In the always evolving world of ecommerce, it’s hard to pick what is a trend from what is a fad.

On a macro level, 2023 is still showing some of the effects of COVID. At the time, many invested in technologies and businesses aimed at remote working, delivery, online, etc.

Today, the word “pandemic” is no longer on the front page of the news. We get words like “war” and “inflation”. So a macro trend is, unfortunately, for tech and ecommerce companies to make some cuts.

On a micro level though, what are the trends, the opportunities, or even the threats for ecommerce operators in 2023? That depends on who you are.

Ecommerce trends for 2023

Social Commerce
If you sell directly to consumers, and your customers are the Gen Z, it’s worth looking at tools for social commerce. Connecting your Magento store to TikTok, Facebook, Instagram social marketplaces is a no brainer, especially if your customer base resonates with a specific platform. There are a variety of modules for selling on social media marketplaces and synchronizing pricing, stock levels, orders, etc.

Mobile
Yes, still. But the web traffic share of mobile users is still growing. And this is relevant to the vast majority of resellers, excluding some B2B . And mobile traffic, regardless of 5G, requires websites to be light and fast. For this reason, if you are planning to redesign your Magento front end in 2023, it’s a good idea to look at Hyva. Hyva is a new, light and modern template for Magento 2 Open Source. With a growing ecosystem of compatible modules, as well as improving compatibility with Adobe Commerce, we believe that Hyva has reached a good grade of maturity and it’s positioned to be a market leader. And it scores really well with Google Lighthouse tests.

B2B
Business to Business ecommerce merchants might not be on the frontline of mobile commerce… or at least not the same way B2C does. Yet, bespoke mobile applications, mobile front ends designed for specific employees, and many more mobile features are still game changers and can provide B2B companies with an advantage over their competitors. Other useful B2B features like selling by quote, requisition lists, company accounts, buy on credit, multi source inventory… and more are all out of the box with Adobe Commerce. We expect these to be attractive features, more and more popular in 2023 and more.

AI
You heard how Chat GPT will take over our jobs… while we see how that goes, there are reasons to be optimistic about how AI can improve our lives. AI is nothing new in the ecommerce world, and you might know that chatbots use it. Adobe Sensei, the engine behind Adobe’s Live Search and Product Recommendations modules for Magento Commerce, learns about your catalog, your users behavior and servers the most fitting products based on a series of parameters. This is useful if you have a large catalog, if search is important for your users (it usually is!) as well as significant traffic your AI can learn from. AI is also used by chatbots.

Integrations
A generic term that includes API integrations for ERP, WMS and CRM softwares, as well as 3PL, and/or marketplaces. In an ever competing world, we expect that most of our clients will look at how they can streamline and speed up their processes . This is aimed at saving time and costs, as well as at providing a faster service to your client.

Ecommerce fads
In the ecommerce world, it’s often the case that early technologies generate a lot of hype and then, for a variety of reasons, translate into not much for the vast majority of ecommerce merchants. Again, this depends on who you are… but unless you are a large corporation with an equally large budget, we believe that this year the average Magento merchant will not be that interested in:

  • the metaverse;
  • NFT products;
  • voice commerce;
  • augmented reality;
  • live shopping.

These are interesting trends, and they will certainly open opportunities to some. But we believe that they will not affect the majority of ecommerce merchants.