What's happening in Shopify & e-commerce? Q4-2025

If you sell online, we think the next year will be shaped by three forces:

• social commerce going mainstream.
• Shopify's platform upgrades
• and (of course) AI

Social commerce becomes a primary sales channel

What's happening? TikTok shop is rapidly growing in the UK. Live shopping and creator-led bundles are redefining the product discovery and checkout flow.

We're working with our clients to:

1. make sure that their catalog is synced with TikTok shop, including products, stock and promotion.
2. Create bundles and live-promos, working with influencer accounts to push TikTok shop sales.
3. Make sure that short, vertical demo videos are being created as part of creative production and product launches.
4. Track attribution between TikTok and their traditional web store.

Shopify platform changes

What's changing? Shopify Editions doubled down on AI tooling, Hydrogen (our clients will thank us for highly recommending custom site builds rather than traditional templates). More customisation is coming to the checkout process, and scripts are being sunsetted.

We can help you:

1. Audit your checkout, thank-you and order status pages. Remember, we're experts in tracking, monitoring and helping you leverage data from you store.
2. Migrate to Checkout Extensibility and Pixels, removing deprecated scrips.
3. Using Functions + Flow for promotions and merchandising logic.

For our new customers, we'll be ensuring that we're building our their sites on Hydrogen, giving them the absolute cutting edge that Shopify has to offer.

AI Everywhere?

What's changing? It seems like AI is everywhere, is it useful for you yet, or just hype? Well, we're seeing conversational assistants becoming sales people, answering questions, and feeding customers actually useful interactions.

We've already implemented AI chatbots that handle like 80% of their FAQs, now we are even working on AI call bots, who can handle calls, answers questions, and hand-off to humans where needed. This is great for when you need either extra phone-line capacity or you just want a front line to protect your time.

What else is new?

• Use AI to generate first‑draft PDP content (then edit for brand tone).
• Test automated product recommendations tied to stock levels and margin.

Search is changing — expect fewer organic clicks

Google’s AI summaries squeeze broad category traffic. Don’t panic. Shift focus to high‑intent content and richer PDPs.

Do this:

• Create comparison content ("which to choose", "can you buy").
• Add FAQs with structured data, quick demo video and comparison tables to top PDPs.

Use metaobjects for real attributes that power filters and on‑page FAQs.

Cross‑border & fulfilment: expectations rise

People still buy across borders, but they want clarity and speed.

Do this:

• Turn on Shopify Markets for priority countries; localise currency and copy.
• Show duties/taxes up front and delivery estimates early.
• Test regional fulfilment or local couriers where volume justifies it.

Privacy & compliance tighten (EU/UK)

Consent UX and enforcement are getting stricter. First‑party data becomes your edge. Server‑side tracking becomes normal.

Do this:

• Refresh your CMP copy and flows; make consent auditable.
• Move key events server‑side (GTM server or CAPI Gateway).
• Offer a clear value exchange for email/SMS (quiz, guide, bundle builder).

How we help

We’re builders, not buzzwords. Recent work:

• Checkout modernisation — moving brands to Checkout Extensibility with cleaner analytics and faster load.
• Headless builds — Hydrogen/Remix storefronts with quick PDPs and sensible SEO.
• AI buying assistants — catalogue‑aware chat that answers fit/returns and nudges to bundles (without hallucinations).
• Data plumbing — server‑side events (GTM, CAPI Gateway) and privacy‑first consent logs.

Book a quick call. We’ll give you a one‑page action plan specific to your stack and growth goals.

FAQs

Do I need Shopify Plus? Not for everything. Bundles, Markets and a lot of Flow run on Core. Checkout Extensibility and some scaling bits are Plus‑first.
Should I go headless? Only if you need custom UX, complex merchandising or multi‑site performance. Otherwise a modern theme + Functions is quicker to ship.
Will AI replace our marketers? No. It multiplies output. Keep humans for brand and offer strategy.

Need help prioritising? Email jack@rodatech.co.uk and we’ll get you moving next week.