2025 H2 Consumer Trends: What Retail CRO Teams Should Prepare For

U.S. e-commerce sales accounted for $352.93 billion in the final quarter of 2024, a jump of almost 25% from the year prior. Right now, the retail space is expanding fast and continuing to see evolving consumer expectations, increasingly tech-powered shopping experiences, and a surge of new competitors.

For retail CRO teams, a basic A/B testing program is no longer enough. In H2 2025 and beyond, you need to align experimentation strategy with the shifts happening in buyer behavior to deliver growth.

Here, we’ll explore the top consumer trends shaping H2 2025 to help you stay ahead of the most important changes.

1. Personalization Is Smarter and Expected

This year, personalization has only cemented its role as a nonnegotiable part of the digital experience for consumers across industries, including online retail. Shoppers now typically expect to receive real-time product suggestions and content that’s relevant to them.

Behind the scenes, organizations are using AI and first-party data to power their personalization engines. From a retail CRO standpoint, the priority is refining those algorithms by testing which combinations of personalized content drive conversions and which don’t.

Retail CRO Takeaway:

Run experiments with:

• Dynamic content blocks that shift based on user behavior, location, or past purchases.
• Predictive search bars that autocomplete to suggest relevant categories or trending SKUs.
• Personalized homepage layouts with distinct configurations based on whether the user is new, returning, or VIP.

With SiteSpect, you can easily implement and test these experiences on the server side to protect performance while maximizing the potential of your personalization offerings.

2. Cross-Channel Journeys Are the New Default

Consumers rarely shop entirely in a single channel. Instead, they often shop in moments. For example, a user might see a product in a social media post, start a search on mobile during their commute, and add to cart on desktop after work. The expectation is that, while these steps occur on different devices and at different times, the overall experience feels seamless and consistently high quality.

However, this behavior’s nonlinear, less predictable nature can introduce complexity for retail CRO teams trying to create effortless user experiences. This is especially the case when test results vary across devices and platforms, making it all the more important to experiment with a testing platform with advanced testing, analytics, and collaboration.

Retail CRO Takeaway:

Focus on:

• Testing to develop consistent messaging and UX across mobile, desktop, and app experiences.
• Evaluating attribution for users who convert outside the original testing channel.
• Experimenting to create entry and exit intent touchpoints on each channel.

Hybrid experimentation makes this easier. When you can run layered client-side and server-side elements in a single campaign, your team gains the ability to coordinate more effectively across test environments and a clearer picture of user behavior and motivations.

3. Ethical Commerce and Brand Trust Are Driving Loyalty

Many of today’s shoppers care how you do business just as much as they care about what you sell. Going into the second half of 2025, more consumers will base purchasing decisions on:

• Whether your brand adheres to sustainable practices
• How you handle user data and privacy
• The transparency of your messaging and sourcing

This trend has powerful implications for retail CRO. Price and convenience matter, but some prospective customers might walk away without an alignment of values.

Retail CRO Takeaway:

Run A/B tests that explore:

• Placement and wording of trust signals like “eco-friendly,” “secure checkout,” or “data privacy guaranteed”
• Use of ethical messaging in banners, cart reminders, and checkout flows
• Transparent product storytelling and genuine social proof

4. AI-Assisted Shopping Is Changing the Purchase Journey

Consumers are no longer limited to clicking and scrolling as they shop. In 2025, some shoppers are increasingly turning to AI tools, whether that looks like engaging with a smart speaker, using more conversational search terms, or relying on assistants within mobile apps and websites. These early “AI agents” can already manage tasks like suggesting products, answering questions, and even finalizing purchases on a user’s behalf.

For example, 75% of U.S. households own a smart speaker in 2025, and consumers are growing increasingly accustomed to giving hands-free commands. As voice search becomes a core subcomponent of the e-commerce experience, shoppers will be able to browse, make purchases, and track orders using native or integrated voice assistants with no screen required.

While voice search is one way to interface with an AI agent, other means can include chat or directly on a website. This is a major change for retail brands, and teams using SiteSpect will find that AI agents deployed on a website or mobile app can and should be tested, typically with server-side experimentation or by optimizing the experiences powered by their underlying APIs.

Retail CRO Takeaway:

Test for the rise of AI-assisted interactions by experimenting with:

• Natural language phrasing and question-oriented titles to align on-site search, SEO, and discoverability with how people speak and ask questions in everyday life
• Server-side support for agent-based logic like personalized product recommendations or rule-based decision trees
• Structuring your site and product catalog to support agentic interactions via APIs

The AI shift is influencing how users find and interact with retail brands as well as what they expect in return. CRO teams must be ready to test and optimize to support more natural, intelligent, and conversational shopping journeys.

Final Thoughts

For the rest of the year, exciting changes will continue in e-commerce and online retail, and retail CRO teams that anticipate and optimize for shifts in shopping behavior will be prepared for the best results.

In an environment where shoppers get to a final checkout step in a wide range of ways, it pays to:

• Personalize experiences 
• Cultivate consistency across devices and channels
• Build trust through transparency and values
• Prepare for new discovery methods and AI agents

Each of these trends signals that consumers are looking for relevance, clarity, and ease. With SiteSpect’s architecture, you’ll be able to test across all of them with fast, flicker-free experimentation that scales.

Ready to prepare your organization for changing consumer behaviors and preferences in the rest of 2025? Get a head start by requesting a personalized SiteSpect demo.