Are you curious about the latest trends in ecommerce?
Ecommerce is a popular way to make money online, and the industry is always coming up with new ways to make managing an online store much easier.
In this post, we take a look at some of the hottest trends in ecommerce at the moment.
Rising trends in ecommerce to watch right now
Top ecommerce trends to watch right now:
- AI in ecommerce
- Personalization in ecommerce
- Augmented reality
- Digital wallet payments
- Social commerce
- Quick commerce
- Connective commerce
- Headless commerce
- Sustainability in ecommerce
- Buying second-hand products
1. AI in ecommerce
Artificial intelligence (AI) is seeing quite a bit of integration with all kinds of different apps, including apps created for the ecommerce industry.
The search term “ai ecommerce” saw a huge spike in popularity in early 2023, and its popularity continues to grow.
Generative AI is the most popular form of AI at the moment. This technology uses machine-learning technology to generate text, images and audio based on text-based prompts written by humans.
In ecommerce, generative AI is mostly used to generate product descriptions. Some ecommerce platforms offer this feature themselves, but store owners can also use tools like Hypotenuse AI, Copy.ai and Rytr to generate product descriptions outside of an ecommerce platform environment.
Most tools ask you to describe the product you need a description for and input the same keyword a customer would input to find the product themselves.
Generative AI can also be used to generate product images, backgrounds for product images, SEO titles and descriptions, marketing copy, email copy, and blog content.
Ecommerce businesses also use AI to implement personalization in their stores. AI is capable of delivering personalized product recommendations to customers based on customer data, including products they’ve searched for in your store and products they’ve purchased.
AI can also use personalization to create better and more accurate customer interactions with chatbots.
Store owners can use AI-powered predictive analytics to use past ecommerce sales and other data to generate better sales forecasts. This gives store owners the opportunity to develop better business plans that are backed by accurate data.
2. Personalization in ecommerce
We mentioned how ecommerce sites are using AI to deliver personalized product recommendations to customers and create better chatbot interactions, but let’s not gloss over this tactic.
Personalization is not just an ecommerce trend, it’s a powerful tool online retailers can use to create unique experiences for online shoppers that are catered to each shopper’s needs.
It improves customer loyalty as well as public perception of your ecommerce brand by making the shopping experience much more efficient for your customer.
Abandoned cart reminders are probably one of the most widely used forms of personalization in ecommerce.
If your customer is logged in when they place items in their cart or if they got through enough of the checkout page to input their email address but did not check out, you can send abandoned cart emails to gently remind them about items they intended to purchase.
You can even include personalized product recommendations in these emails.
One of the coolest personalization methods available for ecommerce involves creating lists of products your customer has purchased in the past. This list should have an “Add to Cart” button for each product so your customer can scroll through it and add items to their cart on the fly quite easily.
Here are other examples of personalization in ecommerce:
- Ad retargeting on Facebook, Instagram and Google ads
- Allowing customers to save their shipping and payment information to your site for easier checkout next time
- Personalized emails by way of segmenting your email list based on interest and purchase history
- Dynamic content block whose content changes based on whether or not your customer is logged in and has made a purchase in the past
- Offering special discounts based on customer behavior, such as offering a 10% discount when you have to send more than one abandoned cart reminder to your customer
- Adding product recommendations in key locations: in a pop-up before your customer checks out, in blog posts and on product pages
- Optimized website experiences that change the language or design of your website based on a customer’s location or device
3. Augmented reality
Augmented reality (AR) isn’t a new technology, but it’s a new ecommerce trend.
AR is a technology that’s able to place computer-generated images in a real-world environment using your smartphone camera.
The most popular forms of AR are social media face filters and the smartphone game Pokémon Go.
Here’s how AR works: as you use your camera to capture the real-world environment around you, AR technology places a CGI graphic or animation, such as a face filter or Pokémon, in the recording.
Ecommerce stores can use this same technology to allow customers to shop virtually.
We should clarify that AR should not be confused with virtual reality. Virtual reality is a technology that creates an environment that’s entirely generated by CGI whereas AR adds CGI to a real-world environment.
AR gives customers the opportunity to see what your products would look like in their homes or on their bodies.
This can be a step up from shopping in traditional brick-and-mortar stores since customers aren’t able to generate previews of what products would look like in their homes while shopping in physical stores.
Shopify has an AR tool you can enable for your store, and there are plenty of apps you can integrate with your store if you don’t use Shopify.
You’ll need to take high-quality images of your products or create 3D models for them, but it’s worth it as it helps to improve the overall shopping experience of your store and keep your store competitive.
4. Digital wallet payments
According to Statista, digital wallet payments accounted for 37% of all ecommerce payments in the United States in 2023, making it the most popular payment method for online shopping.
Here’s how digital wallet payments compared to other payment methods in 2023:
- Digital wallet payments – This payment method accounted for 37% of all online payments in the United States in 2023
- Credit cards – 32%
- Debit cards – 19%
- Account-to-account (A2A) transfers – 5%
- Buy now, pay later (BNPL) – 5%
- Cash on delivery – 1%
- Prepaid card – 1%
Digital wallet payments first overtook credit cards in 2022 when digital wallet payments accounted for 32% of all ecommerce payments and credit cards accounted for 30%.
This payment method is expected to account for 52% of all ecommerce payments by 2027. Credit cards will account for just 22% of all payments by this time.
Digital wallets are applications consumers can use to store payment methods, including debit and credit cards, they want to use for online transactions.
Instead of having to type in their credit card information manually and save it to the store they’re shopping at, they just have to sign into their digital wallet application.
Apple Pay and Google Pay are among the most popular digital wallets on the market since they come preinstalled with every iOS (Apple Pay) and Android (Google Pay) device.
The mobile wallet industry had a market size of $9.01 billion in 2023. This data comes from Grand View Research. It’s expected to reach a market size of $51.53 billion by 2030, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28.3%.
Buy now, pay later
Let’s talk about this payment method before we move on. Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) is another ecommerce trend that’s becoming quite popular. It’s just not as popular as digital wallets.
BNPL is a finance option customers can use to pay for orders over time. Most BNPL services divide orders into four equal payments customers are expected to pay every week, every few weeks or once a month.
The best way to accept this payment method in your store is by partnering with a BNPL service who offers to pay for your customer’s order. This allows you to offer financing without having to go into debt yourself.
5. Social commerce
Social commerce refers to ecommerce sales that happen entirely on social media.
It’s a form of mobile shopping in which apps like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube allow viewers to shop for and pay for products without leaving the app.
On Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, creators can list their products for sale in each app’s shop. They can also add these products to videos where a product image, product title, price and purchase button will be featured.
On TikTok, creators can advertise any product they find on TikTok Shop.
Social commerce generated $570.7 billion in sales in 2023, according to Statista. It’s expected to generate $1.09 trillion in sales in 2028, growing at a CAGR of 13.7%.
Facebook had a headstart in the world of social commerce thanks to Facebook Marketplace. For years, Facebook users have been able to use this section of Facebook as a source to buy and sell used products from individual sellers.
Now, almost every major social media app has some type of way for users to buy ecommerce products.
6. Quick commerce
Quick commerce refers to the practice of shipping or delivering products to customers in a much shorter timeframe than what’s typically expected from online shopping.
When customers shop online, they expect there to be at least a few days between the time they complete their purchase and when they receive their order.
Shopping online with quick commerce options gives your customer the option to receive an online purchase in as little time as under an hour.
Ecommerce trends like this are revolutionizing the ecommerce world by making online sales as similar to retail sales as possible.
Quick commerce does have its challenges, though. You’ll need to hire delivery drivers or work with a delivery company.
You’ll also need to choose fulfillment centers carefully as you won’t be able to offer quick commerce options for global ecommerce sales unless you operate fulfillment centers all around the world.
7. Connective commerce
Connective commerce is an ecommerce strategy that encourages new ecommerce brands to rely on third parties and find alternative marketing strategies when possible to minimize startup costs.
Entrepreneur and eCom Babes founder Cortney Fletcher coined the term and laid the foundation for this strategy.
In connective commerce, ecommerce startups are encouraged to use ecommerce platforms and prebuilt website templates over professionally-made websites designed by developers.
They’re also encouraged to market their websites with organic strategies over paid advertising models. Organic strategies include content marketing and social media marketing.
As for selling, dropshipping is a popular method for followers of the connective commerce method.
Dropshipping helps reduce startup costs by giving store owners no inventory to purchase, store and ship. Your dropshipping provider handles these tasks for you. You just need to sell the inventory.
8. Headless commerce
Headless commerce is an ecommerce web development method that decouples a store’s frontend from its backend functionality.
The frontend is a store’s design layer. Web design elements include things like text, images, colors, buttons and more.
The backend is where the store’s ecommerce functionality takes place. This layer is made up of the store’s product management, checkout and security functionalities.
Decoupling these allows ecommerce brands to create more sophisticated ecommerce websites and apps that aren’t limited by what the site’s frontend and backend can achieve together.
It also allows brands to sell from any digital customer touchpoint, including video game consoles, smartwatches and kiosks.
Headless commerce also helps to improve performance as the site’s frontend design will have no effect on a site’s backend performance and vice versa.
Headless commerce is achieved by designing a frontend of some sort, be it a website or app (smartphone, desktop, video game console, kiosk, etc.), and connecting it to an ecommerce API. The two are managed separately, giving store owners the power to change their site’s design without impacting key functionalities.
A developer can create this type of ecommerce environment for store owners, but ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce offer their own solutions for this trend.
9. Sustainability in ecommerce
Consumers are going green, and ecommerce brands are following suit.
As severe weather becomes more frequent and wildfires become more commonplace, more and more consumers are adopting environmentally-friendly shopping habits.
They’re also placing more pressure on larger businesses to become more mindful about product packaging, manufacturing, shipping and distribution.
For smaller online retailers, sustainability in ecommerce means using greener hosting methods, using sustainable product packaging, printing shipping labels with a thermal printer to save on ink and utilizing eco-friendly shipping programs created by shipping carriers.
Ecommerce businesses can also make sure to create stellar product pages and product images so customers know exactly what they’re purchasing. This reduces the number of returns an ecommerce store needs to process.
Ecommerce businesses can also adopt eco-friendly warehouse practices.
10. Buying second-hand products
According to Statista, 60% of consumers in the United States bought something second hand over a 12-month period in 2023 compared to just 49% in 2019.
61% of consumers in the United Kingdom bought second-hand products in 2023 versus 50% in 2019.
The second-hand apparel market, in particular, will reach a market size of $84 billion by 2030.
Second-hand ecommerce is also popular in the technology niche of ecommerce. Instead of throwing away old devices, consumers are reselling them on marketplaces like eBay and Facebook.
This type of ecommerce is also popular among the collector industry. Things like rare trading cards, old coins and toys are almost always sold second hand.
Existing yet strong ecommerce trends
There are a few trends we didn’t mention because they’ve been around for awhile. Yet, they’re unique enough to be considered “trends.”
The first is dropshipping. Dropshipping is a form of ecommerce in which you sell another company’s products as your own.
You create an ecommerce store for these products like normal, but inventory management and order fulfillment are handled entirely by the dropshipping provider you choose.
It’s a cheaper way to get into ecommerce since it doesn’t require you to actually purchase, store and ship your own inventory.
Private labeling is another way to get into ecommerce by selling another brand’s inventory.
In this ecommerce method, you create your own branded packaging label for another company’s product, then sell it as your own.
The private labeling company will typically place the labels on the product for you, but distribution typically requires you to purchase inventory for the product in bulk. This requires you to handle inventory management and order fulfillment on your own, but it’s typically easier to find niche-specific products with this ecommerce method, so it’s worth it.
Some private labeling companies do offer dropshipping services if you don’t want to manage inventory yourself, and you can also work with a third-party logistics (3PL) provider to handle inventory management and order fulfillment for you.
The last trend we’ll mention is the subscription model.
Ecommerce subscription models have become quite popular. Some ecommerce businesses are based entirely on subscriptions while others only offer subscriptions for products consumers need on a regular basis.
It’s a great way to build a predictable stream of recurring revenue.
