyond. 

Top Ecommerce Industry Trends for 2025

Ecommerce trends for 2025 continue to be powered by technological improvements, both on the industry and consumer side. Here are our top trend picks for this year. 

Omnichannel is Dead, Introducing “Everywhere Commerce”

The ecommerce industry loves a good, snappy buzzword. From “omnichannel” and “multi-channel” to “unified commerce,” we’re always looking for a new, fun way to describe how the industry is shifting to meet customer needs and demand. 

While the jury’s still out on whether 2025 will be the year of “Everywhere Commerce,” “Everywhere, Embedded,” or “Retail Everywhere,” what we know for sure is that this new concept will further bridge the gap between online and retail spaces in all kinds of new and exciting ways. 

Examples of this new form of “adaptive retail” include a combination of:

• Digital/cashierless checkout in-store.

• Virtual try-on opportunities via mobile devices.

• Product recommendations and order history following customers from their in-store purchases to their online store accounts for a more unified, personalized shopping experience.

• Pop-up stores for primarily online shops.

• Buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS), endless aisle, and skip-the-line options.

• Tech-infused magic mirrors/digital kiosks for product try-ons.

Simply put, this new concept of everywhere commerce includes multi-channel integration, customer accounts that follow shoppers online and in-store, and retail stores incorporating more tech to entice people to leave the comfort of their homes for unique experiences they can’t get anywhere else. Retailers now have the opportunity to tap into their digital data in the physical world, and those who find the best ways to leverage it will make it out on top in 2025. 

AI Will and Should be Everywhere (Responsibly)

We’ve passed the two-year mark since ChatGPT was made available to the public, and we’re finally seeing where this tech can thrive and where it should best be left out. The consensus? Let AI handle the easy stuff so you can focus your energy on the more complicated aspects of your day-to-day life. 

One place we see a lot of value for AI is translation. If you operate in different markets or your store serves people who speak other languages, using AI to bulk translate product descriptions, website content, and more can be a massive time saver. 

For example, when Akeneo launched a suite of AI-powered enhancements to their PIM last Spring, we knew our clients, who are often Canada-based and operate in both English and French, would love the extra time gained from translating large amounts of relatively simple content that would have otherwise taken hours to localize. 

Another space where we see AI thrive is in customer service. Gorgias, for example, offers AI chat agents that can be trained on your content and help desk articles to handle your most common and easy customer service inquiries so that your team can focus on the more complex or higher ticket issues that pop up throughout the day. 

One thing we believe we’ll see over the next year is the success of companies that use these tools where they’ll make the biggest impact so that they can spend their time and energy injecting humanity into everything else. AI can be sprinkled almost anywhere, as long as a human regularly reviews it, and companies don’t attempt to replace entire departments with AI bots. 

The Rise of Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality (AR) has been around for decades, but we’ve only recently seen its true value as technology has improved. With the latest generation of smartphones shipping with LIDAR technology out of the box, developers have been able to build more precise and realistic AR experiences for the ecommerce and retail industries to sink their teeth into.  

LIDAR’s enhanced spatial mapping capabilities provide real-time object interaction, more realistic object placement, better accessibility, improved surface interaction, and context-aware experiences, making AR features much more accurate and true-to-life than ever. 

Whether it’s furniture stores allowing shoppers to use AR-powered apps to virtually “place” a couch or an end table in their homes or online glasses retailers enabling people to “try on” new frames, offering these kinds of experiences can bridge the gap between in-store, online, and somewhere in the middle to meet shoppers where it's the most helpful. 

The Nice-To-Haves Are Now Necessities

In past years, offering something like BOPIS or Endless Aisle was a great way to add an additional layer to the novelty and convenience of shopping with your brand for customers. These days, having programs and options like this in place are no longer nice-to-haves; they’re non-negotiables. 

If you don’t already have the following in place for next year, we highly recommend getting started ASAP if you don’t want to lose customers to merchants who make online purchases easier than you: 

• One-page checkout: Compressing your checkout page reduces cart abandonment due to slow loading time, perceived complexity, and second thoughts, all improving CRO.  

• One-click checkout: Platforms like Shopify make one-click checkout a breeze. Customers with Shop accounts can easily add items to their cart and checkout with their payment/shipping addresses preloaded in any participating Shopify store, regardless of whether or not they’ve previously shopped there. 

• Multiple payment options: Similar to one-click checkout, Shopify users with Shopify Payments turned on can make paying for orders super straightforward for customers. Offering options like PayPal, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, and even cryptocurrency wallets can ensure that customers can pay for orders however they feel most comfortable. 

• A rewards plan: No matter what you sell, rewards plans are one of the easiest ways to build brand loyalty and get people to come back to your store over and over.  

• BOPIS: BOPIS programs really took off after the era of curbside pickup spurred on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Now that people have seen how convenient these options are, there really should be no excuse for merchants with retail stores to allow BOPIS options at checkout. 

As you may have noticed, Shopify offers an easy way to enable and implement all of these options/store features, making it one of the most future-proof ecommerce platforms on which you could build your store these days. 

The Continued Growth of Social Commerce (But Livestreams Might Decrease in Popularity)

With almost every social media platform offering social commerce options these days, selling directly through social media has grown in popularity over the last few years. We don’t see that growth slowing down in 2025. 

Currently, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, and Facebook all offer built-in native social commerce capabilities. There are also plenty of ecommerce platform apps and plug-ins available to help merchants bridge the gap between their store websites and social media pages. 

However, one thing about social commerce that may fall out of favor is livestream selling. While novel, at first, interest is starting to wane as this infomercial style of selling requires a large audience to be available at specific times throughout the day who is also patient enough to sit through hours of content in hopes of finding something interesting they’d like to purchase. 

Platforms like TikTok originally had high hopes for livestream sales due to their success in China, but we’re not seeing the same numbers in the West. That said, there are some industries where livestreams do very well, namely fashion and beauty. There are also ways to reuse and repurpose livestream content. For example, if you’re swatching lipsticks or eyeshadows on stream, you can later cut out stream clips and upload them to your product pages so shoppers can get a better idea of your offerings before buying. 

Global Market Expansion Gets Easier

Shopify’s Summer Editions showcase unveiled the platform’s new Managed Markets setup. The company has now made it possible for stores to manage multiple markets from one page without splitting inventory or manually keeping data in sync between storefronts. 

As technology continues to improve, people all across the globe are becoming more connected every day. With Shopify’s improvements to their Markets experience, it's easier than ever for ecommerce businesses of any size to expand their offerings to new countries. 

Subscriptions for Everything!

As customer acquisition costs continue to rise, merchants should shift their focus from acquiring new customers to retaining the ones they have and driving revenue growth through increasing customer lifetime value (LTV). 

One way to shift your focus towards retention? Subscriptions. In the last few years, we’ve noticed that one of the best ways to guarantee that customers come back over and over is to work towards making them feel like VIPs–and one way to do that is by designing experiences that make them feel special. Improve customer loyalty by offering discounts on recurring subscriptions or allowing them to build their own custom boxes of products if they subscribe. 

When setting up your subscription offerings, keep in mind that a survey by Statista found that 38.5% of respondents said that free shipping was the leading feature driving retail subscription box sign-ups. The ability to cancel a subscription at any time was ranked second, with 30.7%.

Top Consumer Trends for 2025

Above all, consumers today value honesty, creativity, and sustainability. Here are the consumer trends we believe will be the most impactful to the ecommerce industry in 2025. 

The Value of a Solid Social Media Presence Grows

Similar to our point about the continued growth of social commerce, having a solid presence on social media will continue to be necessary in 2025. As noted by Porch Group Media, 84% of consumers search for brands on social media before they buy, 67% of customers have purchased through social platforms, and 29% made purchases on the same day they discovered products. 

Building a community around your brand/products is one of the best ways to foster brand loyalty, and this won’t change in 2025. Aside from posting from/managing brand pages, a mix of private Facebook groups managed by your company where customers can discuss your offerings and a good marketing strategy that can build suspense and get people excited to theorize about new launches, and promos can bring in a ton of sales. This leads brands to rely less on other strategies that are falling out of favour with consumers, like FOMO marketing. 

For example, oatmeal brand Oats Overnight manages a VIP Facebook group with its own high-priority customer support email address where “Oatholes” can pop in to discuss their products, theorize what their next in-development flavour will be, and share how they enjoy their oats. 

Having a place where customers can get excited–and even argue about your products with other fans of your brand fosters an incredible amount of brand loyalty at the cost of hiring a few social media community managers to admin your group. 

Influencer Partnerships are More Lucrative than Ever

In the same vein as being active on social media on your brand pages, influencer marketing is a great way to drum up interest in your brand from outside your company-run social media accounts. The global influencer marketing market has more than tripled since 2019, with ecommerce businesses spearheading that growth.

Gen Z trusts influencers more than other generations, making influencer partnerships extremely valuable as the generation ages and their buying power increases. With 49% of all consumers making purchases because of influencer posts, if you’re not already working with influencers, you’re leaving a lot of cash on the table in 2025.

Sustainability as a Path to Success

When looking at search topics related to ecommerce on Google Trends, one of the top rising related search terms over the last 5 years has been “sustainability.” With 40% growth since the beginning of 2024, it's clear that people are starting to care more and more about sustainability as time goes on. 

Sustainable practices in manufacturing, sourcing, shipping, and packaging directly affect consumer behaviour and shopping habits, and we expect this trend to continue in the foreseeable future. 

One thing of note, however, is to be wary of looking like your company is participating in greenwashing, as this is something that consumers are becoming more savvy at sniffing out and will actively avoid your brand if they find you to be participating in this kind of deception. People would much rather see proof that sustainable efforts are being made rather than false promises of perfection. 

AI Transparency is a Must

As mentioned above, while 2025 will see an uptick in AI, it should not be understated that it should be used responsibly and honestly. If you’re using it to write product copy or translate existing text, you should still review the output and ensure it isn’t hallucinating data or writing nonsense. There’s nothing more damaging for a brand regarding AI than running on auto-pilot and getting things wrong in front of your customers. 

One recent example of a brand getting it wrong regarding AI is Coca-Cola, which suffered a lot of backlash this November after getting caught using AI to generate its annual Christmas commercials. Customers don’t want AI-generated product photos or to see caricatures of your company’s clothes on cartoon people. They want transparency and realism so they know exactly what they’ll get if they shop with you. 

According to Getty Images, 98% of consumers say “authentic images and videos are pivotal in establishing trust.” Use AI to help you write, power your CX interactions, and automate your busy work so that you can spend your real, human time injecting humanity into the things that matter most. 

The Importance of Balancing Personalization with Privacy

Personalization must be carefully balanced with an equally strong commitment to privacy. Trust becomes pivotal as consumers become more aware of how their personal information is collected, stored, and used. 

Data breaches, misuse of information, or overly intrusive marketing tactics can erode confidence and damage a brand’s reputation. Today’s customers want to know that their data is handled responsibly, with transparency around what is being collected, how it is protected, and for what purpose it will be used. Companies that respect these preferences and communicate openly about their data practices will likely earn trust and maintain lasting customer relationships.

Striking the right balance between personalization and privacy requires a thoughtful approach grounded in clear policies, good security measures, and ethical data handling. Instead of stockpiling unnecessary customer data, businesses should focus on using only what is essential for providing meaningful, value-added experiences. They should also give consumers choices—such as opting out of specific data uses—and ensure compliance with privacy regulations.

Mobile Shopping on the Rise

One final consumer habit powering the ecommerce trends for 2025 is that mobile shopping is beginning to overtake desktop shopping. There’s a joke that millennials only make purchases on their “big screens” like desktop or laptop computers–but a lot of Gen Z, who now have more purchasing power, often don’t even have desktops or laptops, choosing instead to use phones and tablets for all their online shopping and web browsing.

This shift means that having mobile-friendly websites is more important than ever. If a shopper can’t easily navigate your store and/or check out, you’ll miss out on a lot of potential revenue and gain even more unhappy customers. 

Conclusion

As we barrel through 2025, the ecommerce industry is yet again undergoing significant transformation, driven by rapid technological advancements and changing consumer expectations. Retailers who embrace “everywhere commerce” and other forward-thinking strategies—such as leveraging AI, integrating AR experiences, and optimizing for mobile—will gain a competitive edge. At the same time, the businesses that succeed will be those that listen to their customers, prioritize authenticity, and strike the right balance between personalization and privacy. 

At Blue Badger, we have the tools and know-how to help you make 2025 your best one yet. Our skills include running performance audits, testing and implementing optimizations, custom theme and app design, strategic planning, marketing, conversion rate optimization, ERP integration, PIM implementation, building custom apps, and more. Contact us today to get started.