With the always-on nature of e-commerce in a world changed by a pandemic, retailers of all kinds have shifted toward e-commerce-first. The brick-and-mortar, physical experience was already on the decline, but has been accelerated by Covid-19. Buying online has become a daily habit, and while that’s shifted how retailers position themselves, how they market to consumers, and how supply chains and shipping operate, it’s also afforded some opportunities for streamlining and improvements to user experience. 

The 2020 Cyber Five shopping period broke all previous records for Cyber Five spending, coming in at about 38 billion USD (compared to 28.5 billion USD in 2019). This probably won’t come as a surprise as Black Friday and Cyber Monday moved almost entirely online, followed by record-breaking Amazon Prime Day and Singles Day preceding the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Despite the continued onslaught of Covid-19, good news about successful vaccine trials and greater certainty of a peaceful transfer of power to the new president-elect in the United States contributed to a boost in consumer confidence. 

Ahead of this year’s Amazon Prime Day, moved this year to October 13 and 14, 2020, and other major online shopping days, such as Singles Day and the Cyber Five weekend in late November, it’s worth examining both e-commerce best practices for big shopping periods and how much e-commerce has changed since last year.

E-commerce is poised to change in the near future, and while many predictions herald the coming of ubiquitous VR/AR and voice shopping, some of the changes are likely to be more fundamental and, at least at first, almost invisible.