The e-commerce market is growing faster than ever, with more and more businesses opening up and intensifying the competition. By 2028, Forrester forecasts global retail e-commerce sales will grow to 6.8 trillion USD and capture 24% of global retail sales. At the same time, emerging technologies such as AI or generative AI present new opportunities to enhance the online retail experience and drive future growth. What are the leading technology trends for e-commerce businesses to stay ahead in 2025?
Conversational AI - A powerful tool to transform customer experience
Conversational commerce is rapidly transforming how customers engage with brands, shifting from traditional communication methods such as phone calls and emails to more dynamic, real-time channels. Brands can now interact with customers through multiple touchpoints, including website live chat features, mobile apps, and messaging services like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and even SMS. These platforms enable brands to create personalized experiences, offer immediate support, and drive direct purchases. For this reason, Forrester predicted that around one-fifth of global brands will add conversational commerce to their digital strategy by 2025.
As AI is making great strides in e-commerce, one of the innovations driving this transformation is conversational AI, which leverages chatbots and virtual assistants to automate real-time customer interactions. Compared to rule-based chatbots, conversational AI can understand context, tone, and consumer intent, enabling more natural and engaging interactions. With natural language processing (NLP), these systems can convert conversations into structured data, providing valuable insights into customer expectations from online stores. Thus, businesses can gain deeper customer insights and deliver personalized answers to the customers' inquiries, which further elevates the online customer experience. Indeed, 86% of retail and wholesale digital experience professionals in the U.S. are either experimenting with or actively using generative AI to enhance the customer experience. Of those exploring generative AI, 61% are focusing on improving the capabilities of chatbots and virtual assistants.
Omnichannel retail gains high adoption across regions
Omnichannel retail has become a cornerstone of modern e-commerce, referring to a seamless and integrated approach that connects online and offline shopping experiences. This strategy ensures consistent messaging, product availability, and customer engagement across all touchpoints—whether a customer is shopping through a website, mobile app, or physical store. Omnichannel customers demonstrate significantly higher engagement, with retention rates up to 90% higher and purchase rates as much as 287% greater than single-channel customers.
Thanks to these benefits, businesses around the world are leveraging omnichannel approaches to unlock new growth opportunities. In North America, approximately 85% of retailers have implemented omnichannel solutions, driven by a mature e-commerce market, advanced technological infrastructure, and demand for seamless integration between online and offline shopping. Europe has also embraced this shift, with a growing reliance on omnichannel strategies to meet evolving consumer preferences. According to McKinsey, over 50% of European stores blend online and in-store options for shopping, a figure that rises to over 60% in categories like electronics, furniture, and sporting goods.
In the same vein, online sales in the Asia-Pacific region are expected to grow by 98.3% from 2020 to 2025, driven by a surge in internet access and mobile penetration. According to a report by GSMA, the APAC region is one of the most digitally advanced regions globally, with mobile internet subscribers expected to exceed 1.5 billion by 2024. The rapid increase in smartphone use and internet connectivity is accelerating digital transformation, making omnichannel strategies a central focus for retailers in the region.
Harnessing total experience (TX) strategy for a total success
Total Experience (TX) is a holistic approach to creating a seamless and satisfying experience for customers, users, and employees. In a customer’s journey, TX considers every touchpoint, from the first brand encounter to the post-purchase experience, ensuring customers feel valued and appreciated throughout. Specifically, a buyer might start with a digital ad, then followed by exploring product content that aligns with their needs and receiving personalized recommendations based on past interactions.
A successful TX strategy also prioritizes creating a positive and engaging employee experience (EX), as recognizing that motivated and committed employees is essential to enhancing customer perceptions and interactions with a brand. According to Gartner, organizations adopting a TX approach can outperform competitors by 25% in both CX and EX satisfaction metrics. In addition, user experience (UX), a vital component of TX, focuses on ensuring that interactions with products or services are seamless and enjoyable. For example, a well-designed website should enable users to navigate effortlessly, find what they need, and complete tasks without frustration. By harmonizing CX, EX, and UX, businesses can develop a unified TX strategy that drives value and satisfaction across all touchpoints.
Realizing the benefits of total experience, a leading healthcare company partnered with FPT to address digital experience challenges for its customers and employees. As a solution, FPT revitalized its website by implementing the Total Experience (TX) strategy with XM Cloud. This transformation resulted in a consistent UI/UX across various countries and markets and led to a 25% year-over-year increase in website traffic. Additionally, FPT provided personalized feeds that improved employee engagement, allowing them to focus on professional growth rather than technical issues.
Discover how FPT crafted a Total Experience strategy for a leading healthcare provider and helped them boost 25% in website traffic.
Increased AI use in website prototyping and development
AI is no longer limited to conversational tools or content creation. Instead, businesses can now use this innovative technology to design and develop websites. Creating a new website from scratch requires considerable time and effort and involves many stakeholders. For instance, businesses need to create wireframes and mockups to map out the website’s structure and flow at the prototyping stage. Meanwhile, selecting the right features—such as payment gateways and product catalogs—requires businesses to carefully consider both user needs and technical feasibility.
Therefore, AI can quickly help design layouts and recommend features based on customer behavior and business goals. For e-commerce businesses, AI can streamline website building by providing recommendations of commonly used tools. This can potentially reduce the overall development timeline to help businesses launch their websites more quickly.
As a Sitecore Platinum Partner in Asia-Pacific, FPT has partnered with Sitecore OrderCloud to equip ecommerce businesses with ON.E - a platform that offers pre-built components with composable designs to help e-commerce companies build a website. Powered by its advanced AI assistant, the e-commerce accelerator provides intelligent, data-driven recommendations to optimize e-commerce strategies. ON.E leverages a large language model to analyze user behavior and synthesize recommendations from multiple engines to select the most ideal features. As a result, brands can cut time-to-market by over 30% and reduce costs by up to 55%. The Sitecore OrderCloud product is a key part of Sitecore’s digital commerce solutions, and the integration with FPT’s ecommerce platform ON.E will bring significant value to retailers seeking a competitive advantage.
Elevate your customer journey in e-commerce with FPT
The e-commerce industry is growing at an impressive pace. With consumers facing expanding product options, retailers must develop innovative strategies to capture attention and foster long-term customer loyalty. As a trusted partner to leading digital commerce and experience providers, FPT can help businesses navigate the complexities of the digital landscape to ensure they thrive in the global marketplace.
Discover how we can elevate your digital experience here: https://fptsoftware.com/services/digital-technologies-and-platforms/digital-commerce.
