The Industrial Revolution was nothing compared to the retail industry’s recent transformation. We’ve moved from single channel to omnichannel in a matter of years—but these days, simply being omnichannel means falling behind.
Operational efficiencies, technical debt, and fragmentation tax typically associated with selling omnichannel means retailers need to overhaul their entire tech stack if they’re to personalize the customer experience at scale.
Other industries—including transportation—are already ahead of the curve. Think of the last time you went to an airport. The airport used real-time data flows to handle flight scheduling, luggage handling, and boarding processes. As a result, you got onto your flight on-time and stress-free.
Unified commerce is the solution for ecommerce. When sales channels, operations, and backend retail operations are built on the same centralized platform, things run smoothly—both for your customers and the team managing behind-the-scenes operations. Brick and mortar retailers also benefit from a 22% lower total cost of ownership and an 8.9% sales uplift, according to a leading independent research firm.
So, what does this look like in practice? What retail technology trends are assisting retail brands to offer seamless customer experiences at scale? This guide shares the answer.
8 retail technology trends
- The evolution to unified commerce
- AI-powered customer experiences
- Modern, automated retail operations
- Integrated payments evolution
- Connected commerce operating system
- Customer-first retail ecosystems
- Data-driven merchandising
- Future-ready technology infrastructure
1. The evolution to unified commerce
Omnichannel was defined as offering a seamless experience to customers wherever they decided to shop. Predominantly powered by high-level front-end retail integrations, brands quickly became saddled with a complex infrastructure that presented multiple challenges:
- Lack of real-time data synchronization.
- Inflated middleware costs.
- Technical debt accumulated through patchy integrations and APIs.
In its report, Predictions 2025: Retail, Forrester states that “Retailers will need to explore technology solutions to provide strong service to grow shopper loyalty and share of wallet in a scalable way.”
Unified commerce still offers customers the personalized omnichannel experiences they’re looking for, but without these technical difficulties. Both back- and frontend processes funnel back to a central business “brain”, with real-time data flows that allow you to make more accurate, data-driven decisions—an approach proven to reduce middleware expenses by 27% and cut annual third-party support costs by 89%.
Pepper Palace, the world’s largest spice retail chain, migrated to Shopify to solve this challenge. Shopify is the only platform to natively build POS and ecommerce on the same platform, and it helped Pepper Palace open over 60 new stores with a simple admin interface that powered every facet of its business.
“Shopify’s unified approach to data management leads to a substantial decrease in the time and technical resources spent on maintenance, eliminating the need for middleware by up to 60%,” says Director of Marketing Corey Hnat.
2. AI-powered customer experiences
Customers have greater choice than ever before. They can find comparable products from multiple other retailers within a few clicks. But half of customers want personalized offers from the brands they shop with. Businesses they’ve forged a strong relationship with, and exceed their ever-growing list of demands, win the sale.
Generative AI is the retail technology powering this trend. Major retailers, including grocery chains, are building smart shopping assistants to support shoppers throughout their customer journey.
It’s a trend that’s gaining rapid pace. In 2025, Forrester estimates that about one in five retailers will launch customer-facing genAI applications.
However, AI is heavily dependent on the data you feed it. Fragmented systems with outdated data synchronization are a major problem. When you’ve reformatted and imported your data into a centralized database, it’s out of date. That’s before you account for the efficiency losses you’ve accumulated throughout the process.
Shopify’s unified data model solves this problem because product, order, and customer data flows back to the same platform it was built on. It’s no wonder that 19% of retailers report that customer data and insights provided by Shopify POS helped increase sales.
3. Modern, automated store operations
Retail businesses have many moving parts. From managing inventory to fulfilling orders and serving shoppers in-store, your retail technology stack must be capable of centralizing omnichannel operations to operate as efficiently as possible.
Unified systems do exactly that. By centralizing front- and backend operations in a single platform, there’s no need to spend time operating (or worse, fixing) middleware. Data flows in real-time between sales channels, which enables retailers to benefit from:
- Saving the equivalent of 0.4 full-time employees per store.
- $20,000 annual savings from reduced middleware.
- 10 to 20 second of savings per transaction.
- Operational improvements that contribute a benefit equivalent of up to a 5% uplift in sales.
Apparel brand BYLT Basics experienced this first-hand when expanding into physical retail. “As we entered the retail space, one of the big questions related to our growth was focused on our omnichannel focus and expansion," says Tyler Muzzy, the brand’s director of retail. "When you start adding more software and systems to the mix, it can slow down the tech stack and make it much more time-consuming to try to get the data or even just the answer to your question."
Because all operating systems are built upon the same platform, BYLT Basics could get its Shopify POS-powered stores fully operational within less than a day. Tyler adds: “The setup and training process has been one of the best we’ve experienced since opening up retail.”
4. Integrated payments evolution
Debit and credit cards have overtaken traditional cash payments in customers’ preferred payment methods. That’s not to say it’s the only one you should consider accepting in your store. Alternative payment methods—including mobile wallets, contactless payments, and buy now, pay later (BNPL)—are equally important to the modern shopper.
Integrated payment systems, where your payment processor is built into your POS system, give customers this flexibility. Shoppers don’t need to share their details with a third party. And if they’ve already created an account to vault credit card details with you (such as through Shop Pay checkout), it significantly speeds up the checkout process.
Plus, integrated payments support real-time data synchronization. Generate sales reports, view transaction history, account for currency conversions across multiple store locations, and refund customers easily from a POS system that offers integrated payments.
Shop Pay is a secure digital wallet built on the Shopify ecosystem. Shoppers can save their payment and shipping details in a secure mobile wallet, then sign into their account to speed up checkout wherever they buy—online or in-person. Proven to offer 50% better conversions and 0.5% lower payment fees, it’s no surprise that 65% of users report significant revenue enhancements.
5. Connected commerce operating system
Integrated commerce operating systems (COS) support omnichannel operations with a core infrastructure that shares the same data model. Order management, analytics, supply chain management, and fulfillment operate from the same source to operate more efficiently and offer better clienteling experiences.
Shopify’s unique approach to building POS and ecommerce on the same infrastructure gave Aviator Nation the freedom to no longer rely on external web developers to make changes to its commerce platform. “Shopify unlocked the ability for our team—who, at the time, had very little technical skills or development expertise—to self-manage our own operations,” says Director of Marketing Curtis Ulrich.
Aviator Nation isn’t alone in its decision to migrate to Shopify. Our data shows that 43% of retailers cite a desire for a unified platform as a key factor in their decision to use Shopify POS. The majority (85%) of midmarket retailers use its omnichannel features to drive growth in both sales both online and offline.
6. Customer-first retail ecosystems
Physical retail has evolved—no longer just a place to shop, but a destination that offers engaging experiences for customers to engage with their favorite brands.
Per a recent study from a leading independent research firm, 57% of consumers want to touch/feel items in the flesh. Another 50% of consumers say personalized offers and promotions from brands they’ve interacted with improve their shopping experience.
Omnichannel focuses on delivering customer-centric experiences to shoppers wherever they engage with your brand. Unified commerce takes this a step further with an integrated customer-first ecosystem with a united infrastructure that not only gathers and centralizes customer data but also makes it easily accessible to personalize the shopping experience.
Shopify does this by creating unified customer profiles whenever someone shares their email address or phone number with your business. Any supplementary data (both online and offline) you collect flows back to this unified profile, such as:
- Items they’ve bought
- Products they’ve returned
- Feedback they’ve shared
- Emails they’ve opened
- Loyalty points they’ve earned
This first-party data is invaluable when launching omnichannel marketing campaigns that drive customer loyalty. Use it to retarget retail shoppers through Shop Campaigns with personalized messages—like which products they could buy by converting their loyalty points into store credit, for example—and only pay when they convert.
“Most of our store locations are in destination locations where people are only visiting once a year or once every other year. Before, when they left, we wouldn’t see them again for another year,” says Corey Hnat, director of marketing at Pepper Palace. “Shopify has improved our omnichannel capabilities and allowed us to get customers into our system in store, so we can retarget them back to our website.”
Pepper Palace isn’t alone in its foray into building a customer-first retail ecosystem. Data shows that the number of buyers purchasing through the Shop app increased by 2.6x, with users 77% more likely to make another purchase on a Shopify store after making a purchase.
7. Data-driven merchandising
Inventory is any retailer’s most valuable asset. But it’s a balancing act: holding too much inventory inflates costs and ties up cash in unsold goods. Not having enough causes stockouts that could drive customers towards a competitor.
Real-time visibility is the only way to identify under- or overstocking challenges before they pose a greater risk to your business. That’s possible with a centralized COS that unifies data from every sales channel and inventory storage source, including your retail stores, shipping warehouses, or third-party logistics partners’ warehouses (if you’re outsourcing fulfillment).
The Inspiration Company migrated from Wix and Square POS to Shopify to keep track of inventory across different sales channels. “There were a lot of roadblocks with our previous setup,” says co-founder Doug Waldbueser. “Simply adding functions like inventory tracking or rewards were difficult and involved third-party support, which was super expensive. We wanted our POS system and ecommerce platform to work better together.”
Shopify gave The Inspiration Company one unified back office to transfer products between stores, replenish inventory before stockouts occur, and detailed reports to make smarter restocking decisions. Doug says: “Having one system to manage our inventory and staff is a huge benefit for our brand.”
Aside from improving backend retail operations, a unified data model also lets you offer customers greater flexibility in how they receive their order. Some 38% of shoppers prefer options like buy online, pickup in-store when it’s available.
When inventory data is unified, you can display accurate, real-time stock levels at a customers’ nearby store on ecommerce product pages. Shoppers can choose their closest store, pay for their purchase online, and have order data pass through to the store’s POS system for retail staff to prepare for pickup. And it all happens automatically.
8. Future-ready technology infrastructure
The last thing you want is to build a business atop unstable ground. Commerce is evolving at a rapid pace—it’s not uncommon for vendors to spend their time catching up instead of innovating new functionality that helps retailers stay ahead of the curve.
“We had an expensive IT outsourcing model, the technical debt was building up, and the architecture was a black box,” says Navid Jilow, director of technology at Belstaff, on the brand’s prior platform. “Our point of sale and ERP system were monolithic and complicated, making it hard to adapt to the changing market.”
Belstaff was drawn to Shopify because of its unique ability to unify ecommerce and POS data by building it on the same platform. “If you have a different POS system to your ecommerce system then you have to deal with the additional complexity of managing two different systems, using separate data models, therefore increasing the technical and integration complexity within your IT real estate,” Navid explains.
With Shopify, table-stakes customer experiences—like omnichannel and BOPIS—come out of the box with no custom development required. It leads to a 22% lower total cost of ownership where retailers benefit from a 5% sales uplift generated by operational improvements. But it doesn’t stop there: Shopify invested $1.7 billion into research and development in 2023 alone, and has released over 200 platform updates and innovations each year.
Build a solid retail infrastructure with Shopify
Retail infrastructure can make or break your ability to innovate and keep pace. It’s paramount to choose the right technology partner—one that can grow with your business and innovate as the future of ecommerce evolves.
Start by assessing your current retail maturity: single channel, multichannel, omnichannel, and unified. The former is ideal: only when you’ve consolidated all channels, data, and operations into a single commerce operating system can you benefit from efficiency gains and customer-centric experiences that Shopify has to offer.
