[Report] Similarweb's State of Ecommerce 2025 Report: 5 Strategic Trends for Business

Mastering the Engagement Era: A 2025 E-commerce Blueprint

The global e-commerce landscape is not just evolving; it is undergoing a fundamental paradigm shift. According to Similarweb's comprehensive State of E-commerce 2025 report, analyzing data from July 2024 to June 2025, the age of effortless, broad-spectrum traffic growth is conclusively over. The industry has matured, and the rules of the game have changed. Success is no longer solely about who can attract the most eyes to their storefront, but about who can engage, convert, and retain each visitor with unparalleled precision and personalization.

Image credit: Similarweb, The Global State of Ecommerce 2025 Report.

This report, a critical barometer for digital commerce, reveals a world where mobile apps have become the primary engagement engine, generative AI is rewriting the rules of product discovery, and growth opportunities have decisively pivoted toward emerging markets. For global marketing sellers, these shifts present both formidable challenges and extraordinary opportunities. This deep-dive analysis will unpack the five pivotal trends from the Similarweb report and translate them into a concrete, actionable strategic playbook, powered by the omnichannel capabilities of SaleSmartly.

Part 1: The 2025 E-commerce Landscape – Key Trends Decoded

The Similarweb report paints a nuanced picture of stabilization, strategic shifts, and explosive new frontiers. Let’s dissect the core findings.

Trend 1: Market Maturity and the Plateau of Pure Traffic Growth

The most foundational takeaway is the stabilization of the global market. Monthly visits to e-commerce sites have plateaued, fluctuating within a band of 210 to 270 billion. This represents a slight year-over-year decline, signaling that the low-hanging fruit of digital customer acquisition has been picked.

What it means: The "spray and pray" marketing approach is now economically unsustainable. A 1% increase in unique visitors but a decrease in visit frequency indicates shoppers are more deliberate and less inclined to casual browsing. The competition has shifted from the top of the funnel (awareness) to the middle and bottom (consideration, conversion, and loyalty). Efficiency and depth of relationship are the new currencies of growth.

Image credit: Similarweb, The Global State of Ecommerce 2025 Report.

Trend 2: The Mobile App Supremacy

While web traffic flatlines, mobile app sessions have surged by 13% year-over-year. This divergence is the most telling metric of 2025. It’s not just that people shop on mobile; it’s that they are choosing to embed their shopping experiences within dedicated, brand-specific apps.

What it means: The mobile app is no longer a complementary channel. It is the central hub for customer loyalty and lifetime value. Apps offer a faster, more personalized, and brand-controlled experience. This trend creates a two-tier system: brands with engaging apps build deeper relationships and enjoy repeat purchases, while those reliant solely on mobile web risk becoming transactional commodities.

Image credit: Similarweb, The Global State of Ecommerce 2025 Report.

Trend 3: The Rise of Generative AI as a Primary Traffic Driver

Perhaps the most startling finding is the astronomical rise of Generative AI (Gen AI) as a referral source, with growth exploding by up to 6,000% in specific categories. Consumers are increasingly using AI assistants, such as ChatGPT and Perplexity, as well as integrated shopping aids, to research, compare, and seek recommendations.

What it means: The traditional SEO and Google Shopping paradigm is being supplemented, and in some cases supplanted, by AI-driven discovery. Your product's visibility now depends on how well it is presented in data structures and content that AI tools can parse and recommend. The customer arriving via an AI query is often highly intentional but demands immediate, accurate, and detailed information to facilitate a conversion.

Image credit: Similarweb, The Global State of Ecommerce 2025 Report.

Trend 4: The Geographic Shift: Emerging Markets Take Center Stage

Growth is becoming geographically lopsided. While mature markets like the U.S., Japan, and the U.K. show modest or slowing growth, emerging economies are booming. Brazil and South Korea, for example, saw traffic increases exceeding 30%. These regions represent the new frontier for cross-border expansion.

What it means: Tapping into this potential is not a simple copy-paste operation. Success requires navigating complex local nuances: language barriers, cultural preferences, preferred payment methods (like Brazil's PIX), and expectations for hyper-localized customer service and communication styles.

Image credit: Similarweb, The Global State of Ecommerce 2025 Report.

Trend 5: Platform Consolidation and the Marketplace Dominance

The report highlights a continued consolidation of traffic towards large, trusted marketplaces (like Amazon, MercadoLibre) while standalone sites in categories like fashion and consumer electronics see notable declines. Consumers gravitate towards platforms for convenience, choice, and transactional security.

Image credit: Similarweb, The Global State of Ecommerce 2025 Report.

What it means: For sellers, this underscores a "dual strategy" imperative. Establishing a strong presence on key marketplaces is non-negotiable for visibility. However, over-reliance is risky. The parallel imperative is to build and nurture direct customer relationships and private domain traffic (like your own DTC site and app) to own the customer experience and data.

Part 2: The Engagement Gap: Where Traditional E-commerce Struggles

These trends collectively expose a critical "engagement gap" in traditional e-commerce operations:

Siloed Communication: Customer inquiries are scattered across WhatsApp, Instagram DM, email, and marketplace messaging systems. This leads to slow responses, fractured customer history, and frustrated agents.

Language and Scale Limitations: Manually serving customers in Portuguese, Korean, and Arabic is cost-prohibitive for most growing brands, creating a barrier to entering the hottest markets.

Inability to Capture AI-Driven Intent: A customer arriving from an AI query asking, "Compare the battery life and waterproof ratings of the top 3 wireless earbuds under $100" needs an instant, structured response. A standard "Hello, how can I help?" chatbot fails here.

Post-Purchase Black Hole: After the sale, communication often ceases until a problem arises. This misses crucial opportunities to build loyalty, solicit feedback, and drive repeat purchases.

Image credit: Similarweb, The Global State of Ecommerce 2025 Report.

Part 3: The SaleSmartly Playbook: Bridging the Gap in 2025

This is where an omnichannel customer engagement platform like SaleSmartly transitions from a useful tool to a strategic necessity. It is engineered specifically to close the engagement gap highlighted by the Similarweb data.

Strategic Pillar 1: Dominating the Mobile & Omnichannel Experience

The Challenge: Converting soaring app engagement into sales.

The SaleSmartly Solution: Seamless integration with all mobile-first channels (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, TikTok, LINE) into a single inbox. This allows your team to manage conversations from any platform in one place, ensuring no customer message is missed, regardless of where it was sent.

Actionable Tactic: Use AI-powered chatbots as your 24/7 assistant. Program them to greet users within your app or on social media, answer FAQs, recommend products based on simple queries, and even recover abandoned carts directly within the chat interface. This turns passive app browsing into an active, guided shopping conversation.

Strategic Pillar 2: Unlocking Emerging Markets with Frictionless Communication

The Challenge: Breaking down language and cultural barriers in high-growth markets like Brazil and South Korea, while ensuring communication efforts are directed to valid, reachable customers.

The SaleSmartly Solution: A two-pronged technological approach ensures your outreach is both understandable and deliverable. First, real-time translation across 134 languages allows an agent in Manila to seamlessly assist a customer in São Paulo, with all messages translated instantly in the chat interface. Second, the WhatsApp Number Detection feature, with an accuracy rate of up to 98%, verifies whether a phone number is registered on WhatsApp before you launch a campaign. This prevents wasted efforts on invalid contacts and ensures your personalized messages hit their mark.

Actionable Tactic: Leverage these tools in tandem. For Brazil, use number detection to clean your contact list, then set up a Portuguese welcome sequence via WhatsApp that explains PIX payment confirmations. For South Korea, after verifying numbers, integrate with WhatsApp and design polite, efficient auto-reply templates that align with local communication norms.

Strategic Pillar 3: Capturing the AI-Generated Customer

The Challenge: Providing instant, detailed answers to complex, research-driven queries from AI referrals.

The SaleSmartly Solution: Advanced, trainable AI chatbots. Unlike basic rule-based bots, these can be fed your entire product catalog, specifications, and comparison data.

Actionable Tactic: Train your SaleSmartly bot on "comparison" and "specification" intent. When a customer asks a detailed question sourced from an AI tool, the bot can instantly pull structured data (e.g., "Product A has a 40-hour battery, IPX7 rating, and costs $89. Product B has 30-hour battery, IPX5, and costs $79") and present it clearly, guiding the user to a purchase decision within minutes of their arrival.

Strategic Pillar 4: Building an Ironclad Retention Engine

The Challenge: Maximizing customer lifetime value in a saturated market.

The SaleSmartly Solution: Integrated CRM and automation workflows. Every interaction is logged against a customer profile. You can segment audiences based on behavior (e.g., high-value, at-risk, new customer) and trigger hyper-personalized automated campaigns.

Actionable Tactic:

Post-Purchase: Automate a post-delivery message asking for feedback or offering styling tips.

Loyalty: Trigger a VIP discount code on a customer's yearly "shop-iversary."

Re-engagement: Automatically send a personalized "We miss you" offer with a curated product selection to customers who haven't purchased in 60 days.

Strategic Pillar 5: Managing the Marketplace/Direct Sales Dual Strategy

The Challenge: Providing consistent, excellent service whether the customer buys on Amazon, your Shopify store, or your app.

The SaleSmartly Solution: Unified customer view. Connect your marketplace seller central accounts (where supported) and your direct channels. See all communications with a single customer in one timeline, regardless of where they initiated contact.

Actionable Tactic: Use insights from marketplace interactions to personalize outreach on your direct channels. If a customer frequently asks about sustainable materials on Amazon, you can highlight your eco-friendly product line in your next email campaign from SaleSmartly.

Part 4: Your 90-Day Implementation Roadmap

Turning insight into action requires a plan. Here’s how to operationalize this playbook with SaleSmartly:

Month 1: Foundation & Consolidation

Integrate your top 3 communication channels (e.g., WhatsApp, Email, Instagram).

Set up your centralized agent dashboard.

Deploy a basic AI chatbot for handling FAQs and working hours greetings.

Month 2: Localization & Automation

Activate real-time translation for your target emerging markets.

Build and launch two key automated workflows:

1) Abandoned Cart Recovery

2) Post-Purchase Thank You/Feedback.

Train your AI bot on product comparison data.

Month 3: Optimization & Growth

Analyze chat data to identify common friction points and refine bot responses.

Create your first customer segment (e.g., "High AOV Customers") and launch a personalized retention campaign.

Integrate a new, high-potential channel based on your traffic analysis (e.g., TikTok Shop or a regional messenger like KakaoTalk).

Conclusion: Winning the Engagement Era

The Similarweb State of E-commerce 2025 report is a clear manifesto: the future belongs to the engagers, not just the advertisers. The brands that will thrive are those that recognize every visitor, whether from an AI search, a Brazilian social media app, or a mobile notification, as an opportunity for a meaningful conversation that can build lasting loyalty.

SaleSmartly is the operational engine for this new era. It transforms the daunting challenges of 2025—fragmented channels, global expansion, AI-native shoppers, and retention pressure—into a streamlined, automated, and deeply personal customer engagement strategy. By bridging the gap between data insight and human connection, it empowers cross-border sellers not just to adapt to the new landscape but to define it. Click here to try SaleSmartly for free today!

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The final takeaway is this: In 2025, your competitive advantage is no longer just your product or price. It's the quality, speed, and intelligence of the conversation you have with every single customer. Start building that advantage today.

Further Reading

Free WhatsApp Number Checker: How to Know If a Number Is Registered on WhatsApp

How to Drive Instagram Traffic to Your Website: A Complete Guide for DTC and Cross-Border Brands

TikTok Black Friday Playbook: Maximize Sales & Traffic

How to Manage Multiple E-Commerce Accounts? SaleSmartly Makes Global Communication Smarter!

[E-book] Omnichannel Communication: Solving Customer Retention and Growth Challenges in Retail and Other Industries