How ecommerce evolution in 2025 has changed pre-purchase expectations
Corinne D'Andria
·November 7, 2025
Prices keep going up – and that means shoppers are thinking harder about what’s really worth their money.
Seventy-nine percent of consumers say they’re trading down on their shopping behavior in 2025. For more than half of them, that means looking for deals on every purchase; many also plan to delay certain purchases over the next three months.
Today’s shoppers are less focused on fast shipping speed than they used to be, prioritizing low costs and reliability over next- or same-day delivery. Return trends in 2025 are changing, too: Increasingly, shoppers are looking for flexibility around returns, with generous returns policies and convenient return options that make it easy for them to get their money back if a product isn’t what they expected. More than 65% of shoppers say they’d abandon a purchase if the return policy was too inflexible, such as with final sale items that don’t allow returns.
So what can your brand do to win over modern price-conscious consumers without cutting into your profits?
Delight them with a customer experience that instills confidence at every touchpoint. By leveraging the right pre-purchase tools, you’ll be able to optimize for higher conversion rates and ensure that your customers have a great experience with your brand – whether or not they keep their purchase.
Optimizing the pre-purchase experience
The pre-purchase experience encompasses everything that happens before a shopper commits to a purchase. For the average ecommerce shopper, that journey might involve viewing an ad for a product, checking out your Instagram feed, clicking on a product page, reading a handful of reviews from customers, and even asking friends about their experiences with your products. While you can set up targeted ads to reach the right shoppers, you ultimately have no control over how they’ll respond to your content, or whether they’ll choose to make a purchase or not.
That said, there are things you can do to stack the odds in your favor. By using pre-purchase optimization tools, you can overcome some of your shoppers’ common objections before the point of purchase – making it more likely that they’ll close the deal rather than abandon their cart.
Let’s look at some common fears ecommerce shoppers may have – and how you can address them with pre-purchase optimization tools.
Problem: “What if my order doesn’t arrive in time?”
Especially during the Peak Season holiday shopping period, shoppers are on edge when it comes to making sure their orders arrive in time for the holiday rush. While they may not care as much about fast delivery, reliable timing is crucial. If your brand provides vague shipping estimates, they’re likely to look elsewhere.
Solution: Delivery Promise and Branded Order Tracking
With Loop’s Delivery Promise feature, shoppers can input their shipping zip code to get accurate delivery estimates and costs for any product, based on their region – no more surprises. By providing that degree of transparency up front, you’ll be able to ensure your shoppers feel good about making a transaction, with the knowledge that they’ll get their product in plenty of time for their planned holiday event. Even after the purchase, through Loop Tracking they’ll continue to get regular branded updates around delivery status, ensuring that shoppers stay informed through proactive order management.
Problem: What if I don’t want to keep the item?
In theory, returns are a post-purchase concern – but in reality, your brand’s approach to returns plays a huge role in how likely a shopper is to make a purchase in the first place. Over 65% of shoppers abandon their carts during the checkout process because they’re not satisfied with the brand’s returns policy.
Solution: Streamlined returns workflows
Modern returns management requires the right combination of personalization and automation. Using Loop’s Workflows, you can set up customized returns policies, based on variables such as sales promotions, product category, and shopper type (e.g., VIP v. new customer) to provide the best possible returns experience for every product type without sacrificing your margins. By automating these Workflows, you’ll be able to deliver the right returns experience for each customer, enabling them to accomplish their goals intuitively and quickly, with no need to wait for help from your CX team.
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Get startedProblem: What if the returns process would be too expensive or difficult?
Shoppers demand convenient returns experiences: In fact, 70% of customers told us that they were willing to pay for a more flexible returns experience, with half of them saying that anywhere from $1 to $5 was the sweet spot. Additionally, 95% say a poor returns experience would keep them from shopping with a brand again – and if they anticipate that’s going to be the case, they’re far more likely to look elsewhere before even completing their purchase.
Solution: Checkout+
Give your shoppers confidence in a convenient returns experience by leveraging Checkout+ during the checkout process. Checkout+ gives shoppers the option to pay a little extra upfront at the point of purchase, in exchange for access to a free and streamlined return later. More customers opt in than not, giving your brand extra revenue that you can use to subsidize the costs of return shipping and software services. Checkout+ not only makes customers more likely to complete an order, but they’re likely to spend more, too: We’ve seen conversion rates go up by 2.7%, cart abandonments drop by 2.4%, and AOV increase by 4%.
Creating a customer experience that converts
There are so many factors that go into a shopper’s decision to buy from one brand over another – and to keep conversion rates high, you’ll need to make sure you’re prepared to deliver a superior experience at every turn.
By pairing pre-purchase tools that build confidence in the customer experience with post-purchase tools that keep customers informed and help them resolve issues easily, you’ll be able to boost conversion rates and AOV – and retain more revenue from exchanges and upsells if a shopper does decide to send an item back.
To remain competitive in 2025 in the face of economic pressure and rising costs, ecommerce merchants need to embrace technologies that can help them cater to their shopper’s changing needs and preferences. By paying close attention to what your shoppers are looking for, and providing them with a great customer experience both before and after the purchase, you’ll be able to create long-lasting trust in your brand that will result in ongoing customer loyalty and referrals.
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