2025 eCommerce Predictions

Livestreaming + Social Commerce

Online shopping is becoming more and more experiential. Although social commerce has been creeping up in predictions and discussions for a while now, there has been a significant rise in livestreaming as part of social commerce. China has seen tremendous growth in this area, with McKinsey predicting that live-commerce sales could be 20% of total retail sales in China by 2026.

Kantar’s research has proven that livestream ads have a dual effect in improving short-term purchase intent and long-term brand affinity with established brands showing a 10-15% uplift in building long-term assets and small to medium brands showing a 30% uplift in immediate interest. Based on these results alone, it’s not something we can ignore.

Given the similarities, are we going full circle and reverting back to the popularity of shopping on QVC? We can’t quite say yet, but what we can say is that livestream is likely to be a lucrative opportunity for some eCommerce brands.

Sustainability

With a clear increase in sustainability legislation across the globe, ESG is going to be a hot topic in 2025. Not only this, but consumer sentiment is clearly leaning this way too. From a study In 2022 on Statista, over 80% of UK consumers said they’d pay more for sustainable products, with millennials being more likely to do so.

Although consumers want to see brands making an effort in sustainability, be careful of greenwashing. Consumers care about authenticity and trust which we should not risk with the aim of looking more sustainable.

Some areas to focus on in which you may find some quick wins:

• Packaging
  • Are you using unnecessary packaging, could you cut down on the number of boxes being sent?
  • Is there a possibility to cut down on single-use plastics and use compostable or biodegradable packaging?
• Operations
  • Can you cut down on energy and emissions in your workplace?
• Waste reductions
  • Do you have a platform or encourage reselling, recycling or repairing?
  • Can you limit returns or reduce waste in any way by preventing overproduction?

It may not be an easy undertaking but it is a genuinely good cause and consumers will appreciate it.

Actually making steps towards sustainability is great, but make sure you communicate it! Let your customers know what you’re doing to limit your environmental impact and don’t be scared to get them involved too.

Transparency + EGC, written by Kasey Healey, Paid Social Manager

With the rise of TikTok, brands are becoming more and more transparent with their consumers. We’ve seen brands who launched within 3 years see huge growth and this is ultimately down to how open they are with their customers by taking them on the journey with them. Recently, Odd Muse posted a TikTok where they shared snippets of their trade call which broke down their Black Friday performance and the type of results they achieved, one of the metrics discussed was ROAS and it’s amazing to see brands become so transparent and you can see by all the comments that people are so happy for the founder and praise her success.

Another brand, P Louise, has been doing this for a while. You can see their customers are hooked on their daily vlogs where you get to see snippets of different meetings throughout the day where they talk about performance, upcoming events and sales. It’s important to reflect that not everything shown is positive. You get to see business problems in real-time and how they’re going to overcome the issues, which from the comments people absolutely eat up!

While their transparency is unheard of, P Louise heavily features their staff and founder in their TikTok videos, which play a huge part into why their customers feel like they’re a part of the team too. Employee Generated Content (EGC) has been growing rapidly, in line with brands becoming more transparent and we’ve seen a few brands completely adapt their social media strategies to reflect this. Sister & Seekers are the best in the game when it comes to EGC, people have either heard of the brand through their TikTok music videos, or are hooked on Anna’s daily vlogs. You can see people in the comments know most members of the staff by name with how frequently they feature their team over the clothes they sell!

So in 2025, we predict you are going to see more brands open themselves up to their customers and feature their team more heavily as it’s evident these new social media strategies have been very successful at creating brand loyalty and trust. Moreover, this may be the key deciding factor for a customer when they’re debating about purchasing from you or a competitor!

Data, Privacy & Consent

Although very much a trend from the past 2 years and with the transition from Universal Analytics to GA4 – I believe data, privacy & consent is going to continue to be a hot topic in 2025. Ecommerce brands are still consistently not following consent regulations on their website or taking full use of Google Analytics 4. We have recently been providing free top-line GA4 audits for eCommerce brands to identify key areas of opportunity within GA4 and there are a lot of GA4 set ups not even making the foundational benchmark.

Search volume for “data privacy” has doubled over the past 5 years and it’s a clear priority for users. According to a report on Statista, 44% of UK users decline cookies in websites at least some of the time and 38% of users worry about how companies might use their online data. In the US, nearly 75% of Americans are “very concerned” about online privacy.

These privacy concerns can be handled by a properly set up GA4 property utilising Consent Mode 2.0 which uses modelled data to more accurately measure website performance that is fit for purpose even with the lack of cookies. Also, going back to the transparency point, you will find consumers are more likely to willingly exchange data to companies they trust and have a connection with. BCG had a great report diving deep into this. Again, it’s all about that authenticity and trust.

Trump’s Tariffs & Cross-Border Commerce

For those living under a rock, in which during peak period in eCommerce it can certainly feel that way, Donald Trump is president-elect yet again. During his first term in 2018, he imposed a tax on multiple Chinese imports such as aluminium, steel and, strangely enough, washing machines!

The tariffs seem to be something Trump is choosing to double-down on, and with rumours that all imports could be taxed then it could potentially leave eCommerce brands in a sticky situation. Those eCommerce brands that see strong performance from exporting to the US and those who have their products made in China could see considerable damage to their margin. However, every brand could feel the effects of this as, depending on the size of the tariffs imposed, it could cause seismic shockwaves to the market. I’m sure we’ll all agree that we are fed up with logistic costs consistently increasing.

We won’t quite know what tariffs Trump is going to impose, and it did take him 2 years into office in his last term to bring the tariffs in, but those eCommerce brands likely to be affected will need to be prepared.

When one door closes, another one opens and we have seen Cross-Border commerce becoming more and more popular with brands. Through innovations in translations with generative AI and global fulfilment solutions such as ShipBob – selling across borders has arguably never been easier (or at least cheaper). There may be quick wins for brands to expand into countries where there is demand for their product.