This Is How the World Will Shop by 2025

If you aren’t convinced of the immediate power of the smartwatch, then count me among your ranks. After all, most of what can be done on your wrist has been much too reliant on your smartphone, so why carry both? But, as we’ve seen from Apple's recent Watch release, smartwatches are becoming less dependent on directly adjacent smartphones. Think of the smartphone of tomorrow as you would a desktop or laptop, and the smartwatch of tomorrow as your current smartphone: The smartwatch functions as a data transmitter designed to receive and relay data back to the smartphone, which is where all of your crucial and secure data resides.

"Great," you’re probably thinking, "but I can’t browse products, fill a cart, enter credit card and shipping data, and submit purchase information from the tiny face of my smartwatch." Most of that basic, repeatable information is already stored on your primary e-commerce accounts or within your Chrome browser. With your permission (hopefully), Amazon and Google save every credit card you use to buy products and every shipping address you enter. Plus it knows which products you’ve already purchased. By 2025, you’ll order products from your smartwatch with just a lift of the wrist and a few spoken words, whether or not you're anywhere near your smartphone or laptop.

Here’s how it will work: You’ll remember that you’re out of razors, you’ll lift your wrist, you’ll call up your preferred retailer’s application, and then you’ll say something to the effect of: “Re-order razors” or “Buy Gillette Mach 3 razors.” You’ll see or hear a confirmation, depending on your preference, and you’ll say “Confirm.” Think Amazon Alexa and Amazon Echo but, instead of speaking to a box in your kitchen, you’ll be speaking to your wrist while you’re, say, swimming in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

“By 2025, experiences through voice and touch will be so easy and compelling that the smartphone and watch will be where you do all your shopping,” said Peter Sheldon, Vice President of Strategy at Magento ($0.00 at Magento) . “The consumer identity will be managed through a suite of tools. There will be no need to enter personally identifiable or contextual information…the checkout process will be checking preferences instead of entering information. Choose the saved addresses you already have, the payment methods you already have. It’s unconscious checkout.”

Bardia Dejban, CTO at Volusion ($15.00 at Volusion) , agrees. “No-click purchases will be the standard, alleviating all of the hassle and frustrations of one-click buying,” he said.

“Your iOS or Android device will automatically determine which credit or debit method to use based on points, rewards, balance, and other smart rules," Dejban continued. "As shopping between meetings, walks, showers, and other life to-dos becomes incredibly normal, the ability to continue a transaction, cart and all, from multiple devices will be super-critical for any online retailer.”

But don’t start shouting at your wrist just yet. Desktop shoppers convert three times better compared to mobile shoppers, due to easier navigation, better image viewing and, you guessed it, the ability to more easily enter payment information, according to a 2016 Adobe study.

“Mobile still has limitations to overcome that will prevent it from becoming the only way we conduct e-commerce transactions,” said Craig Fox, CEO of PinnacleCart ($44.95 Per Month at Pinnacle Cart) . “All of us in the industry have been working on the payment issue but limited space is a huge challenge. So how do we solve this? Enter AR and VR [augmented reality and virtual reality].”

You’re probably not going to buy a Maserati with an Apple Watch unless you’re in a showroom (more on this later). But what if you can’t get to a showroom or don’t want to go to one? Today, you’d be buying your car without having done any physical, practical research. Is there enough head rest? Are the cup holders within reach? These are factors that can’t be considered unless you’re actually in a store and touching a product.

With AR and VR, retailers want to put you in the showroom regardless of your physical location. Before we get into how AR and VR will change shopping, here’s a brief overview of the difference between both technologies: With VR, you’re transported to another environment. You see new things and you experience life through an entirely reproduced point of view. You strap on a headset and storm the beaches at Normandy on D-Day or you fight aliens on Mars in the year 3,000. But with AR, you’re merging a digital environment, or object, with your real life. Walking around your neighborhood and spotting Pokémon ($0.00 at Apple.com) is an excellent example of AR.

Want to test-drive a Maserati? Pop on a headset and grab the virtual wheel. Want to see if a couch fits in your living room? Pop on your headset and drag a virtual thumbnail of the couch into its intended space. Try on clothing. Mix and match outfit combinations. Test-drive a vacation before booking tickets. Sit at the restaurant and view the food before making a reservation.

“AR has already established a foothold in e-commerce and has the potential to be a transformative technology in retail, changing how consumers interact with products before purchasing,” said Brian Dhatt, CTO of BigCommerce ( at Bigcommerce) .

Dhatt cites real-world apps such as IKEA Place and the Houzz mobile app as examples of current tools that let shoppers visualize furniture in their homes before buying.

“AR is classic for furniture,” added David Schwartz, Head of Product at Wix ($14 Per Month for Combo Plan at Wix) . “In the future, the simulation of trying on clothes before purchase will be super realistic. VR will be used to experience reality and create an emotion in products like cars, motorbikes, and hotel rooms.”

By 2025, the practice of “testing” products in VR and AR will be commonplace, a first stop (and maybe even a last stop) for people who are researching more complicated purchases. This added element will have ripple effects that reach far beyond product research.

"Marketing will be less about hype and more about getting products into people's hands,” said Lauren Antonoff, Senior Vice President of Presence and Commerce at GoDaddy (Start for Free at GoDaddy) . “See something you like on a friend at a party? AR-enhanced glasses can identify the merchandise and figure out where you can purchase it on the spot, with a flick of the eye. Second, without the confines of stores, there will be limitless opportunities for creators and service providers to present their goods and services when and where consumers are most interested in them. This has a democratizing effect, dramatically broadening the economic opportunity for small, independent businesses that were previously unable to compete for shelf space in a world increasingly dominated by big box retailers.”

Volusion’s Dejban agrees. “Advertisers will figure out a way to create a robust VR ad network for retailers and local merchants,” he said. “The old-school commercial break of the past will be replaced with this new VR option for those with modern home audio and video equipment. Of course, national advertisers will provide VR glasses, goggles, and headsets, shipped free to your door as long as you share your address along with some demographic data.”

But don’t expect VR to become the go-to shopping experience just yet. Some, like Dhatt, expect AR to be the primary app of shopping experiences by 2025, while VR will remain a tangential experience.

“Over the next decade, I expect it will become apparent that VR lacks mainstream viability as it relates to most commerce scenarios,” Dhatt argued. “Consumers have shown a resistance to technologies that remove them from their physical surroundings, as that introduces discomfort and vulnerability, and I don’t expect this trend to change in the near term.”

Which brings us to our next major change: the brick-and-mortar experience.

There are two things I hate about the in-store shopping experience: lines and carrying packages home. Technology has already advanced far enough that consumers no longer need to stand in a checkout line to purchase products at an Amazon store and, if you’re really too lazy to carry your bags home, you can pay most retailers to ship items to your house. What if both practices became standard across the majority of our shopping experiences?

By combining Amazon Go’s brick-and-mortar fundamentals (for example, customers open the Amazon app, grab items off the shelf, and walk out of the store without ever handing anyone a credit card) with rapid, same-day delivery, you’ve got a retail experience that’s faster, less cumbersome, and more enjoyable.

Here’s how it would work: When you enter a retail location, you open the store’s smartwatch app. You verbally add products to your virtual shopping cart. When you’re done shopping, you walk out of the store, grab a bite, pet a few puppies, and head home. By the time you reach your doorstep, the items you added to your cart have already been delivered to your house (or the trunk of your car; more on this later).

“E-commerce is going to be ubiquitous,” said Magento’s Sheldon. “This will have a negative impact on the traditional retail experience. Malls, department stores, they’re on a downward spiral. We’ll see flagship stores, experiential stores, for products you don’t own and need to research…You may not walk out with a bag, but you’ll place an order and the product will be on your doorstep when you get home.”

Jimmy Rodriguez, COO of 3dcart ($19 Per Month at Shift4Shop) agrees. “Retail stores will become an extension of online stores,” he explained. “The stores will be places where transactions are processed as e-commerce transactions allowing for immediate delivery of high-demand items or fast, in-store pickup with a setup like the Amazon lockers.”

This setup also helps to benefit the retailer. Think about how much physical space is required to run a retail location such as Sam’s Club or a Dick’s Sporting Goods. What about those stadium-sized Ikeas we all dread visiting? Retailers stack boxes on top of boxes to ensure inventory, but really, by 2025, they’ll only need enough product in-store to allow consumers to touch, feel, and sample.

“Physical retail locations will cease to operate as glorified warehouses where extensive inventory is held at each location,” said BigCommerce’s Dhatt. “When retailers have to carry their entire inventory in physical spaces, they’re overpaying on shelf space, narrowing their available assortment of products, and subjecting themselves to customer disappointment when certain items aren’t in stock.”

Dhatt cites Bonobos’s Guide Shops as an example of what to look forward to by 2025. The retailer’s stores are designed to expose shoppers to products, while logistics and order fulfillment take place through remote warehouses.

Experience and product research has already replaced product availability as the number one purpose of the retail location: You don’t go to the Apple Store to necessarily walk away with an Apple MacBook Pro ( at Amazon) . You go to test a laptop, to ask a Genius for advice, or to pick up a phone that you ordered several weeks before its release date. Look for retailers to find new and interesting ways to keep you in the store, to get you talking to other customers, and to get you to touch, feel, try on, and virtually experience products. Just don’t expect to walk away with products or stand in line to pay for them anymore.

The in-store experience will only satisfy customers if products are delivered within a reasonable amount of time. After all, no one wants to get excited about something they saw at a store and then wait two weeks to be able to use it. Today, same-day delivery from massive retailers is possible within most major metropolitan areas, especially if you’re willing to pay extra for the service. To win the commerce arms race, smaller brands and even mom and pop brands, are going to have to cut down on the time it takes to deliver products, even to those customers who don’t live in a high-population city.

“Shipping is one of the front lines of the battleground,” said Magento’s Sheldon. “So much of Amazon’s success has been Prime, and that they’ve redefined the benchmark for shipping. Consumer expectations for shipping have tightened dramatically. We’re not willing to pay for 2-day delivery anymore. We’re not prepared to wait any longer than two days. But we’re also demanding how it arrives.”

What if you could order groceries that arrive on your doorstep within 24 hours? Meh. Or what if those groceries are actually in your refrigerator waiting for you when you get home? Nice. Retailers are testing new and interesting ways to deliver products based on customer preference.

Since 2016, DHL has used smart cars as drop-off or pick-up points for packages. Vehicle owners use an app to generate a single-use transaction authorization number, which they enter in the “c/o” box in the delivery address field. When the DHL employee reaches the car, he or she uses a single-use code in his or her app to pop open the trunk and drop off or receive the parcel. Unfortunately, the tests have only been done in a limited capacity, primarily in European cities, and the vehicles must be located within the vicinity of the recipient’s home address. As more devices become connected to the internet (i.e., the door to your house and to your refrigerator) and associated security safeguards strengthen, the more options you’ll have for dropping off and receiving packages. Want your jet skis delivered to the garage of your summer house in Greece? Want your new fishing rod dropped off on your boat at the marina? Go for it.

How will it be accomplished? And how can we ensure that parcels will be delivered quickly enough to make this service valuable?

“Drones, autonomous cars, and ride services will become a major part of the shipping fleet seven years from today,” Volusion’s Dejban predicted. “All of these technologies enable immediate to 1-hour delivery of most goods, while traditional couriers and shipping companies will still provide 1- to 3-day shipping for all other products. If 10 percent of internet retail products are available for 1-hour delivery today, then 90 percent will be available within one hour by 2021.”

Not everyone is sold on the idea of a massive fleet of robots delivering packages,though. “As far as delivery goes, drones are still a novelty at best,” said PinnacleCart's Fox. “There are too many obstacles to overcome to make it a viable option within seven years.

"Product delivery in 24 hours? This depends on who we’re talking about," Fox continued. "Amazon is already able to get us products in a couple of hours but they’ve had to control the proximity and logistics for that to happen. Sure, the big players are stepping up, but proximity of the product to the buyer is still an enormous challenge. We’ll see gains in the next seven years, but without using the Amazon channel, small to midsize businesses will have difficulty competing.”

You grab a bottle of water from the fridge. It’s your last bottle. Without touching a button, speaking to a smartwatch, or leaving your couch, a fresh supply of water is delivered—not to your door, not to your trunk, but to the fridge itself—within an hour.

All of the changes I’ve examined in this article require one major factor: continuous customer intervention. What if we combined everything examined in this piece to provide the ultimate shopping experience, one that doesn’t even require customer participation beyond initial setup? We will by 2025.

By tying together back-end software (like accounting and inventory control), front-end shopping apps, cameras, and a connected digital ecosystem, we’ll be able to program the ongoing delivery of common household goods. Today, shoppers can set up recurring deliveries of household items. You receive paper towels. The towels come in a giant box that’s left on your stoop. Your account is charged. Repeat.

Tomorrow, you’ll tell Amazon to supply you with a constant stream of paper towels. Your roll of paper towels will be connected to cameras or sensors that are programmed back to your Amazon app. You will give Amazon the autonomy to charge your account whenever the cameras or sensors detect a shortage. You will pre-select the item, the amount you’re willing to pay, and where you’d like the product delivered.

“The Amazon store uses real-time image processing to figure out what you’re picking up and leaving the store with,” said Magento’s Sheldon. “By 2025, that’s in your home. Your fridge has all these cameras monitoring what you put in and put out. It monitors expiration dates. It knows you’ve run out of carrots. AI [artificial intelligence] will proactively order for you.”

For now, though, please remember to keep a backup supply of toilet paper underneath your sink at all times.