Welcome to our comprehensive e-commerce industry report for November 2025. This month's data paints a vivid picture of a market in flux, driven by a relentless pursuit of modernization, scalability, and enhanced user experience. We're seeing clear trends indicating a strategic pivot among merchants, from long-established businesses seeking a refresh to dynamic startups demanding cutting-edge capabilities.

Comic book style illustration of an e-commerce analyst pointing towards a modern Shopify platform, with older, legacy e-commerce platforms depicted as crumbling castles in the background being revitalized.
Comic book style illustration of an e-commerce analyst pointing towards a modern Shopify platform, with older, legacy e-commerce platforms depicted as crumbling castles in the background being revitalized.

Insights & Trends

November 2025 data confirms several compelling shifts in the e-commerce landscape, reflecting a robust and evolving market:

  1. This month confirmed a 'Great Replatforming' trend among mature businesses. We saw a significant increase in migrations from stores 5-10+ years old, particularly from legacy platforms like Magento, PrestaShop, and Volusion. This indicates a widespread move to modernize outdated systems and embrace more agile, scalable solutions like Shopify. Businesses are no longer just upgrading; they are strategically replatforming to future-proof their operations.
  2. Shopify continues its impressive trajectory as the dominant target platform for migrations. Merchants from a wide array of source carts - including WooCommerce, Wix, BigCommerce, and BigCartel - are consistently choosing Shopify, drawn by its robust ecosystem, intuitive interface, and extensive app marketplace. This trend underscores Shopify's position as a preferred platform for growth and ease of management.
  3. While a primary source for migrations to Shopify, WooCommerce also showcased its versatility. We observed a notable number of WooCommerce-to-WooCommerce migrations, often for version upgrades or server consolidations. Furthermore, WooCommerce acted as a target platform for several Magento and PrestaShop users, highlighting its continued appeal for its flexibility and cost-effectiveness, especially for businesses seeking an open-source solution with broad customization potential.
  4. November saw a significant number of high-volume data migrations, with several stores moving tens to hundreds of thousands of entities. This indicates that businesses with extensive product catalogs and customer databases are increasingly confident in undertaking large-scale platform shifts, enabled by more efficient migration technologies. The perceived hurdle of data complexity is diminishing as tools become more sophisticated.
  5. The consistent flow of migrations from simpler platforms like Wix and BigCartel to Shopify suggests a natural growth path for smaller businesses. As these merchants scale, they seek platforms that offer more advanced features, greater scalability, and a richer set of integrations to support their expanding operations and market reach.

Bold Predictions for the Next Quarter:

  • Prediction 1: AI-Driven Migration Tool Adoption: Following recent AI enhancements on platforms like Shopify and Shopware, we predict a rapid increase in demand for AI-driven migration analysis and mapping tools. These tools will automate complex data transformations and error detection, significantly reducing migration times and costs for merchants.
  • Prediction 2: Accelerated Legacy Platform Sunset: The observed wave of replatforming from older systems will accelerate. As these legacy platforms require more frequent and complex maintenance (evidenced by recent router fixes in VirtueMart), and modern platforms introduce compelling new features, businesses will be forced to evaluate the total cost of ownership more critically, leading to a faster exodus.
  • Prediction 3: Hyper-Personalization as a Migration Driver: With enhanced APIs and headless capabilities emerging across platforms, merchants will increasingly migrate to enable hyper-personalization at scale. We predict a surge in migrations specifically driven by the need to integrate advanced PIM, CRM, and headless storefronts that offer unparalleled customer experiences.
A vibrant comic book style cityscape at night, where each skyscraper represents a major e-commerce platform like Shopify, Wix, and WooCommerce, connected by digital data pathways and busy developer robots.
A vibrant comic book style cityscape at night, where each skyscraper represents a major e-commerce platform like Shopify, Wix, and WooCommerce, connected by digital data pathways and busy developer robots.

Platform & Technical Updates

November 2025 brought a flurry of critical updates across the e-commerce platform landscape, with a strong emphasis on developer experience, AI integration, and core functionality refinements. Shopify continued to bolster its ecosystem, integrating Apple Pay into Shop Pay, enhancing AI image generation capabilities directly within its mobile app, and introducing Sidekick Voice for hands-free business management (Source URL). This suite of updates reinforces Shopify's commitment to mobile-first operations and advanced merchant tools.

Wix made significant strides in its developer offerings, launching a new Unified CLI for both app and headless development, and expanding its Bookings API with add-on group methods. Furthermore, the introduction of Wix Vibe GitHub integration streamlines external IDE development and version control (Source URL), signaling a mature approach to developer tooling.

On the open-source front, WooCommerce focused on fundamental improvements, including CSV import support for hierarchical brands, giving block themes control over legacy asset loading for better performance, and ensuring compatibility with WordPress 6.9 button styles (Source URL). Adobe Commerce strengthened its enterprise features with enhanced user management for Product Admin roles and new GraphQL/REST API endpoints for handling negotiable quote attachments and customer creation/updates, with Amazon S3 integration (Source URL).

BigCommerce rolled out extensive API and documentation improvements, increasing customer segments and expanding product API endpoints. Its Catalyst v1.3 release incorporated a cookie consent manager for compliance and gift certificate functionality. Further API and B2B updates refined checkout workflows and authentication processes (Source URL). Shopware introduced innovative features like mixed shopping carts for subscriptions and robust Budget Management with Approval Workflows for B2B. A notable beta feature is Data Insights in Copilot, allowing natural language queries for shop data (Source URL), highlighting its investment in AI-driven merchant intelligence. Even VirtueMart received attention with an auto token system, enhanced waiting list functions, and a crucial router fix for Joomla 4/5 (Source URL). Square improved checkout accuracy with sound feedback, simplified bookkeeping via Reconciliation Report CSV Export, and sped up operations with connected keyboard shortcuts for iOS POS (Source URL).

Internally, our development team addressed several key areas, ensuring smooth operations and improved user experience. Significant work included optimizing Shopify preview stores and streamlining our sitemap by resolving 301 redirects and 404 image links. A critical fix was deployed for Shopify imports to correctly handle the channel_liable field for marketplace orders, ensuring accurate tax liability reporting. Further enhancements to the migration wizard focused on recent file upload logic and more efficient API calls for option checking, alongside general UI/UX improvements like adding reload buttons to admin tables and clarifying top navigation menu items.

A comic book style image of a retro news anchor presenting 'E-commerce News' with enthusiasm, surrounded by speech bubbles highlighting a new report and deep dive analysis.
A comic book style image of a retro news anchor presenting 'E-commerce News' with enthusiasm, surrounded by speech bubbles highlighting a new report and deep dive analysis.

From the Weekly News Desk

Stay ahead of the curve with our comprehensive weekly news summaries! Dive deeper into the dynamic world of e-commerce migrations, strategic platform enhancements, and data-driven success stories. Our weekly roundups provide invaluable perspectives, helping you navigate the complexities of digital commerce with confidence.