Meet the World’s Best Ecommerce Retailers

This year, global ecommerce sales are expected to rise to $6.56trn (£5.21trn) – a 7.8% increase from last year – skyrocketing to $8.09trn (£6.42trn) by 2028, according to Shopify.

But as spend increases, so does competition in the market, meaning the retailers that don’t adapt face being left behind.

Whether it’s a hyperfixation on personalisation, driving engagement through immersive VR experiences, seamless omnichannel integration, leveraging social commerce or employing AI to drive cost-savings, 2025 is set to be the year of ecommerce innovation.

Retail Week’s expert team of editors and journalists have delved into global retailers’ market leading strategies, pulling out key learnings to provide a toolkit to help retailers shape their 2025 strategies.

The World’s Best Ecommerce Retailer’s report, produced in association with Affirm, Equals Money and Vimeo, explores who’s winning and what you can learn from them.

We’ve pulled out two of the top ecommerce behemoths from the report below to reveal the tech-driven innovations and customer-centric investments powering their growth. View the full list here.

So, who’s strategies came out on top?

Amazon

With Amazon announcing revenues of $187.8bn (£150.9bn) in the final quarter of 2024, ahead of analyst expectations and a 10% increase from 2023, it’s been a stellar year for the retailer. Online store sales grew 7% year on year, accounting for 40.3% of total revenue.

Investments in innovations surrounding AI and final mile have left it in good stead, as it strives to enhance its already world-leading shopping experience.

Last year the retailer claimed to achieve its fastest-ever delivery speeds for Prime members, with over nine billion items arriving the same or next day globally, and more than one billion items arriving the same day or next day in the UK. The company recently ordered the UK’s largest ever fleet of electric heavy goods vehicles to continue this progress—with over 148 vehicles to be added to the fleet in the next 18 months, forecast to transport over 300 million packages each year.

In January this year, Amazon announced preparations to bring its much-hyped Prime Air drone deliveries to the UK, starting with flights from its Darlington warehouse. Electric-powered drone delivery has been available in certain states in the US since 2022, for items weighing up to five pounds.

One of its most game-changing innovations is its futuristic ‘vision-assisted’ package retrieval (VAPR) tech, which it plans to install in 1,000 electric delivery vans by early 2025.

The tech uses Amazon Robotics Identification (AR-ID), a form of computer vision originally developed for fulfillment centres, to automatically identify items—reducing the need for manual barcode scanning, and reducing the time and effort delivery drivers spend retrieving packages.

Amazon Transportation team claim to have seen a ‘67% reduction in perceived physical and mental effort for drivers and more than 30 minutes saved per route’ in early tests.

Walmart

The world’s biggest retailer by revenue according to the NRF, Walmart reported revenues up 6% across the company in the financial year ending January 2024, rising to $648.1bn (£513.1bn), with $100bn (£790m) reported in ecommerce sales alone.

Last year saw Walmart increase its investments in tech-driven innovations across its vast physical presence of over 10,500 stores in 19 countries. It expanded its AI capabilities – implementing generative AI-powered search on iOS – and introduced two key new innovations to target younger shoppers.

It’s Gen-AI search tool, first launched in January last year, uses Gen-AI to better understand the intent of a customer based on their query, session, and engagement with items. The tool then creates a ‘holistic product offering’ in groups for the customer, which is aimed to give customers time back to ‘enjoy life instead of spending their days searching, scrolling and tapping’.

April 2024 saw Walmart’s launch to online game platform Roblox. An impressive 48% of the US population aged 13-24 play on Roblox, according to Statista, and Walmart’s virtual experience ‘Walmart Discovered’ has surpassed 30 million total visits, racking up more than 2.1 million hours of play time.

Through the platform, customers can purchase real products such as bags, water bottles and wireless headphones – also receiving digital versions of the items for their avatar.

The retailer’s second strategy involves its innovative ‘Shop with Friends’ social platform, which it developed after a company leader witnessed their daughter sending photos of different outfits in a store to friends.

Users choose from a series of models to find the closest likeness and create a virtual fitting room of outfits they like, then share a link to their fitting room with friends who can like their virtual picks.

Walmart has purposefully avoided the risk of ‘negative trolling’ by preventing the ability to share negative votes or detailed feedback on outfit choices. Users are also not required to install any apps or create an account to vote, allowing potential shoppers to browse without barriers.