Holiday Ecommerce Sales 2025: 6 Proven Ways to Increase Sales

Holiday ecommerce sales keep breaking records, and for Shopify businesses, 2024 was no exception. 

Over the pivotal Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) weekend alone, brands on Shopify collectively drove a staggering $11.5 billion in sales, a 24% increase from the previous year. 

This record-breaking weekend saw more than 76 million consumers globally purchasing from Shopify-powered brands. Flexible payment options also surged, with Shop Pay sales increasing 58% year over year as shoppers embraced seamless, one-click checkouts.

But while the opportunity is bigger than ever, the landscape is also more competitive and complex. From meeting expectations for fast, affordable delivery to navigating shifting platform realities, businesses need a clear strategy to stand out and capture holiday demand. 

This guide shares proven ways to increase your ecommerce holiday sales in 2025, with tactics from real brands already making them work.

Know the 2025 online holiday shopping trends

This holiday season is different from years past. From inflation concerns to mobile ordering, modern shoppers face a myriad of decisions that can derail a purchase. Understanding these shifts helps brands adjust their strategy and capture more sales.

Holiday spending and channel mix: what changed in 2024

Holiday ecommerce sales kept climbing in 2024, but the way shoppers spent—and the channels they used—shifted in ways worth paying attention to. 

Year-end data shows US online holiday spending hit $241.1 billion, up from the year before, with smartphones leading the way and driving 54.5% of sales.

Omnichannel pickup options also gained ground: 17.5% of online orders were fulfilled via curbside pickup or buy online, pickup in-store (BOPIS), showing that convenience is now a top priority for many shoppers. 

For 2025 planning, think about where your store experience aligns with these behaviors. Mobile optimization, easy checkout, and integrated pickup options aren’t nice-to-haves—they’re all becoming baseline expectations for competing in the holiday market. 

BNPL adoption in peak season

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) has gone from a fringe payment method to a core part of peak-season checkout. In 2024, BNPL purchases totaled $18.2 billion during the holiday season, driven by budget-conscious shoppers spreading out big-ticket purchases.

If you’re already offering BNPL, make it visible in all the right places to maximize impact: 

• Product pages: Show payment flexibility before customers fall in love with the item.
• Cart and checkout: Provide a last-minute nudge to prevent cart abandonment.
• Promotional emails: Call it out on higher-value bundles or limited-time offers.

If you’re not offering BNPL yet, 2025 is the year to test it. Beyond increasing the chances of an on-the-fence shopper converting, BNPL is also a trust signal that shows you understand your customers’ financial realities and want to make their holiday shopping easier. 

Price sensitivity (inflation cooling)

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, inflation cooled to 2.9% year-over-year in December 2024 and hovered around 2.7% by mid-2025. That’s good news for shoppers’ wallets, but it doesn’t mean they’re any less price-sensitive. 

The combination of high living costs in other areas and an endless stream of online deals means buyers are still hunting for value. Baymard’s 2025 research found 39% of shoppers abandon carts due to extra costs like shipping, taxes, and fees—the number-one driver of lost sales.

For 2025, frame your pricing strategy around perceived value, not just discounts, and think about ways you can convert price-conscious shoppers without impacting your margins. This could include transparent shipping thresholds and strategic bundles. 

Prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday earlier

The Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend might be only four days long, but preparation starts long before Thanksgiving. Here are three ways to get your ecommerce brand ready and maximize sales once the weekend arrives.

2025 key shopping dates at a glance

Black Friday tends to overshadow the holiday season, but there are other prime shopping days worthy of attention.

Plan key shopping dates on your 2025 holiday calendar in advance so you know exactly what’s coming up and when people buy. It’s the best way to prepare your online store for peak shopping days—not just Black Friday. 

Create a promotions calendar

Once you’ve got peak shopping days in your diary, work backward to drive sales and promotions that attract customers in the mood to buy. A promotions calendar helps you stay organized and ensures your campaigns go live at the right time.

Use a calendar tool to detail each promotion’s:

• Start and end dates
• Coupon, discount, or deal
• Product or categories on offer
• Qualifying criteria (e.g., orders over $100)
• Assets and creatives 

Promotions don’t have to be limited to the day you’re celebrating. Organics Ocean, for example, ran an early Black Friday deal, turning what’s usually a one-day sale into a week-long event that captured shoppers’ attention ahead of the rush.

Forecast demand and plan inventory

Inventory management is notoriously difficult to handle year-round, but it becomes especially tough throughout the holiday season, when consumer demand can spike overnight. 

“Last year, like many other businesses, we ran into many problems with inventory management when demand went up unexpectedly,” says Priyanka Swamy, founder and CEO of Perfect Locks. “It was a real wake-up call about how important it is to forecast accurately and keep your supply chain flexible. So this year, we’ve got a strong inventory management system that works well with Shopify, so we can keep an eye on sales and adjust stock levels right away to ensure we’re meeting customer demand without running out.”

To avoid stockouts or costly overstocks, use demand and supply chain forecasting tools to accurately estimate demand this holiday season. These tools use artificial intelligence to interpret weather trends, social media data, and market intelligence to predict how many units you’ll need for each product. 

Create a smooth customer experience

Holiday shoppers are bombarded with offers from new brands that promise them the world. To stand out, focus on delivering an experience that’s fast, trustworthy, and effortless. 

Optimize the checkout

The holiday season isn’t just busy for sales. Shoppers are short on time and every extra step at checkout risks losing the sale. Anything a customer buys online needs to be a process that is easy, quick, and simple, which can make the difference between a completed purchase and an abandoned cart. 

Optimize your checkout process by:

• Enabling one-page checkout
• Adding social proof or trust signals
• Upselling or cross-selling related products
• Accepting multiple payment options
• Offering guest checkout

Even better: Let customers purchase in a single click with Shop Pay. It lets customers breeze through the checkout process, prefilling their details. It’s the world’s best-converting checkout, lifting conversion by up to 50% compared to guest checkout.

Offer live chat options 

You’ve done the hard task of driving a holiday shopper toward your online store. They’ve found a product they’re interested in, but they have a question that’s holding them back. A live chat feature—on both the product page and checkout page—can give them real-time answers and improve site conversion rates.

“To increase holiday ecommerce sales this year, we focus on creating a seamless customer experience,” says Ricky Allen, marketing director at Ever Wallpaper. “We have implemented a chatbot on our website to provide instant customer support and answer any queries they may have.”

Use Shopify Inbox to create an automated chatbot that answers FAQs in seconds. From holiday returns policies to shipping queries, you’ll filter out any repetitive questions and give your team enough bandwidth to focus on more complex support tickets that need a human touch. 

Add video to product pages 

A high-converting product page usually includes a clear title, a description, and a photo of the product you’re selling. Add product videos into the mix and reach the 87% of people who’ve been convinced to buy a brand’s product after watching a video.

Short, authentic videos show products in action and help customers picture how they’ll use them. Partner with creators to produce professional, user-generated-style clips that feel genuine while maintaining quality. This gives you content that builds trust without relying on low-quality submissions.

Update your holiday returns policy

An influx of ecommerce holiday sales can lull brands into a false sense of security. You might rake in thousands over BFCM, but come January, retail returns spike—a trend that has been increasing year on year. 

Update your holiday returns policy now to protect against return fraud and support legitimate customers. Fraud is especially common during the season, from stolen items and purchases with stolen credit cards to receipt fraud and “wardrobing,” where shoppers wear items once and then return them.

For genuine shoppers, a short return window can also be a barrier. If someone is buying a Christmas gift on Black Friday and your traditional returns window is just 30 days, they’re taking a risk. If the recipient doesn’t like their gift, they’re stuck with no option to return it. Consider extending the returns period, but be strict on what can be returned, how customers can process a return, and how long they have to return it.

While it might sound counterintuitive to showcase your returns policy to holiday shoppers, it can improve the returns experience for legitimate customers and deter fraudsters from targeting your brand. Clear policies are also one of the best defenses against in-store and ecommerce fraud during the busy holiday season. 

Use social commerce platforms for more holiday ecommerce sales

Social media is no longer just a place to showcase holiday spirit. Instead, it’s now a key strategy to drive holiday ecommerce sales, boost engagement, and connect with customers. 

Instagram and Facebook in 2025 

To prove the purchasing power of its various platforms, Meta—which operates both Facebook and Instagram—offers several ways to make your mark on holiday ecommerce sales this year:

• Shops have shifted toward website checkout. Use Instagram and Facebook for discovery and messaging, then route shoppers to your site to complete their purchase.
• With Facebook page posts, you can launch ads and promote page posts right inside Shopify. 
• Meta’s messaging features on Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp let you build stronger connections with customers. 
• Brands can utilize ads that click to message to help you engage (or re-engage) shoppers whenever and wherever they choose.

YouTube Shopping

Consumers watch billions of hours of YouTube content every single day, and they’re not just watching, they’re shopping. YouTube has doubled down on integrated shopping features so brands can meet customers where they’re already being inspired.

Picture this: A viewer is watching a “holiday outfit ideas” video from their favorite creator. As the host tries on a pair of sneakers, clickable product pins appear right under the video. With a single tap, the viewer can see details, check sizes, and buy, all without leaving YouTube. 

The Google & YouTube app for Shopify makes it simple to list your products for free or run paid Performance Max campaigns. This collaboration ensures your product listing ads appear across all Google-owned properties, including Google \sSearch, Shopping, Images, and YouTube, reaching high-intent shoppers.

BK Beauty, a makeup brush brand, partnered with creators through YouTube Shopping’s affiliate program. By tagging products directly in video content, the brand made it easier for viewers to browse and buy without leaving the platform—turning inspiration into sales. “I was always the big believer that the sale takes place while the consumer is watching and consuming the content,” says cofounder Paul Jauregui.

Pinterest 

Pinterest is a search engine–social media hybrid, where users pin products to virtual pinboards. Pinterest reported 578,000 monthly active users in 2025, and 80% of weekly pinners say that they feel inspired by the shopping experience on the platform. 

With Shopify’s Pinterest sales channel, you can expand your reach by turning your product images into shoppable pins. This puts your products in front of millions of consumers during the busiest shopping days, often without any advertising cost. According to Pinterest, brands that connect their catalog see up to five times more impressions than merchants who haven’t added their products. 

Take this one step further by investing in sponsored pins through the Shopify Pinterest channel. This product pin from Neptune, for example, appears in the search results for “duvet cover”:

TikTok Shop + ads

In the past year, the hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt has been used on 15 million posts worldwide. Compared to other platforms, TikTok users are 1.5 times more likely to purchase products they discover through the app. That makes TikTok a social commerce powerhouse you shouldn’t ignore this holiday season. 

TikTok’s Shopify app lets you create video ads, track results, and manage your orders from your Shopify admin. Key features available on the TikTok channel for Shopify include:

• Run TikTok ads: Start quickly with TikTok For Business to promote your holiday online shopping programs. 
• Use TikTok Shop: Shopify’s guided campaign-creation tool assists you in setting up and tracking conversion campaigns and promoting your holiday deals effortlessly. 
• Create content fast: Use Creative Made Simple to turn existing product images into TikTok-style videos in minutes, without needing video production expertise.

Optimize your holiday marketing and campaigns for discovery

There’s more to a holiday marketing strategy than pushing a discount code across every marketing channel. Here’s how to craft strategic campaigns that stand out and guide shoppers toward your online store. 

Retarget shoppers with email marketing

For every $1 large companies spend on email marketing, they make around $10 to $36 in sales. But a customers’ inbox is a competitive space throughout the holiday season. 

Create BFCM email segments to personalize your campaigns and stand out in a customer’s inbox. That includes:

• Email ignorers
• VIP customers
• Product browsers
• Category buyers 
• Gender-based segments
• Seasonal shoppers

Combine this strategy with automated cart recovery emails that online retailers use to recoup otherwise lost sales.

“We’re launching a series of engaging email marketing campaigns to drive repeated visits and foster customer loyalty,” says Wendy Wang, owner of F&J Outdoors. “By sharing useful tips on maintaining outdoor furniture and making the most of our products, we aim to deepen relationships with our customers and incentivize repeat purchases.” 

Lean into holiday gifting initiatives

Gifts are the top holiday spending priority for shoppers, beating holiday food, drinks, or clothing. Helping customers find and purchase the right gift not only drives sales but also goes a long way toward building customer loyalty that lasts beyond the 2025 holiday season.

Create gift guides—collections of products that make ideal gifts for different buyer personas If you’re a skin care retailer, for example, you could publish a “gifts for moms” guide featuring your bestselling products. Landing pages for each guide make it easy for shoppers to browse and buy.

Spread the holiday spirit and give your customers a small gift. Whether it’s a free product or a gift card to redeem on their next order, these unexpected gifts could turn seasonal shoppers into year-round customers.

“One major thing we are doing this year is running a contest,” says Alex McIntosh, CEO and cofounder of Thrive Natural Care. “One of our skin care kits sold between Black Friday and December 15 will have a ‘golden ticket’ hidden inside. The person that finds this ticket will win a trip to Costa Rica. We are amplifying this promotion by allowing our email subscribers the opportunity to give their friends and family a 25% discount on kit purchases, so the barrier to entry in the contest is much lower."

Live shopping, used selectively

Live commerce continues to gain traction. Last year, nearly half of US shoppers participated in a live shopping event—most often to get exclusive offers and discounts. 

Social-first approaches—including behind-the-scenes livestreams, video consultations, and personalized product recommendations—are ways your brand can capitalize on the video trend. By showcasing products in real time and interacting directly with viewers, you can create urgency and build trust during this year’s holiday online shopping season.

Gather first-party data to combat rising advertising costs

Apple’s app tracking transparency (ATT) policy left many businesses scrambling for new advertising methods. Without the user-level data they’ve come to rely on, digital ad campaign performance has declined. 

Savvy brands are coming up with creative ways to gather first-party data. Jones Road Beauty, a cosmetics retailer, uses quizzes to provide personalized product recommendations. In the process, the brand gathers holiday season first-party data for further retargeting. That data could fuel holiday email marketing campaigns based on skin tone, preferred product, and skin concerns.

“Our customers will be the loudest voice in our holiday campaigns,” says Michael Klein, founder and CEO of Herbaly. “Through A/B testing, we learned that when our marketing efforts are grounded in anecdotes from the customer experience, we see more sales and a stronger connection between our brand and customers.”

Make shipping and fulfillment easy to improve conversion rate

By making delivery fast, reliable, and hassle-free, businesses can turn more browsers into buyers when it matters most.

Set free shipping thresholds 

Two-thirds of modern customers expect free shipping on all online orders, driven largely by Amazon’s commitment to fast, no-cost delivery with Prime. Eighty-four percent of Shopify merchants met these expectations and offered free shipping throughout the holidays last year.

And there’s a strong reason to take it seriously: 39% of shoppers cite extra costs like shipping, taxes, and fees as the number-one reason they abandon their carts. Free shipping helps remove one of the biggest friction points standing between you and a completed sale.

However, offering it across the board can eat into profits, especially on low-value orders. A smarter approach is to set a threshold—for example, free shipping on orders over $50. It’s a win-win: you protect your profitability, while also encouraging larger carts, boosting your average order value in the process.

Offer expedited shipping

Next-day shipping is no longer enough to impress holiday shoppers. Many last minute shoppers want the fastest option, and are willing to pay for it.

Offer expedited shipping as a premium service during the holidays. It helps customers who need gifts quickly and captures sales that might otherwise be lost.

With Shopify Flow, you can automate ecommerce workflows that tag orders with expedited shipping selected. Your fulfillment team will get notified right away, making it easier to prioritize these transactions.

Offer local pickup and delivery

While the majority of holiday sales happen online, brick-and-mortar retail still plays a key role—and increasingly, those two channels are blending. 17.5% of online orders in 2024 were fulfilled via curbside pickup or buy online, pickup in-store (BOPIS), showing just how popular omnichannel options have become.

Offering local pickup or delivery can ease pressure on your fulfillment team, save on shipping costs, and help shoppers get their orders faster. It also creates opportunities for in-store impulse purchases when customers come to collect their order from your store.

Use Shop Promise and trusted 3PL partners

Shipping and fulfillment can get complex throughout the holiday season. You’ve got orders coming in from multiple sales channels, and with 72.5% of customers saying a bad shipping experience would stop them from buying from a retailer again, there’s little room for error.

In 2023, Shopify sold its logistics operations to Flexport, shifting its focus toward empowering brands to work with trusted third-party logistics (3PL) partners. These vetted 3PLs can help you manage storage, picking, packing, and shipping, freeing up your team to focus on sales and service during the busiest time of year.

If you’re eligible, you can also use Shop Promise, Shopify’s delivery badge that displays an expected delivery date directly on product pages, at checkout, and in post-purchase tracking. 

The badge is available only to businesses that meet performance requirements (such as on-time delivery rates) and use supported fulfillment methods, including certain integrated 3PLs. Brands have seen conversion lifts of up to 25% when Shop Promise is displayed.

Consider automation software

Ecommerce operators have lots of plates to spin throughout the holiday season. Make sure no task (or customer) is left behind by enlisting the help of ecommerce automation software. 

Shopify Flow allows you to create automated workflows with “trigger, condition, and action” rules. In other words: When someone completes a trigger (like changing inventory quantities), the rule checks whether a condition has been met (like whether it falls below 50 units). If it has, it’ll proceed and complete an action (like emailing your buying team to notify them of low stock). 

Other smart ways to leverage ecommerce automation templates to capture holiday ecommerce sales include: 

• Tagging your VIP customers when they reach a certain spend
• Flagging high-risk orders for manual review to prevent fraudulent transactions 
• Hiding and republishing product pages when an item goes in and out of stock

Capture holiday ecommerce sales this year

The secret to a successful holiday season is preparation. Focus on exceeding expectations, whether it’s a free gift with purchase, flexible fulfillment, or fast shipping. These tactics help your brand stand out in a crowded market and give customers a reason to buy from you. 

With the right mix of planning and execution, you’ll not only drive more sales this year, but also retain profits when the inevitable January returns frenzy begins.