10: Navigating 2025: Trends and Tips for E-Commerce Success

Hello and welcome to the Product Growth Lab podcast hosted by Andrew George and Melissa Pickup. This is the podcast for creative product-based business owners who want to grow their businesses without overwhelm or massive investment. Each episode we explore actionable strategies, real-life stories, and insights from business owners and experts who know what it takes to succeed. Whether you're just starting out or looking to scale, we're here to help you grow your business on your own terms. Subscribe and join us each week as we dive into practical advice and inspiring stories to fuel your growth journey.

This is the Product Growth Lab.

Let's get started. Okay, hello everyone. This is the first episode we are recording in 2025, and we thought we'd go over all of the trends that are coming along, what tips we have, and what opportunities we see coming in for all of our e-commerce business owner listeners.

Everything coming down the hype, or at least trends and like big picture-wise what's coming up. So definitely we're gonna go through what we're seeing, what we're thinking is going to come, and you guys will just know if you agree or disagree, and if so, how you're adding it or ignoring it in your business. Ready to get started?

Obviously the first thing, there's no way we can avoid talking about it, is AI. And I find it's a bit, the people are either jumping on it or they're like, keep this shit away from me.

We have an explicit rating. Just curse how you want to, Andrew.

This isn't gonna be a very balanced view from all sides cuz both of us jumped straight into AI. So we're gonna be talking about it from the kind of AI evangelist kind of side. I dunno how to, like, choose—

if you have not jumped into AI, I'm gonna give you a little caveat right here. Don't feel feel bad. Don't feel bad, okay? I was at a conference last week all about AI. As Andrew said, we're biased, but they were saying there that less than 1% of the world is actually using AI or using these automations at a high level, and most of those are Fortune 500 companies. So you have not missed the bandwagon yet with AI.

It's what— it's one of those things, like, I know a lot of people don't want to, they're completely avoiding it, uh, and that is totally up to you. But yeah, if you, if you haven't done it, listen to the podcast, get on the waitlist for our new membership. We are going to be talking a lot about how you can integrate AI into your workflow and use it to kind of speed up things and help you do things better. While a lot of our listeners are handmade makers, we're not going to replace you. No, you're still going to be making things handmade, but the, the sucky stuff everyone hates— the email marketing, the social media, the how do I reply to this crappy customer and not swear and shout and scream at them, how do I come up with new product ideas, how do I do product list— like all of these things that AI can help us with, how like, how can we do that part of it and get to spend a little bit more time on the stuff we're doing? And like the past couple of years, it's— it has progressed so much. Like, the first time using AI, it was really like, oh yeah, you can kind of use it for an outline and to get some ideas. Then it kind of was like, okay, we're getting something slightly usable. And now, like, things seem to come in thick and fast, the amount of stuff you can do. And the, like, all these AI agents, which are supposed to be coming very soon, like being able to get ChatGPT to connect to their stuff and do all these tasks for you automatically. Like there's so much.

That's the start. Don't be worried. AI can't actually do anything. We start adding integrations and robotic stuff. Now it gets fun.

And I know that ChatGPT's first, I can't remember what it's called. There's a name for it, but like their first kind of AI agenty thing is supposed to come in towards the end of this month, supposedly. I think we're going to see a lot more of that coming across the year, and I think it's something that we're probably going to have multiple episodes that you touch on it or do some deeper dives, and we're going to be showing how we can use it for all sorts of things— all your email marketing, your social media, customer support, integrating AI features into your site. I think a lot of like product recommendations and like email segmentation, all this stuff is going to become really delightful with AI and capture, analyze so much data that we can't, and honestly that we don't even think of. And the things like the image generation stuff is getting to a point where it's— yeah, and like we've been playing with this this week. I think once— I need to play with it a little bit more because this one is like really new and I haven't even found anyone like who's done it to be able to really see how capable it is. But where you'll be able to have your products in there and it can put them into different scenes and things. And it, it's not like, what's the word I'm looking for? Like a catfish kind of product. Like before AI, you had to like, you didn't really know your product, you couldn't really upload it, and you'd end up with some kind of like AI regeneration of your product that doesn't really look like it. But now it's like, okay, I can actually insert this and it creates a realistic depiction.

That are all the Amazon listings that have cut and paste with the product on a person.

There's some horrible Photoshop on Amazon.

AI, to sum it up right here. Kind of this year you're really publicly all in or all out and taking a stand on where you are with AI. And it's okay if your stand changes over the course of the year, just be transparent about it.

Yeah. I know when I first started using it, I was just like, I'll just use it to help me a little bit. And then I really changed over time. But I know some of these people that I admire would never use it. I just mean it's going to be quite the thing that Do that sort of thing. But yeah, let's move on. One thing which I feel gets mentioned every year, but I've seen it spoken about again this year, is the whole live shopping experiences. I think TikTok has popularized it. As of recording of this, TikTok is like always days away from being banned in the US, maybe, who knows. Who knows. And we'll see, we'll see how that goes by the time you listen to this. But it's kind of going everywhere. Like you can do it on places like Instagram, you can do it on, there's ways to do it through Amazon. There's all sorts of stuff. It's not something—

I mean, I do it straight on Facebook. Nope. I've been doing it for years on Facebook.

Yeah. And the, I don't wanna say low tech, but like there's all the fancy things. Like I know like if you're on LinkedIn or something, like push buttons and it pulls up links and images. Like you can do all the fancy stuff or you can just be like, message me if you want this. So there's like a whole bunch of ways to incorporate that. But I think this year it's going to continue to grow. If you use TikTok, you'll see that it kind of morphed from the like trends and people dancing to QVC on your phone. And I don't think that's going anywhere. And especially if TikTok is truly gone in the US, I think that's just going to shift even more over to places like Facebook, Instagram. And I know that they have, I think, literally, what should I say? I know I saw someone taking screenshots of like, there's new, some new buttons in Instagram where you can like, I think you can tag products in a live now. I don't know. I shouldn't talk about stuff I don't know. I should probably look into these things more if I had said talk about them on a podcast.

But anything that takes a, what has traditionally been very transactional and turns it into an experience. Is growing. So to take a comparison, even looking at like the music industry where previously you bought albums and then you bought songs on iTunes, and now who buys any music? Music is dirt cheap or free. What do you pay for? The experience of going to a concert. That's where people are spending their money, not on buying the music, their experience of going to the concert. So how do we bring that into the e-com world? We make these live shopping experiences and there's so much engagement back and forth between the person running the live and the audience. It's just so much fun.

I think that's something we should talk about more, live shows and in-ear membership and things, because from someone who gets sucked into some of these, there are some really boring, awful ones and there's some really exciting ones. I saw this a while ago, it's pretty— I imagine they still do it. But there's like this Chinese one that I think they're on TikTok, like the Chinese version of TikTok, and all their products are like stacked in these orange boxes and they show them for 3 seconds. And it's just this woman standing there opening box and like putting it and people like throwing box out and just throwing them to their side. Like it's insane. And I was back, it was, I would say so long ago that I've forgotten, but they said how much money it makes and it's like insane. Like hundreds of thousands of dollars of just like, just all these boxes being thrown around a warehouse and like, buy it, buy it, here's the thing and stuff. Like, and you're not losing your attention there. But especially, we talked a lot of handmade people, you have such an advantage showing your process. Watch me mixing the soap, welding the jewelry, like by the actual— is such a really easy, awesome way. And you, like, you don't need to interact with the comments a little bit, but I'm not asking you to silently become like study QVC and watch and be like, like those presenters on the, like, insane infomercial things.

Like, you don't have to be the next Billy Mays. Yeah, you don't need to shout at people through the screen and like At least to my right, like the dynamic range of being really loud and really, and kind of shouting at people and pulling back or being really intimate, like having dynamic range of speaking is important.

Yeah. And I know like we always have this like, like skits where it's like, people are just stupid. It's like people spilling things and tripping over. That's like, livestream experiences, another big thing. And I think a lot of different platforms are trying to integrate that more. I like that. We'll see that. A lot this year. Next, I'm gonna talk about sustainability becoming more of a must-have. I've spoken about this a little bit before in the podcast, but people— it's kind of a split. It's like there's AI and there's like all ethics around it, and it's unsustainable because it uses a lot of energy and things, and like Amazon is bad and the H&M, ASOS, and the, like, Temu and AliExpress and stuff. And there's, like, the people who firmly align themselves with, uh, what could be all of that or a piece of that. And there's, like, the extreme opposite, like, I'll never touch ChatGPT, I'm never gonna touch Amazon, I'm never gonna shop from, like, Temu, AliExpress stuff. Like, there's both sides are growing in popularity.

Polarizing. People are more choosing sides, like everything else in the world.

And I think by the kind of people we talk to in the podcast, you most likely don't own Amazon or exist in China. So you're probably more on the— speaking to the people who are on the slightly more ethical, sustainable side. And I think incorporating some of that into your marketing is a good idea. And there's complicated ways to do this, and there's easy ways to do this. Like, some of your packaging can be a little bit more sustainable. Showing how you're recycling your business, kind of talking about a bit about sourcing and how your products can be reused over time, even if you get sick of the thing that you're buying. I bought earrings from Melissa, and after a year, I don't like these anymore, but I can pass them down to someone else. I repair, I do, or replace. But yeah, like, there's the more kind of— it's like, I can donate them and like, they last longer. It's a much more sustainable thing even if—

than the fast fashion.

So there's like a ton of different angles for that kind of as well. And I think it's something people like to see, and I think they're gonna like to see it even more this year. But I think it totally depends if you are doing Like if you're in that kind of like the fast stuff and the people restock a lot, and that's like the thing that we'd sell on Amazon, I think you can get away a little bit with not highlighting sustainability quite as much, but I know it's still good to have. Another one I get excited about is subscriptions and membership models. And these are another one of those polarizing things. Some people are like, I am sick of paying 8,000 subscriptions. But businesses are really keen on recurring revenue. Yeah. And I don't think it's wrong for you to want to get into that, especially it depends, like, again, what do you make? If you are making something that someone has to rebuy every so often, like you're, like you're in the soap industry. Yeah. If you're in the soap industry, I need a new soap every however long your soap lasts.

Is that good?

It's like you're doing me a favor by being able to send it to me. Look at, and you can see what categories they're for. Go on Amazon and search Titan. Does that category, do that listings all have subscribe and save, or are the ones that you only buy once? Like, and you'll see there's a whole bunch of stuff that people are setting up on subscription. Good. And even if you're like, okay. I don't have something that I need to be stuck, but it's fun to have. Like if I can wake up every first Monday of the month and Melissa has sent me a new piece of jewelry, maybe that's just fun. Maybe that's just like, she sent me a new t-shirt.

T-shirts are cool.

Trying to think of all the different businesses. But like I can have a new thing. I have subscriptions for all sorts of stuff.

So you think about it's usually subscriptions fall under consumable. Like the soap, or if you do like, I got, I'm on a bunch of subscriptions for supplements, that kind of stuff, or collectible. 2C, consumable or collectible, are typically the thing that you're using with subscription. And it's the nature of saying like, I need the next one in the set.

Yeah, I've had some for all sorts of stuff. I had like a kind of stationery one where you got like notebooks and pens and cards and stuff that they eventually just continue to buy.

It just makes you happy when the box comes.

I've also had Harry's send you their default razors. They send them Like even on the slowest speed, they send them really fast. I ended up with like 100. I was like, okay, I need to cancel this. Oops. Um, I have On That Ass is another one, which is like underwear and socks. Like I get a new pair every month.

That is kind of awesome. I'm jealous of that one. That one, that was so good. It was so cute. And it was all food samples.

Yeah.

You remember Ipsy?

I've seen the food ones. Yeah. There's a ton of them. And they're fun. And if people are coming to you anyway, a subsection of those people might want to set up a subscription. And it's become even easier to do. Shopify has like their own kind of native plugin that you can use to set up subscriptions. And that lets you integrate with tools like your email provider to do some of that stuff that previously was quite an advanced, expensive feature is kind of accessible to everyone. And you can try it out with kind of lower risk, especially like that kind of recurring orders. Like, there's not a ton of time or money to invest in that. You can just kind of leave that up as an option without having to do too much work. If you're doing something more like the T-Shirt of the Month Club and you're having to create new designs every month and market and stuff, that's a bit more work. You might want to know that, okay, you can maybe set up a waitlist and be like, okay, can I gauge interest in this a little bit? But knowing that you're gonna have a decent amount of people that to make it worth your while with that. And also we sell digital products. Those work really well. Those are subscriptions and membership sometimes. Yeah, memberships, like digital stuff, giving people a community. If you're like a really specialist kind of space, having some sort of group for them to gather in can be a membership kind of model, uh, giving them a download of the month. Like, there are so many different ways to do this. In fact, join our Facebook group. The link will be in the show notes for our podcast, our description if you're on YouTube, or wherever, wherever there's words underneath this video/podcast. Wherever the words are, there'll be a link to our Facebook. Join it, tell us what you do, and we will tell you, we'll tell you like 30 different subscriptions or memberships you could come up with it for. Are you gonna ask chat to give you tea? But way more fun.

Yes. No, Andrew's working on subscriptions this year. I'm going to be doing, to loop it back to chicken nuggets, I'm working on a chicken theme t-shirt of the month club. And so very excited for that project.

Yeah. I like, is that because we like chickens or we like chicken nuggets? I feel like they're two different people. Well, like how much do you like the chicken?

I love our chickens and I love chicken nuggets, and we call the eggs commonly butt nuggets. So I mean, it all comes full circle. To anyone who's wondering, my sister has 37 chickens.

Just mostly is like that. No, it's the whole Pickle family.

In some ways I'm the tame one in the family. Not really, but I like to imagine.

Our next one is localized and micro community marketing. And it's, see, it's like a big shift from what the whole point of going online has been. But kind of with there being so much out there, being able to target your SEO, target some of your community stuff, and being okay, we are small community and we can gather in person. Like, there's kind of different ways to do this, and there's a bunch of different strategies now for that. And sometimes it may feel slightly easier to you instead of being like, okay, I'm targeting every chicken lover in the world. Can be like, okay, I want to target people who have chickens who are in the China burp pit. Yeah, who are in like the state of New York, kind of like.

That's fine.

Yeah.

Yep.

I mean, like, you can do like state of New York or like the city you're in, or what's it always say in movies? The tri-state area.

The tri-state area. Very good. Very good. I'm impressed, Andrew. Really?

But like, you can narrow it down into different areas like that. I wanna talk to these people. And then that lets me, when I'm doing things like SEO and social media and stuff, I can really target a little bit more. It will take your ads cost down cuz you're not going to everyone. You're like getting a little bit more specific. It lets you do things in person. You can be like, okay, we're gonna do in-person events, or I'm gonna go to all of the different shows in the tri-state area, which is And they're done. Kind of become known. I'm gonna go around every single space with a window or a notice board and make sure I am Melissa, the chicken woman of the tri-state area. Every single person knows me. I am on every chicken podcast and chicken TV show. I am on—

gonna do a chicken summit this year.

Yeah, I've done the chicken summit. Like, you think chicken, you think Melissa. Dominate a niche community, and that can be online or IRL.

And the last one on here is multi-channel sales dominant. So being present on many places at once, and we actually have some split feelings on this one. Most of these things we've been in really agreement on, but multi-channel, people who are like, you have to be omnichannel, you have to be everywhere. You need a really, really tight system to be able to— so we mean being on every single social media platform, being on every single marketplace, having plus your website, and just kind of spray and pray. Because if it's just you, it's really, really difficult to master and have content that is specific for all these platforms. If you have a team, if you have systems in place, maybe. But yeah, this is one that we kind of like, pick a couple of specific ones and go deep on those.

Yeah, I think it's especially— we're starting out, definitely pick one and kind of master it before you add in any others. But I do think having a kind of multi-platform strategy is good for like a multitude of reasons. Obviously you increase your potential income, but the platforms are kind of volatile just now. Like if you were really big on X, you might have seen hit. Oh shit, you're really big on TikTok. You're probably in a little bit of a panic now. I just announced all these changes to like fact-checking and stuff, and people are like, I'm quitting here. So like all the social platforms are in a bit of a kind of flux thing just now, and who knows what that might be. And I think you see it with online platforms as well. Like Amazon definitely goes up and down. Like Amazon is huge, but things like Etsy It is still big, but people do not love it the way they once did. And like, they could save it and get really bigger, or it could continue to go down. eBay is less popular than it were. I don't know what they're doing now, but I know that they changed some things and it got—

a lot of people I'm looking at, like my dad, who was an avid eBay shopper, has realized stuff is much easier to find, much cheaper, and we get free shipping on Amazon. I feel like that crowd has finally caught up.

Yeah. It's kind of the same thing that's happened on all this stuff. If you go on eBay, there is a bunch of dropship stuff from China and it's people that are in there for auctions to start with. And it's like, it's all buy it now, dropshipped kind of stuff. And it makes it, it's like when you used to search, it's like, oh yeah, there's 30 listings and I see what ends soonest and what has the lowest visit. Now it's like, okay. There are 10,000 results for everything and people are less likely to buy.

I mean, it was fun when you were putting bids in the auction. There was a little bit of adrenaline there. You set your max bid, like, have it go, have it go, have it go. Who played on eBay? I think right now the rise of the, like, Facebook Marketplace, other marketplace tools have just— I feel like those have really kicked eBay's butt too.

And Etsy has kind of had the same problem. Even though they say it's a platform for handmade, the enforcement really isn't there when it comes to the dropship stuff. The handmade makers can look at it and be immediately like, okay, that is dropship. Those 24-karat gold earrings that they're selling for a dollar, make sure they aren't real. You know, it's not okay with that. But a lot of people who are shopping don't just kind of see, ooh, they're a dollar and I like them and buy them. It's mainly the people on our side that are up in arms about it. Yeah. So like not being too reliant on any one platform unless it's your own. Social media, there is no platform you own there, but when it comes to your site and your email list, you own that. And I think it's still like, I recommend Shopify and Klaviyo. There is still a chance that Shopify shuts tomorrow and you have to move, or Klaviyo shuts tomorrow and you have to move that stuff. But you own it and you can explore all that data and it's easier to do. Whereas with other places, you're really stuck. And if something changes, you're kind of starting from scratch. If you move your shop, people, like, the link still works and you just format things over. It's not so bad emailing switch platforms. If your Facebook— like, Instagram, people get banned and stuff. Your Instagram's suddenly banned, you— that's you, you've lost— you could be years and thousands of followers. Whereas if Klaviyo shuts down tomorrow, I can just export follow those followers over to whatever email platform.

As long as you know before they shut down.

Oh yeah, most, most platforms will give you an option. And I don't envisage Shopify or Klaviyo disappearing anytime soon, but just in that case, most platforms do give you some time to export data.

So to sum that, when it comes to multichannel, if you are just getting started, go deep on one or two, and once you've mastered that, you have a good system, strong system in place for putting content on that, or for putting products on that, or for driving traffic to it, then maybe every quarter add in a new one. And make sure that you don't take on another platform unless you can hire it out to someone else, or you have a strong system in place that when you bring on a new one, the other ones don't dip. Because that has been my issue every single time I try to add in— I'm going to focus in on this next platform Yeah. If you're established, you have a team, then you're good.

Yeah. And having that mix of types of places, like if you're on 5 different social places, but you aren't doing any SEO, that's probably that you've got the wrong idea there. Like try and pick, I kind of split things into 4 things. There's 4? Social media, SEO, like I'm afraid I forget that. Relationship. Um, relationship and referral are the four. I'm trying to have it spread out between those.

That's when your business is safe. Was it, I heard from someone, big ops person recently was saying that if, I forget now if it was 40 or 60% of your revenue is coming from, I think 60% of your revenue is coming from one location. You are potentially screwed. Or if 60% of your traffic, your sales are coming from like one social platform, you need to diversify. Because if something happens and it goes down, the algorithm changes, anything can happen, you're screwed.

Yeah. All right. I think it's okay to focus down and look at if you did start to spread out, looking at what actually works. There's that whole 80/20 rule. Like 80% of your results come from 20% of what you do. And it's okay to go, okay, I have tried. So say that like 80%, but you're like, okay, Facebook is getting me a ton of traffic, but I've tried Pinterest for years and I've never managed to do it. I've tried everything. Yeah, it's okay to go, okay, let's abandon Pinterest. I don't even try to print just really properly, so I'm not in that state.

I've tried to cheat Pinterest and I just got screwed.

Okay, yeah, so those are our key trends you need to watch in 2025. If there's anything else you've seen that you think is important to focus on, please do let us know over in our Facebook group. You'll find the link in our show notes. And if you want to increase your sales this weekend, go ahead and grab our flash sale and a start guide that includes everything you need to have a sale set up and running this weekend. You can download it now at theproductgrowthlab.com/ush.

Thank you for tuning in to the Product Growth Lab podcast. We hope you found today's episode insightful and inspiring. If you enjoyed the show, leave a review. It helps us reach more creative entrepreneurs just like you. Stay connected, and keep experimenting. Follow us on your favorite podcast platform, and don't forget to join our community for more resources, tips, and support. Until next time, keep growing and creating. This is the Product Growth Lab signing off.