Today the Commerce Department dropped its retail sales numbers for November. They were better than expected, increasing 0.3% compared to October and 4.1% over last year. One particularly strong category was non-store retailers — largely online shopping — which saw sales grow by more than 10% year-over-year. That added up to about $1.2 trillion in retail spending outside of stores so far this year.

So, as retailers gear up for 2024, let’s look at some of the trends that shaped online spending this year, and what to expect next year.

It only took customers three online orders to get comfortable with online shopping, says Santa Clara University’s Kirthi Kalyanam. Since COVID, they’ve really settled in. 

“Channel habits are so deeply ingrained, once they pick up a channel habit it’s something they hold on to,” she said.

And this year, the physical shopping world and the online one became even more integrated, says University of Houston professor Olivia Johnson.

“Retail stores are starting to be what we call showrooms, right, where you can come in and see the product, but they’re not really trying to hold a lot. And so you’re gonna see a lot of that traffic come and move more to their e-commerce sites, because the variety is just there,” she said.

So when a customer is in-store, it needs to really count, says Bryan Eshelman at AlixPartners.

“Consumers, when they go into the physical world, are not shopping just to pick up items in a store, but to experience the brand,” he said.

He also says selling online is less profitable than selling in store, so we could see retailers making changes like ending free shipping and cutting staff. 

“You don’t need necessarily people buying product for the website and buying product for the stores as separate teams,” Eshelman said.

One thing they may not cut back on? The use of influencers, who customers trust for honest reviews, especially compared to AI, says Morning Consult’s Claire Tassin. 

“A lot of that sort of more human-driven curation has a lot of power and certainly earns far more consumer trust than an AI recommendation might,” she said.

Tassin says while AI has been the big story of 2023, it isn’t coming for influencer’s jobs just yet.