2024 Holiday Retail Trends Worth Paying Attention To

Earlier this month, Adobe Analytics came out with some very interesting online holiday shopping data. Here’s what stood out to us…

Despite broad concern for inflation and general consumer sentiment, shoppers shopped online during the 2024 holiday season with significantly more gusto than they did in 2023 to the tune of 8.7%.

It will be interesting to see what kind of impact this surge had on Walmart, Target and other retailers. We’ll know in February when fiscal results from the fourth quarter come in.

When you think of holiday shopping, you don’t typically think of groceries, but with the rise of Instacart and store-brand grocery shopping apps, the industry saw online shopping growth jump by nearly 13%, year-over-year.

According to Adobe, “traffic to retail sites from generative AI-powered chatbots increased by 1,300% compared to the year prior. Cyber Monday saw the biggest growth in chat bot usage, up 1,950% year-over-year. While the base of users remains modest, the uptick shows the value that chat bots are playing as shopping assistants.”

This is absolutely a trend ecommerce brands need to be paying attention to.

Data from the U.S. Census Bureau showed that core retail sales during the 2024 holiday came in at $994.1 billion. This figure was 4% higher than the previous year’s totals and a half point higher than the National Retail Federation’s high-end forecast of 3.5% growth.

Even though the 2024 holidays are still in the near rearview mirror, there’s no time like the present for ecommerce brands to start preparing for 2025. Consider the following areas to explore making upgrades that can help drive an outstanding 2025 holiday season:

1. AI-powered chatbot development
2. Electronic data interchange upgrades
3. EDI integrations with ERPs, WMSs and accounting software
4. Ecommerce platform upgrades (especially within Shopify)
5. Returns management systems