The Future of ecommerce: Trends, Technology, and What's Next for Online Retail

The same digital nature that makes ecommerce scalable and customizable, also fuels rapid change. As a result, keeping up with the future of ecommerce can feel a lot like running after a train you just missed.

Even something as seemingly simple as digital payments, made via app or QR code, have altered the ecommerce landscape:

2020 global digital payments: $10.55 trillion.

That same stat in 2025? $24.07 trillion.

Now, add in trends like Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL), the rise of AI-powered ecommerce tools, and automated inventory management, and suddenly once-revolutionary features like voice search seem outdated.

Fortunately, you’ve come to the right place to discover the latest trends.

Developing ecommerce trends to follow

The future of ecommerce is comprised of new songs and covers of oldies. Established tech and strategies that are ingrained in businesses, and new developments that many are still undecided about. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to shape the landscape, product discovery is becoming intertwined with the customer experience, and consistent messaging on TikTok and the like are now just as important as the messaging on your brand’s site.

From technological shifts in digital commerce to changes in consumer behavior, these are the biggest trends shaping the ecommerce ecosystem.

AI’s influence continues to grow.

From AI copywriting and chatbots to personalization, AI and machine learning already have a firm place in ecommerce. Now, agentic AI is increasingly common and important, both as a form of convenience for customers and a core way for businesses to be discovered.

The fact that 58% of consumers are using generative AI to start searches, rather than traditional search engines, showcases just how much AI is impacting both the product and customer journey.

How to adapt.

Think about your business model and how AI search is changing product discovery and the customer journey, and make sure you’re following best practices around AI in ecommerce. Streamline workflows with AI-powered tools that help with product pages, email marketing, and beyond.

Augmented reality meets virtual reality.

Augmented reality (AR) isn’t new, and while it’s still somewhat niche, it’s also a powerful ecommerce tool.

With AR in ecommerce, brands can add an extra dimension to a customer’s decision-making process by helping them visualize what products might look like in their living room, as part of their wardrobe, and so on.

Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly commonplace as well. In 2025, the Meta Quest, one of many VR headsets available, hit an all-time high for overall usage. With upwards of 68% of players spending money in-game, the digital commerce market within VR is likely to explode.

Expect to see VR used more in the ecommerce space in similar ways as AR, making it possible for users to get a better visualization of products in their own home.

How to adapt.

Consider developing partnerships with influencers to deliver fun, branded AR experiences within social media. These can drive brand awareness, while helping market to younger generations. While not mission critical, retailers who break into the VR space have a better chance of getting ahead before it’s the next big focus across the board.

An emphasis on security and privacy.

Protecting customer data should always be a top priority, and the future is no different.

While AI has benefitted the ecommerce space in many ways, 2025 saw an 89% increase in AI-based cyberattacks. Keeping customer data safe is only going to get more difficult as time goes on, with AI making cyberattacks easier and faster.

How to adapt.

Make sure you’re current with ecommerce website security, staying ahead of the latest threats and best practices. If you’re not already, use an ecommerce platform that prioritizes security, and ensure any payment processor you use is PCI DSS compliant.

Seamless checkout.

Getting customers on your site is step one. Next, it’s essential you deliver a seamless checkout process, otherwise cart abandonment will become the norm.

In the US alone, 19% of cart abandonment stems from needing to make an account, while 18% abandoned their order because the checkout process itself was lengthy or complex.

A painless user experience is essential to ecommerce success in 2026. Especially as omnichannel ecommerce becomes the norm and customers expect a uniform, seamless experience across any and all channels.

How to adapt.

Eliminate the mandatory account creation and let customers check out as a guest.

Another way to optimize the checkout process is to offer alternate payment methods. An independent study covered two months of transaction data from BigCommerce merchants on our “Enterprise” plan and using our native checkout experience.  

• A BigCommerce merchant not using alternative payment methods yielded a 52.9% checkout conversion rate.

• A BigCommerce merchant using our native one-page checkout and including either PayPal Wallet or Apple Pay saw a 58.9% checkout conversion rate.

• BigCommerce merchants using BOTH PayPal Wallet and Apple Pay? That conversion rate jumped to 61.9%.

Meeting customer needs in 2026 means offering options. Even if one wallet type isn’t used as often as others, you should still use a platform that supports it.

Omnichannel ecommerce will be critical to success.

It’s been a long time since brands were largely single-channel entities. Today, brands exist across various social media channels, one or more ecommerce sites, marketplaces, and beyond.

Omnichannel is increasingly important as social media continues to evolve from “place to post cat pics and argue” into a true avenue for online sales.

• TikTok Shop is projected to hit $30B in annual sales by 2028.

• Instagram Shopping sales in 2025 amounted to $42.8B.

• US social commerce as a whole is valued at $90.6B.

A great omnichannel ecommerce strategy ensures customers get a consistent experience no matter which channel or social platform they’re on.

Omnichannel ecommerce not only helps customers have a better experience, it also boosts your profitability. When compared to single-channel brands, omnichannel businesses saw a 30% ROI.

How to adapt.

It’s not enough to have a few ways of reaching online shoppers. You need to have multiple consistent channels that deliver direct messaging. Put brand and messaging guidelines into place and make sure you’re representing your brand in a consistent manner across channels.

Think about how you can maximize site traffic across leading search, social, ad, affiliate and marketplace channels. Streamline efforts with a feed management solution, like Feedonomics. This will reduce the likelihood of manual errors and help you update product listings, whether they’re on your site or a partnering marketplace. Feed management tools can also help with data enrichment at scale, opening the door to getting surfaced by agentic AI.

Lastly, don’t just exist on social media and treat it as simply another touchpoint. Use it as a place to build customer relationships. Engage with followers, host giveaways, and be authentic. People will take note, the algorithm will take note, and your business will be better for it.

Mobile continues to grow.

We’re fast reaching a point where mobile commerce IS ecommerce. In the first quarter of 2026, 71% of online orders were made via smartphone.

With 91% of Americans using a smartphone, the mobile audience is simply massive.

How to adapt.

Mobile shopping is here to stay, and will likely continue to grow. It’s paramount that ecommerce businesses offer a mobile-friendly experience. But don’t stop there.

Utilize mobile in your marketing efforts if you aren’t already, delivering a personalized shopping experience on the go and sending customized offers via text. Lastly, keep up with the latest in mobile commerce, doing whatever you can to set trends, rather than lag behind.

Customer experience is paramount.

The customer experience has always been important to ecommerce success. That isn’t changing, but what is, is how brands can enhance the customer experience, and what a truly great experience looks like in 2026.

Today, a great customer experience is:

• Omnichannel

• Frictionless

• Agentic AI-ready

• Personalized

From increasing use of mobile to AR and VR to seamless checkout experiences, there’s no shortage of factors shaping how the customer experience is improved upon in today’s ecommerce sphere.

How to adapt.

Embrace modernity. More specifically, utilize the technology that’s been outlined so far in this piece and:

• Deliver a seamless checkout experience.

• Accept a wide variety of payment methods.

• Leverage AR and VR to cater to younger audiences.

• Personalize everything from marketing to product recommendations

You should also keep up with customer experience best practices in general. Lastly, keep in mind your customers and audience are uniquely yours. What works for other brands may not work for you. Run A/B tests, collect feedback, and let your customers guide you.

Automation frees up resources for the important tasks.

From streamlining previously manual data entry tasks to assisting with marketing campaigns, automation has made its way into nearly every facet of ecommerce.

With recent advances in AI, the automation revolution in ecommerce isn’t slowing down. If anything, it’s going faster and in previously unexplored directions.

Agentic AI is automating the product discovery and shopping process for customers. Meanwhile, you can automate much of inventory management, including label generation and warehouse space optimization.

The sky is the limit.

How to adapt.

Don’t shy away from automation. Many ecommerce platforms come with powerful automation tools, making it easier to optimize pricing, upsell with product recommendations, automatically send abandoned cart emails, and so on.

For example, BigCommerce has much of the above functionality already built in. On top of this, we have more than 1,200 integrations and apps that enable further automations throughout your business.

Voice commerce is here to stay.

Voice search began as a niche novelty, but now plays a role in shopping for nearly half of US consumers.

With the rise of agentic AI and engines like Gemini and Perplexity, voice commerce is primed to continue its vocal expansion. Where voice search previously allowed consumers to make verbal search queries, it can now integrate with agentic AI and not only find products, but also help users purchase them.

How to adapt.

A baseline understanding of voice search in ecommerce is critical. From there, make sure you’re updating your product pages and the language on your site to be conversational.

Voice searches aren’t like traditional searches. While keywords still play a part, the queries are far more likely to be conversational and question-based. Your content needs to reflect this. (Or else!)

“I sometimes watch younger folks and how they interact with AI — whereas I'm on ChatGPT on my phone saying ‘please show me a restaurant,’ they're talking into their phone: ‘Hey man, I just did this, I'm hungry but I had Chinese yesterday.’ They're just so natural with it. That's what I've been trying to encourage within my team.”

— Wilt Kishimoto, Director of ECommerce, Marketing and Customer Experience, Prime-Line

Headless technology drives innovation.

Headless ecommerce decouples the backend and frontend, making it possible to work on either end without interrupting the other. This opens the door to a whole slew of innovation, and makes life easier for marketers and developers alike.

For example, with a headless approach, your dev team can put together a landing page template. From there, your marketers can easily customize this template on the frontend, making campaign or product pages without needing developer help.

On the innovation front, few companies are a better example than Yeti Cycles.

Yeti Cycles had a complicated tech stack that prevented them from moving products to market quickly. With the help of an agency partner, they discovered they could use BigCommerce’s headless ecommerce implementation which could match the precise engineering of their products.

Going headless proved to be the kickstart they needed for innovation and growth. It opened up an entirely new revenue stream that would have otherwise taken a massive amount of time and development resources.

How to adapt.

The right platform is everything where headless commerce is concerned. If you’re not already, use an ecommerce platform that supports headless commerce.

For example, BigCommerce makes headless a breeze, with both headless and low/no code routes available.

Marketing  Manager in the Consumer Goods Industry gives BigCommerce 5/5 Rating in Gartner Peer Insights™ Digital Commerce Market. Read the full review here. #gartnerpeerinsights

Psst. If you really want to stay ahead of the curve, take things a step further and go the composable commerce route. This API-first approach lets you piece together every element you want, decoupling everything.

A rise in eco-friendly products and shipping.

Slowly but surely companies are embracing sustainable practices, from reducing waste and their carbon footprint to creating longer-lasting products. Amazon lets customers choose shipping using fewer boxes and Patagonia is renowned for giving profits to the planet.

With 80% of global shoppers open to paying more for sustainable products, embracing the eco-friendly approach is great for both the planet and business.

There’s also the growing recommerce sector, in which people buy and sell pre-owned goods. While pre-owned goods come with the obvious lower price,  45% of people say they choose pre-owned goods for sustainability and environmental reasons.

How to adapt.

There are a number of ways you can become more eco-friendly:

• Partner with ecommerce shipping companies that utilize eco-friendly options.

• Use recycled packaging and packing materials.

• Sell pre-owned versions of your products, if possible.

• Use a web host that offers renewable options..

• Give back to your local community and volunteer.

Whichever avenues you choose, make it known that your company is becoming more eco-friendly. Engage on social media and share pictures of your team volunteering, mention on product pages that your shipping is green, and so on.

The future of ecommerce websites

Ecommerce has evolved significantly over the past 25 years. From its humble beginnings in the early 1990s, it has become a massive global industry, achieving an estimated $2 trillion in sales worldwide.

Ecommerce is rapidly evolving as online businesses aim to deliver highly personalized and seamless shopping experiences. This shift is happening at a time when economic challenges, like dwindling consumer savings, rising debt, and high interest rates, are limiting people's ability to spend.

Key factors driving this evolution include technological advancements, mobile devices and smartphones and product marketplaces, like Amazon, Alibaba and eBay, which have contributed to overall sales volume.

To stay relevant, ecommerce businesses must invest in artificial intelligence, digital business transformation and seamless customer experiences.

Agentic commerce experience.

Agentic AI powers platforms like Gemini and Perplexity, making it possible for users to submit a query and get real-time responses.

Customers are rapidly adopting this AI-driven commerce model: 58% of people use AI in place of traditional search when researching products.

How to adapt.

On the surface, agentic AI can function similarly to chatbots. But, being agentic ready as an ecommerce business requires much more than a simple plugin.

Agentic commerce is only possible when the right data is in place. If your product data isn’t optimized, rich, and consistent across marketplaces, agentic AI is unlikely to find and recommend your products when queried.

Get your business ready for agentic AI by:

• Optimizing your product pages for agentic AI.

• Unify systems on the backend with unified commerce to enable data sharing.

• Streamline checkout flows to ensure agentic AI can navigate them.

“While we sit on the sidelines skeptically awaiting a second mover advantage, our competition is 2x-ing us in the next quarter, 4x-ing us in the next two quarters, 16x-ing us in the next year, or 256x-ing us in the next two years.”

— Anders Sorman-Nilsson, Futurist & Author, at Commerce Live 2026

Much like the early days of SEO, businesses who adapt to agentic AI sooner, rather than later, can benefit from extreme exposure. Don’t wait.

Sales from generative search engines.

Speaking of AI-powered sales, generative search engines are also playing a role here. Through platforms like Gemini or ChatGPT, users can ask for product recommendations and then have the purchase process completed right within the window.

How to adapt.

Much like agentic AI, benefitting from generative search engine-based sales requires the right data and formatting in place. In order to prepare, you should:

• Follow generative engine optimization (GEO) best practices.

• Practice good data hygiene, structuring data in a clear and concise manner.

• Regularly audit your product feeds to check for accurate, up-to-date information.

• Reduce manual workloads with automation, freeing your team to focus on quality.

Much like agentic AI readiness, making GEO a core part of your workflows will only help you get ahead.

Personalization.

Product recommendations are common on most ecommerce websites, but an entirely personalized ecommerce experience is fast becoming the new norm.

Instead of offering a single unified experience, ecommerce platforms need to offer unique experiences based on past customer behavior, location, product interests, and so on.

How to adapt.

With 73% of shoppers expecting personalization to improve alongside technology, it’s in your best interest to deliver a personalized experience.

Fortunately, most tools and platforms have personalization baked in. For example, BigCommerce:

• Personalizes product recommendations via carousel.

• Automates customer segmentation for hyper-personalized targeting.

• Personalizes storefronts based on browsing history or interests, and so on.

If your ecommerce platform doesn’t come with personalization, consider switching. If this is out of the question, hunt for marketing tools that assist with email personalization, content management systems (CMS) that support personalized content recommendations, and beyond.

Multichannel integration.

In the modern era of ecommerce, selling in a single channel is almost unheard of. Today, brands exist across multiple marketplaces, social media platforms, and so on.

Having a multichannel presence does more than stick your brand in front of more faces (although it does do this). A proper multichannel presence can help you drive sales. Not sold?

By the end of 2026, it’s estimated multichannel ecommerce sales will total $892.4B.

Some customers will go straight to your site to purchase, but others won’t find you until you’re on their TikTok feed, popping up on Instagram, or showing up in Amazon’s recommendations. Proper multichannel integration is how you make this happen.

How to adapt.

Proper multichannel management is a colossal task if you’re handling everything manually. Having the right tools in place makes it a lot more manageable.

Establish and manage your multichannel madness by:

• Utilizing automation that streamlines manual workflows.

• Turning your ecommerce platform into a single source of truth, with data flowing out.

• Implementing feed management solutions to help you update product listings across channels.

• Ensure your messaging is consistent no matter where your brand lives.

If the above sounds familiar and a lot like managing an omnichannel presence, that’s because it is. The importance of having a multichannel presence in 2026 can’t be overstated.

Chatbots.

A well-integrated chatbot eases the burden on your customer service, enables customers to self-service and resolve many issues on their own and even serves as a 24/7 support function. They make it easier to find customer service-related information and have the potential to increase customer satisfaction.

Furthermore, chatbots today are often powered by the same AI that makes the agentic magic mentioned earlier possible. This allows chatbots to further personalize interactions, escalate matters to the right specialists more accurately than before, and assist with purchasing.

How to adapt.

If you want to integrate basic chatbot functionality into your site, the process is relatively straightforward. But, the days of basic chatbots are mostly behind us, so instead, treat this process the same as agentic AI readiness:

• Use feed management tools and the like to enrich and optimize product data.

• Highlight unique characteristics or features of your products in descriptions.

• Format copy in a conversational manner, keeping in mind some chatbot queries are done via voice commands.

• Connect inventory and warehouse systems so that real-time data sharing is possible, allowing chatbots to surface products that are in stock.

Once again, it’s important you have the right ecommerce platform. You need a platform that makes unified commerce easier to achieve, and ideally one that supports a wide variety of integrations. Otherwise, maintaining consistent data and giving chatbots the real-time information they need will be next to impossible.

Cutting-edge site search.

Basic site search is so last year. With voice, AI, and semantic search all in the picture, cutting-edge site search looks a lot different than it used to.

Today’s search uses natural language processing (NLP), taking into account semantics rather than only a keyword. This makes it possible for customers to throw longer queries into the bar, asking for “Stain resistant couches in red suede under $2,000” instead of a basic “red suede couch.”

How to adapt.

Delivering cutting-edge site search depends on both the right platform and a strategic approach.

In order to make site search as intuitive and useful as possible, you should:

• Use site search tools like Klevu or Algolia to provide semantic, AI-powered search.

• Build on an ecommerce platform that supports advanced search integrations.

• Incorporate semantic descriptions into your product pages and site content.

All that in mind, don’t neglect keywords either. While keywords aren’t the end-all-be-all they used to be, it’s still important you focus on traditional SEO.

Multiple payment options.

A seamless checkout process is a great start for driving sales. As part of that process, you need to make sure you’re accepting the kinds of payments your customers prefer.

For instance, failing to accept digital wallets, like Google Pay or Apple Pay, keeps you from taking part in the 40% of US ecommerce payments made in 2025 using this payment method.

Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) is another increasingly common payment method. This method, often through partners like Klarna, Afterpay, or Affirm, allows customers to purchase an item via installments. With 26% of US shoppers more likely to purchase if BNPL is available, this is another avenue you can’t miss.

How to adapt.

The right payment methods are a big component of a customer’s purchasing decision. Failing to offer a payment method could cost you a sale, and impact retention as people grow to prefer different payment methods.

Make sure you’re not left out and use a payment processor that accepts common payment methods. If your ecommerce platform itself doesn’t have a processor built-in, use an integration that enables further payment methods.

If you have a brick and mortar location, use a payment system that accepts these payment methods both online and in-store.

For instance, BigCommerce Payments, powered by PayPal, plugs directly into the BigCommerce control panel. From there, you can sign up with an existing PayPal business account or create a new one, then quickly start accepting major credit cards, PayPal, Venmo, Apple Pay, Klarna, and more.

See how BigCommerce Payments can simplify the payment process and help you serve as many customers as possible.

Easy order tracking.

When people order online, they generally want to know where their order is. In fact, 73% of shoppers expect tracking, and 96% use tracking when it’s offered.

Clear, easy order tracking isn’t just playing into customer expectations, but also helping build trust and customer loyalty. When you offer tracking, you’re telling customers they can trust your brand and rely on timely shipping.

How to adapt.

Don’t just offer the bare minimum. With your systems united, you can easily automate order tracking. From there, offer SMS order updates, automated email updates, and real-time delivery tracking.

The final word

The future of ecommerce is never quite here. (Much like the free beer that restaurants love to promise “tomorrow.”) Trying to keep up with the torrent of emergent tech and practices can feel overwhelming.

Remember: At the end of the day, let your customers be your guide. Embrace what technology and strategy you can, but don’t ever let it get in the way of your audience. Run tests, see how your audience is responding to your efforts, and iterate.

How you deliver a great ecommerce experience next year will likely look different than it does today. One constant? The customer experience.

FAQs about the future of ecommerce