E-Commerce Trends 2026: What's Driving Online Sales Growth

Last updated April 2026 by the NTD Digital team.

E-commerce in 2026: the six trends reshaping how brands grow online

Your traffic is up. Your ad spend is up. Your revenue is flat.

If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone — and it’s not a product problem. The e-commerce environment in 2026 has shifted underneath most brands without anyone sending a warning. Customer acquisition costs are up across every paid platform. AI-powered search is intercepting buyers before they reach your site. And the third-party data that used to power your retargeting audiences is gone.

The brands gaining market share right now are not spending more. They’re structured differently — better first-party data, more efficient campaigns, and acquisition channels their competitors haven’t fully activated yet.

Here are the six shifts that explain the gap, and what to do about each one.

1. Retail media is now a primary acquisition channel

Retail media — advertising sold by retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Target, and Instacart that appears within their platforms — has become one of the most effective acquisition channels for consumer product brands.

U.S. retail media ad spending reached $60.32 billion in 2025 and is projected to hit $71.09 billion in 2026, with Amazon holding roughly 79.7% of the market (eMarketer, 2025). That growth is not coincidental: shoppers on retail platforms are in active buying mode. An ad served to someone actively searching for “wireless headphones” on Amazon converts at a fundamentally different rate than a display ad served to someone browsing a news site.

For brands selling through Amazon, Walmart Marketplace, or other retail platforms, retail media placements within those platforms are increasingly non-optional for maintaining visibility. Organic ranking alone is not sufficient for competitive product categories.

Google Shopping campaigns remain a critical component of any e-commerce acquisition strategy alongside retail media. Performance Max (PMax) campaigns have become the primary vehicle for Google’s e-commerce advertising, using machine learning to optimize across Search, Shopping, Display, YouTube, and Gmail from a single campaign.

2. AI personalization is closing the gap between browse and buy

Cart abandonment remains one of the most measurable inefficiencies in e-commerce. The average documented cart abandonment rate across 49 studies is approximately 70.19% — roughly seven in ten shoppers who add a product to a cart do not complete the purchase (Baymard Institute, ongoing benchmark, 2025).

AI-powered personalization is the most effective lever for reducing that gap. Product recommendation engines that surface relevant items based on browsing history, purchase patterns, and real-time session behavior — rather than generic “you might also like” algorithms — meaningfully improve conversion rates and average order value.

According to McKinsey’s Next in Personalization research, brands that effectively deploy AI personalization see 10–15% revenue uplift and reduce customer acquisition costs by up to 50% compared to non-personalized approaches (McKinsey, 2025 update).

The practical application for most e-commerce brands is not building proprietary AI. It’s using the personalization features already built into platforms like Shopify, Klaviyo, and Google Ads (through audience signals and Smart Bidding) — and structuring first-party data well enough for those tools to work effectively.

3. Social commerce converts discovery to purchase in one step

Social commerce — the ability to complete a purchase directly within a social platform without leaving the app — is eliminating the friction that historically caused buyers to drop off between “I saw it” and “I bought it.”

U.S. social commerce sales reached $87.02 billion in 2025, growing at a compound annual rate significantly above broader e-commerce — with TikTok Shop alone accounting for roughly $15.82 billion (an 18.2% share, eMarketer, 2025). The channels driving this growth are TikTok Shop, Instagram Shopping, and YouTube Shopping — all of which allow brands and creators to tag products directly in content.

TikTok Shop in particular has demonstrated rapid adoption for consumer goods in beauty, apparel, home goods, and food. For brands in these categories, a combined strategy of organic creator content and paid TikTok ads with direct product links to TikTok Shop is among the faster-growing acquisition channels available.

The key variable is product-platform fit. Social commerce works best for visual, demonstrable, low-to-mid ticket products where a short video can credibly explain the value proposition. It is less effective for services, complex B2B products, or high-consideration purchases where buyers need extended research time.

4. Mobile-first is the baseline, not the differentiator

Mobile commerce accounts for a growing majority of U.S. e-commerce sales — eMarketer estimates mobile’s share of retail e-commerce continued climbing through 2025, and in categories like apparel, beauty, and food delivery it is substantially higher.

The implication is that “mobile-optimized” is no longer a differentiator — it is the minimum standard. Brands that still treat desktop as the primary design surface are optimizing for a shrinking share of their traffic.

What mobile-first means in practice: page load times under 2.5 seconds on mobile (Core Web Vitals), single-tap checkout options (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Shop Pay), thumb-friendly navigation and product browsing, and checkout flows designed for small screens rather than adapted from desktop versions.

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) on mobile is one of the highest-leverage improvements available to most e-commerce brands. A 1% improvement in mobile conversion rate on meaningful traffic volume typically generates more revenue than any equivalent improvement in traffic acquisition cost.

5. First-party data is the foundation of sustainable e-commerce growth

The deprecation of third-party cookies across major browsers has removed a significant portion of the cross-site behavioral data that e-commerce brands previously relied on for retargeting, lookalike audiences, and attribution.

Brands that built first-party data assets before 2024 — email lists, loyalty programs, SMS subscribers, CRM databases — are now operating with a structural advantage in targeting efficiency, remarketing reach, and customer lifetime value measurement.

Growing a first-party data asset does not require a large technology investment. The fundamentals are: a compelling email capture offer (discount, early access, content), a welcome series that converts new subscribers into first purchasers, and a post-purchase flow that drives repeat buying and review generation.

First-party data has become the most valuable data source for the majority of marketers in the post-cookie environment. Customer Match in Google Ads and Meta’s Custom Audiences allow brands to use first-party email lists for highly precise targeting and lookalike expansion, partially compensating for the loss of cookie-based signals (Salesforce State of Marketing, 2025).

6. AI search is changing how products get discovered

The emergence of AI-powered answer engines — Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT Shopping, and Perplexity — is introducing a new layer of product discovery that operates above traditional search results.

A shopper who asks “what’s the best non-toxic cookware under $100” may receive an AI-generated answer that recommends specific brands and products — without clicking through to a website first. If a brand’s products are not being cited by these AI systems, they are invisible in that discovery moment.

Optimizing for AI product discovery requires structured data (Product schema with accurate pricing, availability, and reviews), a well-maintained Google Merchant Center feed, and on-site content that answers specific buyer questions in a citable, direct format.

This is an emerging channel, not a mature one. But the brands that begin structuring their content and data for AI citation now will have a meaningful advantage as AI-powered shopping queries grow in volume. For more on this, see our overview of the broader digital marketing trends shaping 2026.

What this means for your e-commerce strategy

The common thread across these six trends is data quality and channel integration. Brands that connect their customer data across retail media, paid social, email, and on-site personalization are outperforming those running each channel in isolation.

For Shopify brands and DTC e-commerce businesses, the priority stack in 2026 looks like this: build first-party data capture, optimize mobile conversion, activate retail media where products are sold, layer in social commerce for visual product categories, and begin structuring content for AI product discovery.

NTD Digital works with e-commerce brands to build and execute integrated strategies across paid search, retail media, social, and email. If you want to understand where your current strategy has gaps, get in touch for a free audit.

Sources: eMarketer “US Retail Media Ad Spending Forecast 2025” ($60.32B 2025, $71.09B 2026, Amazon 79.7% share); eMarketer “US Social Commerce Sales 2025” ($87.02B; TikTok Shop $15.82B, 18.2%); Baymard Institute “Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics” (70.19% across 49 studies); McKinsey “Next in Personalization” (2025 update); Salesforce “State of Marketing 2025.”