What 2025 taught us about ecommerce (and what’s next)

At Elevating the Game this year, Tom Mucklow-Norell, Co-founder of Superco, shared his perspective on what worked across ecommerce in 2025, and what brands should be paying attention to in 2026. Here are the key takeaways.

Peak isn’t a weekend anymore - it’s a season

Tom’s first point was that Black Friday no longer plays out as a frantic three-day sprint. In 2025, the ‘peak’ period spread out over weeks (or even months), with customers taking their time to choose the right products, and brands needing to adapt.

“It wasn’t a frantic three day fast charge for Black Friday. It was elongated.”

Rather than impulse-buying, shoppers were comparing options, thinking through purchases, and being more deliberate.

“People were shopping around. They were taking their time to think about what things they wanted to buy. They were being savvy about it.”

That shift forced brands to start earlier and think more creatively about how they drove AOV, rather than relying on discounts alone.

Peak isn’t just a weekend anymore. It’s a much longer window, and brands need to plan for it like a season.

Conversion wins are coming from CX and checkout

A major theme of Tom’s talk was that the brands winning in 2025 weren’t necessarily doing anything revolutionary - they were removing friction and building confidence at the point of purchase.

When customers land on your site, especially in competitive categories, experience is often the deciding factor.

“Being able to have a really seamless shopping experience, a really great user experience, is key.”

Tom shared examples of brands seeing meaningful lifts simply by improving the basics, like faster load times and clearer navigation.

“Fast, clear and frictionless.”

Checkout, in particular, came up as one of the simplest and most effective conversion levers. Wallet-based checkouts, especially Shop Pay, have become the default expectation for many shoppers.

Why? Because customers want to buy quickly, especially on mobile, and digital wallets remove friction at the most critical moment.

Alongside wallets, Tom spoke about the continued role of 'buy now, pay later' as a practical driver of performance - particularly around cart abandonment and AOV.

“We are seeing cart abandonment get massively reduced by giving people the ability to pay in instalments.”

For higher-ticket categories, instalments are increasingly shaping how customers assess value. Price still matters, but flexibility has become part of how shoppers evaluate affordability.

In 2026, if brands don’t have a checkout that’s fast, familiar and flexible, they’re leaking revenue.

AI is quietly reshaping experience and discovery

We’ve all heard a lot about AI and its potential for ecommerce, but Tom didn’t pitch AI as something brands should obsess over. Instead, he framed it as something already embedded into the tools they use every day.

His key point was that the best AI use cases aren’t exceptional - they’re operational. AI can take care of repetitive tasks and free teams up to handle complex issues and build stronger relationships.

And importantly, Tom cautioned brands against forcing AI into everything.

“At the end of the day, customer experience is what matters.”

Tom also touched on something many brands haven’t fully clocked yet: customers are already discovering products and services through AI platforms.

Getting found in these tools isn’t necessarily a black box, either. AI discovery rewards brands that make it easy for machines (and customers) to understand what they sell and why it matters.

“If you’re good at SEO… your FAQs are good… your product descriptions are tidy… the data is nicely organised [for AI search].”

As AI becomes part of how customers browse and buy, poor foundations will become harder to hide.

The fundamentals still decide who wins

Tom’s closing message echoed the wider theme of Elevating the Game: ecommerce growth is changing, but the brands that succeed are the ones that double down on the fundamentals.

“Just do the basics really well and you’ll be ahead of 90% of your competitors.”

And while tech is evolving fast, his view is that brands don’t need to panic or reinvent everything. Instead, the opportunity is to focus on the foundations: better experience, better checkout, better data, better visibility - and treat peak as an always-on discipline.

“Customers are getting much smarter… researching, comparing and using AI, and you just need to get better with them.”

The fundamentals haven’t changed - but the stakes have.