As e-commerce experts with more than 15 years of experience, we at WebiProg are particularly interested in one question: What will e-commerce look like in 2035? How will we shop online in ten years? And what role will artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, personalization, and sustainability play?
We would like to share our ideas about what online stores of the future could look like, and we are curious to hear your thoughts and visions of the future.
Today, e-commerce is highly standardized. We have traditional categories, filters, shopping carts, and checkout processes. Images, product descriptions, prices, and reviews are the most important sales factors. Personalization usually happens through algorithms that show us “similar products” or relevant recommendations.
Even modern online stores with AR visualization, voice search, AI chatbots, or personalized product recommendations are still largely built around familiar structures.
In short: we shop digitally, but the way we do it is still surprisingly similar to how we shopped ten or fifteen years ago — just faster and more convenient.
But this could change fundamentally.
A Look into the Future – E-Commerce 2035
Let’s imagine it is the year 2035.
The boundaries between the physical and digital worlds have largely disappeared. An online store is no longer a traditional website that we navigate through menus, categories, and product pages. Instead, it becomes a digital experience space that adapts to the individual.
Customers no longer need to know exactly what they are looking for. They simply describe what they need — perhaps through voice, gestures, or even thoughts. An artificial intelligence understands the situation, asks follow-up questions, and creates a personalized shopping experience.
The online store of the future therefore no longer simply sells products. It understands needs, situations, and emotions.
We would like to share a few unusual and perhaps even crazy concepts that, in our opinion, could shape the future of e-commerce.
1. Haptic Shopping: Actually Feeling Products
Today, we can see products online, listen to them, and in some cases even try them virtually. What is missing is our sense of touch.
By 2035, this could change.
Customers could wear lightweight gloves, smart sleeves, or other haptic wearables that allow them to perceive fabrics, surfaces, temperatures, or specific levels of resistance.
If you are buying a sofa, you could feel the texture of the fabric. When ordering clothing, you could virtually compare different materials. With a technical product, you might even be able to feel the surface of the casing.
This could reduce one of the key disadvantages of today’s e-commerce: the lack of physical product experience.
Haptic shopping could therefore become particularly interesting for fashion, furniture, luxury products, electronics, and lifestyle products.
The online store would evolve from a digital catalog into a kind of virtual showroom.
2. Emotional Product Presentation Through AI
Today, an online store usually communicates with us through text, images, banners, and pop-ups. By 2035, the product itself could communicate with us more directly.
Artificial intelligence could appear as a digital brand personality, answer questions, explain products, and recognize how a particular user prefers to be addressed.
If you are stressed, the presentation might become calmer and more streamlined. If you are curious, the store could become more playful. If you are looking for a specific product as quickly as possible, everything unnecessary could disappear.
This means AI in e-commerce would become much more than a chatbot.
Artificial intelligence could become a central part of the customer journey — from the first moment of inspiration and product selection to the purchase and subsequent customer service.
The key question would no longer be: “How does the search function work?”
Instead, it would be:
“How well does the store understand what I really need?”
3. Digital Shopping Companions Instead of Traditional Chatbots
Chatbots can already be found in many online stores today. However, they often only answer simple questions.
The digital shopping advisor of 2035 could do much more.
Instead of starting from scratch every time a customer visits a store, each customer could have their own personal digital companion. With the user’s consent, this companion could know their personal style, previous purchases, sizes, preferences, budgets, and long-term needs.
It could accompany the customer for years.
For example, someone who bought a particular bicycle five years ago could automatically receive information about maintenance, replacement parts, or compatible accessories. Someone who regularly buys running shoes could receive recommendations when it is time to replace an existing pair.
This shifts the focus from an individual sale toward a long-term customer relationship.
The question changes from:
“What would you like to buy?”
to:
“How can I help you in the long term?”
4. Adaptive Interfaces: Every Online Store Looks Different
Why should every customer see the same online store?
Today, personalization already exists, but the basic structure usually remains the same. By 2035, this could change.
The interface of an online store could dynamically adapt to each individual user. Navigation, colors, content, product presentation, information density, and even the order of individual elements could be customized.
One customer wants as much information as possible? The store displays technical details, comparisons, and data.
Another customer simply wants to make a quick decision? They receive a streamlined interface with only a few relevant options.
Personalization in e-commerce would therefore reach an entirely new level.
No more standard layout — instead, a store that feels like a personal digital space.
The goal would be a simple feeling:
“This store is mine.”
Would you like more information?
Contact us now
5. AI-Powered Sustainability in Online Shopping
Sustainability will continue to play an important role in e-commerce in 2035.
Today, customers often see price, delivery time, reviews, and technical product specifications. In the future, the environmental impact of a purchase could be displayed just as naturally.
An AI system could analyze factors such as origin, materials, production conditions, transportation routes, product lifespan, and recycling options.
Instead of sorting exclusively by the cheapest product, customers could search for the most environmentally responsible product.
For example, the store could explain that a product is slightly more expensive but lasts longer and generates fewer emissions over its lifecycle.
This means sustainable e-commerce would not simply consist of green labels. Sustainability would become an integral part of the purchasing decision.
Shopping would no longer be exclusively a transaction, but a conscious decision.
6. Digital Sensory Transfer Through Digital Sensors
This concept sounds particularly futuristic today — but it could become interesting in the long term.
Luxury brands and manufacturers could use technologies capable of digitally simulating scents, aromas, or other sensory impressions.
Testing a perfume directly through a smartphone or smartwatch? Experiencing a specific aroma virtually? Feeling the surface of a material or the temperature of a product?
Perhaps this will no longer be science fiction by 2035.
This development could be particularly interesting for beauty, perfume, food, gastronomy, luxury, and lifestyle.
E-commerce could therefore take another major step toward multisensory shopping.
We would no longer simply look at products and have them described to us.
We could experience them.
7. 3D Social Shopping: Shopping Together While Apart
Online shopping has long been a largely individual activity. You sit alone in front of a screen and make your purchasing decision.
With social commerce, virtual reality, and 3D shopping, this could change.
Friends could meet virtually in the same store, view products together, comment on them in real time, and, for example, try on clothing or accessories in a virtual environment.
“Going shopping” would regain a social dimension — this time without queues, searching for parking, or long journeys.
This could also be exciting for brands. Products would no longer simply be displayed but staged within digital experience worlds.
The online store becomes a meeting place.
8. Voice and Agentic Shopping: Customers No Longer Need to Search
Another important development could be what is known as agentic shopping.
Instead of searching through ten different online stores themselves, customers could simply tell an AI what they need:
“I need a durable laptop for a maximum of €1,500. It should be lightweight, have good battery life, and ideally be produced sustainably.”
The AI researches and compares products, checks availability, and presents a reasoned selection.
Taking this a step further, a digital shopping agent could even organize recurring purchases independently — of course, only within the rules and limits defined by the customer.
The traditional shopping cart could therefore become less important.
Instead of:
Search → Compare → Shopping Cart → Checkout
it could become:
Need → AI understands it → Options → Decision
That would represent a fundamental change in the customer journey.
What Does This Mean for Businesses Today?
Companies that want to remain successful in e-commerce in 2035 should not wait until 2034 to start thinking about the future.
Companies should already be building flexible, scalable, and integration-ready e-commerce systems today. New technologies will emerge — but nobody knows exactly which of them will ultimately become mainstream.
That is why the individual technology is not necessarily the most important factor.
What matters is a company’s ability to integrate new technologies quickly.
A modern online store should, for example, be open to AI, automation, new payment systems, personalization, new sales channels, and digital experience environments.
This is exactly where the value of a solid technical foundation and professional e-commerce consulting becomes apparent.
As a company working every day with e-commerce consulting, e-commerce management, and support, we see how important a well-designed technical foundation is. Companies such as WebiProg help businesses not only keep their online stores technically operational, but also develop them over the long term.
Shopware in particular offers companies interesting opportunities to build modern and flexible e-commerce platforms and gradually integrate new features.
Learn more about WebiProg’s e-commerce and Shopware consulting services
E-Commerce 2035: What Will Really Matter?
Of course, we do not know today which of these technologies will actually become part of everyday life in 2035.
Maybe we really will be wearing haptic gloves.
Maybe we will order products almost exclusively through AI agents.
Maybe the traditional online store website will disappear completely.
Or perhaps some of the technologies we use today will develop in completely different ways than we expect.
However, one thing seems quite likely to us:
The e-commerce of the future will function less like an online store and more like a personal digital assistant.
Artificial intelligence will understand products better. Stores will become more individual. Social commerce will strengthen the shared shopping experience. AR and VR could make products more tangible and immersive. Sustainability will play a greater role in purchasing decisions. And digital shopping advisors could accompany customers for many years.
E-commerce 2035 will therefore probably have more emotion, more intelligence, and more humanity — ironically, through more technology.
And that may be the most exciting development of all.
Technology should not make people click more.
It should make them do less.
Maybe by 2035, we will no longer search for products.
Maybe we will simply say what we need.
And artificial intelligence will take care of the rest.
Who knows — perhaps we really will no longer buy with clicks, but with thoughts.
Would you like more information?
Contact us now
FAQ: E-Commerce 2035
How Will E-Commerce Look in 2035?
E-commerce in 2035 could become significantly more personal, intelligent, and immersive. Online stores could evolve from traditional websites into digital experience spaces that adapt individually to customers, their needs, and their situations.
What Role Will Artificial Intelligence Play in E-Commerce in 2035?
AI could play a central role in e-commerce in 2035. It could support customers with product searches and advice, create personalized recommendations, answer questions, and automate parts of the purchasing process.
What Is an Online Store of the Future?
An online store of the future could be much more than a website with categories, filters, product pages, and a shopping cart. It could become a digital experience space that individually adapts content, navigation, and product recommendations to each customer.
How Will AI Change Online Shopping?
AI could simplify online shopping by understanding customer needs, comparing products, creating relevant recommendations, and supporting users throughout the entire customer journey.
What Are Digital Shopping Advisors in E-Commerce?
Digital shopping advisors are personal AI-based companions that support customers over a longer period of time. With the user’s consent, they could take preferences, previous purchases, sizes, budgets, and personal requirements into account.
What Does Personalization Mean in E-Commerce in 2035?
By 2035, personalization could go far beyond product recommendations. Navigation, colors, content, product presentation, and information density could dynamically adapt to each individual user.
What Role Will AR and VR Play in the Future of E-Commerce?
AR and VR could make products more tangible and immersive in online shopping. Together with 3D shopping, they could create virtual product environments where customers can view, try, and experience products together with others.
What Role Will Sustainability Play in E-Commerce in 2035?
Sustainability could become an integral part of purchasing decisions. AI systems could analyze factors such as origin, materials, transportation routes, product lifespan, and recycling options and suggest more environmentally friendly alternatives.
What Does Social Commerce Mean for the Future of E-Commerce?
Social commerce could turn online shopping into a more collaborative experience. Customers could meet virtually, view products together, comment on them, and, for example, try on clothing or accessories in 3D.
What Is Agentic Shopping?
Agentic shopping describes an approach in which customers tell an AI what they need. A digital shopping agent could then research suitable products, compare them, check availability, and present a reasoned selection.
Anatolii Mykhailov
Anatolii Mikhailov has been active in the field of SEO and online marketing since 2017. He has extensive experience in developing and implementing marketing strategies, on-page and off-page optimization, and improving conversion rates.
With his analytical mindset and keen sense for digital trends, he helps businesses enhance their online visibility and achieve measurable success in e-commerce. In his blog articles, he shares practical knowledge and strategies for sustainable online growth.
