Look back to Black Friday 2024 and you’ll see ecommerce sales were above expectations, up nearly 15% year-on-year in the US (depending on the figures you choose), against an in-store sales rise of 0.7%.
Within the UK, click and collect grew, up nearly 10% on Black Friday orders, according to Adobe data. No doubt omnichannel behaviour, if you want to call it that, will grow over the Christmas shopping and sales period.
Though ecommerce growth may have fallen back to the trend line post-2021, online shopping is still growing, and there are intriguing narratives in many categories – from social as a booming sales channel for beauty and fashion, to AI-powered product discovery, information and customer service from the likes of Amazon and Walmart.
As ever, the future can seem unevenly distributed, with not every retailer on the cutting edge, something our experts highlighted when we asked them about ecommerce in 2025. They also weigh in on topics such as personalisation, search, D2C vs indirect commerce, and changing consumer behaviour.
A big thanks to:
Here’s what they had to say…
Aoife Dowling, Head of Global Agency Group Partnerships, Shopify:
The lines between commerce and marketing are blurring, which is fundamentally transforming how businesses tell their story to consumers. While it may at first seem to complicate how retailers can advertise their products, this collaboration has seen strong growth in shoppable ads that deliver both brand awareness and revenue through one simple interaction.
We’re only seeing this trend go one way, as it delivers more valuable connections with shoppers across platforms, reducing friction in the buying process so they can get the products they’re looking for quicker.
Sarah Jarvis, Communications and Propositions Director, Eagle Eye:
While everyone is talking about omnichannel, hardly anyone is delivering it well. Customer expectations continue to change at pace with pureplay digital platforms having set the precedent for effortless, personalized, and seamless experiences – but most retailers are still struggling to integrate channels, data, and operations to meet even the basics.
[Omnichannel is] a behaviour. It’s how we all live and shop in the world today and businesses must act fast to respond to this reality or risk falling so far behind that they can’t ever catch up.
Jen Jones, CMO at commercetools:
Omnichannel retail remains a goal rather than a reality for many brands. Beneath the surface, businesses are grappling with disconnected systems and outdated platforms that can’t seamlessly communicate…
…When brands fail to provide a unified experience, the result is disjointed journeys, unmet expectations, and lost customer loyalty.
Benjamin Lang, Head of Partnerships for Northern Europe at Shopify:
Businesses are still talking about being omnichannel, when consumer expectations are increasingly shifting to an even more holistic shopping experience. Retailers need to catch up. Our Holiday Retail research found that two in five (44%) British consumers plan to evenly split their shopping online and offline.
This is why 2025 will mark a sea change in the implementation of unified commerce, which integrates all of the business’ technology, data and platforms into a single view of the customer. It will unlock opportunities to streamline operations, deliver personalised experiences and ultimately increase loyalty while reducing acquisition costs, enabling retailers to exceed customer expectations in the coming years.
Amy Sillince, luxury ecommerce consultant:
In 2024 I started consulting in the digital shelf space, having spent all my career in D2C ecommerce and it really shone a new light on ecom for me. One thing I find curious is that there are differing skills between the brand-led D2C space and the FMCG-dominated digital shelf space, but few people transfer between them – I feel like we’re working in two parallel ecommerce worlds!
We like to hire in echo chambers, recruiting people who’ve already done exactly what we need them to do for us. Of course there’s a lot of value in that, but gaining a really new perspective in your business can be game-changing.
Digital shelf folks are highly focused on onsite SEO, product content and PDP conversion because it’s the only piece they can influence with retailers to grow their sales. Whereas, more traditional ecommerce profiles have this great breadth of experience from pulling levers all the way along the customer journey. I think more cross-pollination between these sectors would make amazing results for us all.
How could this apply? If you’re having a conversion issue on a brand site, recruiting someone from an FMCG or the grocery space could unlock it. Likewise, traditional FMCGs can be fixated on marketing, and bringing in talent with an ecom trading background might give you a different commercial edge.
Sarah Jarvis, Eagle Eye:
Personalisation will increasingly be seen as a driver not just of customer engagement but of profitability within retail. Done right, personalisation allows businesses to allocate their marketing and promotional spending more efficiently than they could have imagined just a few years ago, presenting bespoke offers only on the “right” items for the “right customers”, ensuring that the discount provided is enough to motivate the behaviour the retailer seeks whilst protecting margins as much as possible.
It’s for this reason that organisations such as BCG are betting big on personalisation; stating that retailers who lead in delivering it will see $570B in revenue shift to them by 2030.
Benjamin Lang, Shopify:
Brands of all sizes need to… lean into fast growing channels like social commerce, especially if they want to meaningfully engage with younger demographics. According to our Holiday Retail research, 59% of 18-24s said they shop via Instagram, while 62% do so through TikTok. With shoppers spending their time and money across so many channels, retailers must follow. Unified commerce is no longer an optional strategy, it’s table-stakes.
Eric Brackmann, Head of Commerce Media at Koddi:
Search, as we know it, is ripe for transformation. The traditional method of typing keywords into a search bar and filtering through dozens of options is giving way to AI-driven discovery. This shift will fundamentally change how consumers shop. Retail sites will increasingly use AI to predict customer needs, offering curated suggestions instead of endless options.
…For retailers, this evolution creates new challenges, such as redefining how and where
promotions appear in a world without traditional search results. However, it also opens
significant opportunities to reimagine consumer interactions and drive seamless, intuitive shopping experiences. According to eMarketer, search will account for around $6 of every $10 spent on retail media through 2028 – driven not just by traditional search, but AI-powered search too.
Steve Ricketts, Chief Commerce Officer at Publicis Media:
The adoption of AI is shifting how we shop and driving disruption in this space. Next time you’re on the Amazon app, take a look at the colourful icon on the home screen. That’s Rufus, Amazon’s AI-powered helper created to assist your shopping. Just think about telling your grocery app to whip up a meal plan for a dinner party of six, including a gluten-free and vegetarian option, all within a £200 budget, and the co-branded possibilities there. You won’t have to imagine for much longer, as it’s not far off.
Benjamin Lang, Shopify:
AI is fast cementing its position as a business-critical tool for retailers, helping them to streamline operations and better help customers. This is why at Shopify we have doubled down on tools like semantic search, which enables customers to search for products on a merchant’s storefront using everyday language, and Shopify Magic’s Media Editor, using which our merchants have already saved over 1 million AI-generated images to their storefronts.
Amy Sillince, consultant:
I’ve worked on several genAI pilots related to ecom content in the past year, and I think it’s great for developing visual content, although it still requires a lot of human input. To get good quality out, the effort and skill set needed is still high, but the cost- and time-saving is compelling.
I think most businesses are trying to run with genAI before they’re even crawling successfully, and I’d like to see people scale back into approaches that make real business sense: Is this saving me time, saving me money or making me money? Space for experimentation and innovation should be built into our teams’ workloads, but not at the cost of other priorities or budgets.
I’m excited to see the way platforms are building smart and usable… functionality into their tech – I was impressed with Amplience’s AI content features that they demoed at Shop Talk Europe in 2024. Features that take away the heavy-lifting of getting successful outputs are really valuable at the moment.
Benjamin Lang, Shopify:
We should stop talking about ecommerce, it’s just commerce. Consumers don’t think of the channel they buy from, they just buy. Retailers should also adopt that mindset and seamlessly meet customers wherever they want to shop.
Sarah Jarvis, Eagle Eye:
The way we shop today reflects a total blend of digital convenience and the irreplicable store experience. Shopping journeys are anything but linear – with transactions happening everywhere; flowing from online to offline, across touchpoints (mobile, desktop, in-store), owned and 3rd party channels, with a path to purchase that varies from a few seconds to many months.
It is complex but customers are not going to streamline their behaviour any time soon and therefore retailers need to have a robust omnichannel strategy in place in order to meet customers wherever and whenever they decide to interact.
You can view all of our 2025 predictions here.
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