E-commerce orders jumped 147% last year, but growth stayed concentrated at the top: study

We already know rising costs and tighter budgets didn’t stop Americans from shopping—but they did change how and where they spent.

According to Omnisend, e-commerce orders in the US jumped 147% year over year in 2025. But that growth wasn’t evenly distributed. The top 5% of US e-commerce brands accounted for 54% of total order growth, underscoring just how competitive (and unequal) the online retail landscape has become.

The report, which analyzed e-commerce performance across 150,000 brands, also found that shoppers engaged less frequently with marketing overall. But when they did engage, they were far more likely to convert and to spend more.

Consumers clicking on promotions weren’t just browsing. Purchase likelihood rose 51% compared to last year, while average order value climbed 22%.

So what separated the winners from everyone else? It wasn’t more emails, but better-timed ones.

Per Omnisend, behavior-based automated emails drove 25% of total email revenue while accounting for just 1.7% of total sends. In other words, relevance beats volume.

“After years of inflation and uncertainty, people were still willing to spend, but they were much more intentional about where they spent their money,” Marty Bauer, e-commerce expert at Omnisend, said in a statement. “Brands that were able to react quickly to customer behavior had a clear advantage, while others found it harder to keep up.”

That intentionality has been showing up across consumer studies all year. A June 2025 report from Lightspeed Commerce found that 92% of consumers considered themselves at least “somewhat intentional” shoppers, with 40% identifying as very intentional.

And for brands, meeting shoppers where they are means recognizing that experience still matters, even online. A separate 2025 Criteo study found that more than 3 in 4 consumers described e-commerce as “functional,” but not fun.