Taking off in online retail: trends for top sellers in 2025

Online retail is and will remain the number one growth driver for digitalisation. Especially as spatial commerce offers completely new opportunities for e-commerce. In the metaverse, for example, avatars can interact with products and brands in 3D worlds and experience them in a completely new way. This development offers you the opportunity to tap into new target groups and create your own immersive retail worlds. As real and virtual worlds are increasingly merging anyway, understanding the dynamics of the next logical evolutionary step in online retail is essential. Other success factors like well-structured, visual shopping malls or online shops, efficient customer service, search engine optimisation (SEO) or search engine advertising (SEA) remain. Let’s take a closer look at some of the trends for top sellers in 2025.

Spatial commerce on the rise

Spatial commerce has many advantages for creating cross-channel shopping experiences that will delight your customer’s long term. It is still uncertain when spatial commerce will be fully developed. However, it is already exciting to see how rapidly the technologies surrounding augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) are developing. In the future, the focus will include contextual information, among other things, that creates a living ecosystem. For example, customer locations will be automatically linked with stock levels in real time. Advances such as more affordable entry points, high-speed internet and easy-to-create 3D models are crucial to ultimately reach the expected maturity. GS1 standards can promote interoperability in spatial commerce. They help to create a strong foundation for the high-quality visualisation of circular economy processes and provide the syntax for seamlessly linking the real and digital worlds. Location-based recommendations, personal shopping assistants and transparent product details are just some of the positive effects, without claiming to be exhaustive. The result is a powerful tool for you and the digital transformation of your customers.

To the marketplaces, get set, go

If you want to list and sell your products on marketplaces such as Amazon or eBay, your items must be clearly labelled with the Global Trade Item Number (GTIN). The GTIN, the number under the barcode, makes it easier to find your products on marketplaces. This improves the quality of the product catalogue, contributes to an unforgettable shopping experience, and makes internal processes much more efficient. You also get closer to a digital twin of your products – a kind of fingerprint for goods both on the World Wide Web and in stationary retail. This will make each of your products unique. And that’s important, because online marketplaces and search engines such as Google require unique product identification through the GTIN to make the wide range of products more user-friendly. Products labelled with incorrect numbers will be removed. This can result in you temporarily or even completely losing authorisation to create Amazon Standard Identification Numbers (ASIN) or sales authorisation.

Smart QR codes for the future

50 years ago, a barcode on a product was scanned for the first time at a supermarket checkout. On 26 June 1974, it was a pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum that revolutionised the retail world in a small grocery shop in Ohio, USA. Today, barcodes have become indispensable everywhere. The truth is that with the increasing need for information along the supply chain and the digitalisation of many processes, the demands on the data carrier are increasing. One-dimensional barcodes, such as the familiar barcode, are reaching their limits, as they can only contain a limited amount of information. It is therefore time for a forward-looking upgrade: the solution are two-dimensional barcodes such as QR codes in combination with the GS1 Digital Link. This allows relevant information to be made available to users at the right time and in the right place. The highlight is that the ‘code for everything’ can be used to display different, context-related, and customised content. The 2D codes can contain additional data such as expiry date, batch number, serial number and more. As a marketer, you can connect all your products to the web and offer as much information and web content as you like. Just think of special offers, certificates, or product recalls. From 2028 at the latest, the use of 2D codes as an alternative or in addition to the existing 1D barcodes will become the new standard worldwide.

About GS1 Germany

GS1 Germany – It all started with a simple beep.

In 1974, a barcode was scanned for the first time in a supermarket. This was the beginning of automated checkout – and the start of GS1’s success story. The machine-readable GS1 barcode with the included GTIN is now the universal standard in the global exchange of goods and is scanned ten billion times a day on products. GS1 standards are the global language for efficient and secure business processes that are valid across company borders and continents. As part of a global network, we work with our customers and partners to develop market-driven and future-orientated solutions that directly contribute to their business success. Today, two million companies from 25 industries worldwide use this language to uniquely identify products, locations and assets, to record relevant data and to share it with business partners in the value creation networks. GS1 – The Global Language of Business. www.gs1.de

Author:

Volkan Kavsak, Senior Manager Marketplaces

GS1 Germany GmbH, Stolberger Straße 108 a, 50933 Cologne

[email protected]

+49 151 57122046

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