358. What eCommerce Businesses Should Focus on in 2026

If you’ve been wondering how your business stacks up after a wild 2025, you’re not alone. After months of hearing conflicting stories—some biz owners up, others down, and plenty just trying to make sense of it all—I ran a Pulse Check Survey to see what’s actually going on in the world of product-based eCommerce.

Then I followed up after Q4 to see how things landed for the year.

In this episode, I’m breaking down those results—what trends showed up, what separated the businesses that grew from the ones that didn’t, and what it all means as we head into 2026. From sales channels and marketing strategies to tariffs and economic outlooks, I’m giving you the real talk and practical insights to help you navigate whatever comes next.

Whether you crushed it or barely held on last year, this episode is your data-backed roadmap for the new year.

Prefer to listen to the episode? Click here.

Overall Results

Here’s the good news, there are more businesses doing well than not. Of all respondents, 70% are doing the same or better than last year. And yes, I consider being flat to LY a success. 

This carried through in the Q4 follow up, with only 13% of people reporting that their profit is down. Everyone else is somewhere from flat to up regardless of their sales.

I was happy to see that the general performance of Q4 held to the stats we saw earlier in the year. 

A few quick anecdotal observations from my community and what Katie Hunt of Proof to Product and Kristin Fisher are hearing from their audience.

First, sales patterns did change throughout the year compared to what they usually are. For example seeing a softer Q2 than usual, but then making up the difference in Q3. This was seen for retail and wholesale. 

Second, and likely the most important is that a lot of merchants felt like they were doing worse in 2025 compared to 2024, and it wasn’t until they were pushed to look at the actual numbers where they figured out oh, I’m actually up year over year and doing better than I thought. 

Moral of the story, when it comes to business results, perception is not reality and the data doesn’t lie. Make sure you’re digging into your numbers before you stress out about your results. 

Alright, let’s dive in starting with Sales Channels

Sales Channels

When it comes to sales channels, websites and Etsy both performed pretty much the same as overall sales numbers with 75% of people reporting flat or increased sales and 25% seeing a decline. I was actually a little surprised by this stat because I’ve been hearing people struggling with Etsy lately. Whether it bounced back or people ditched it, I’m not totally sure to be honest. 

Amazon, Wholesale and in-person saw 40%-ish percent of businesses reporting a decline in sales, so those channels are definitely the softest right now. When it comes to Amazon, I’m no expert but if I had to guess why that channel is seeing a decline for a lot of people it’s likely due to saturation and visibility on the platform. If what you sell isn’t super unique, there’s a ton of other people selling it too. That doesn’t mean Amazon isn’t a viable platform, you may just have to invest in some ads on the platform, switch to fulfilled by Amazon to be more competitive, or if you don’t also have your own website put some effort into driving traffic to your Amazon listings from off the platform vs. relying only on their existing search traffic. 

For wholesale and in-person, a lot of this was likely due to the uncertainty of things at the moment. And this is true even if you’re not in the US. What happens here affects everyone. 

What was surprising to me about this, is unlike what we’ve seen in the results of surveys that Katie Hunt of Proof to Product did, there wasn’t much of a difference in the number of channels for those who were doing well and those who weren’t. A lot of times the data hints that people might be spread too thin, not giving any one channel enough attention. That pattern didn’t show up here. 

Granted, this was a smaller sample size than Katie had, and there’s a lot of variables in the respondents of course. I still stand by my recommendation to do less, but better. 

I did have a question about TikTok shop on there, but not enough people were using it to have any meaningful insight. I’ll be interested to see if that changes at all in 2026. I’m gonna do a separate episode about TikTok shop and what I’ve observed as a user, stay tuned.

Marketing Confidence vs. Decision Making Style

I also had two questions on the survey about marketing confidence and decision making style. 

I was actually surprised about the result. The decision making style didn’t weigh as heavily as expected. For example, I thought those who got stuck trying to make the right choice would make up a larger percentage of those who were struggling… but the data didn’t say that. It was pretty even across the board.

What did show up was the confidence in your marketing strategy. Of the struggling businesses, 92% said they were totally winging it vs. just 24% of those who were flat or up year over year.

If we look at it in the other direction, when we isolate the businesses that say they’re winging their marketing about 61% of them report declining sales.

The clearest lesson from this data isn’t about being decisive or having everything figured out — it’s about whether you have a marketing strategy at all. Businesses that described their marketing as totally winging it, were much more likely to report declining sales. 

And that rings true for my clients and students. Those who create and follow a plan, even if it’s missing the things most of us think we have to do, like posting on social media, they’re the ones that are seeing the most growth. 

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again… the most successful eCommerce and product-based businesses are the boring ones. The ones that just stick to the tried and true strategies that get better over time. They’re not necessarily the same for every business, but it’s usually some combination of email, SEO, in-person or wholesale, launch cycles, and paid ads. 

If you’re in the totally winging it stage, I recommend you take some time to look back at where you spent your time in 2025 and what didn’t bring you measurable results. For a lot of you that’s likely going to be social media It just ain’t what it used to be. 

That’s not to say there aren’t businesses killing it on social media. I know some who started doing so well on social media that they stopped their paid ads. But that is the exception, not the rule. 

At the end of the day we’ve all been sold the lie that social media is free. But it’s not. It takes a lot of time and energy to do it well, especially now. So if you’re grinding away at social media hoping that you’re going to go viral and your product-based business is going to grow… I encourage you to consider putting your time and energy into something else. 

What exactly that is will depend on your business. If that’s something you want help figuring out, the Lounge is a great place to get that support from me. 

More or Less Marketing

For this, I’m kicking myself for not having a follow up question about what the answers meant. I don’t know if more marketing means more consistency, higher frequency, more channels, more experimentation. How I overlooked that, I don’t know. Bad survey creator!

We do get some insight about this when I asked about which marketing activities they were using in their business, we’ll talk about that in a bit… but in the meantime let me tell you what I usually see among my clients and students. 

More marketing usually means higher frequency, for example sending 2-3 emails per week vs. 1. Or more consistency, not missing a week in emails, doing launch events quarterly, etc. Sometimes it means having a marketing plan vs. nothing at all. 

Those who said they were doing more marketing are generally seeing better sales results. 

But that doesn’t automatically mean they’re doing more marketing activities so don’t take that as oh I just need to do more marketing and start spreading yourself too thin. 

The more important insight is that of those who are doing more marketing, only 13% of them said they were just winging their marketing strategy. 

Point is, they’re not just doing more marketing for the sake of more marketing. They’re confident in their strategy, likely doubling down on what already works, or only expanding their strategy when they have the foundations running like a well-oiled machine. 

On the flipside of that, of those who are doing less… 69% say they’re totally winging it. My educated guess is they’re overwhelmed, not really sure what to work on, and possibly giving up too soon on a strategy not giving it enough time to work. 

What Marketing Activities

Now, let’s talk about marketing activities. As I mentioned, I don’t have direct answers about what more marketing means… but I was able to make some inferences from the next question which was about which marketing activities they were using in their business. 

This included things like, sending regular marketing emails, posting social media content consistently, running paid ads, on-site SEO, etc. and I asked them to check all that apply. 

The result? Those who reported 1 or 2 marketing activities, 68 and 66% of them report being flat or up. Once that gets to 3 activities, it drops to 50/50. 

So yes, it’s not a definitive answer, but it is a pattern. 

And going back to our more marketing question. Even those that reported they were doing more marketing, 93% of those respondents reported doing 3 or fewer activities. Again, it’s not a definitive answer but it does show that more marketing, even if it is an additional channel, is still targeted maxing out at 3. 

So to me, the lesson is, do less but better. 

Visibility & Engagement

Then we got to the visibility and engagement activities. How are people interacting with their community. For example, doing live events, collaborating with other product-based businesses, engaging on social media, doing in-person pop-ups, public relations, etc. 

The results here were pretty unremarkable with a pretty even split in performance across each individual activity. 

But the sweet spot seems to be 2 activities with 75% of those people being up over last year. Also, the none of these group was mostly up but that comes with other factors like being in business for a long time, or just starting out. 

Strategy & Growth

Then we have strategy and growth. This asked them to select things such as testing new strategies, offers or platforms, investing in mentorship, etc. Unsurprisingly, those who were testing new things and investing in mentorship saw higher rates of increased sales year over year. 

The Most Impactful Marketing Strategies

So far, we’ve been looking at structured answers — checkboxes, percentages, patterns you can measure. But I also wanted to zoom out and look at the open-ended response to Which three marketing strategies or activities have driven the most sales for you recently?

There was a wide range of answers. Everything from SEO to ads, to in-person, wholesale, social media, and yes… even a hope and a prayer. That made me laugh out loud because it was so real. Some people said nothing seemed statistically significant, others were all in one one thing like SEO or email. 

But when I stepped back to look at the full picture, one pattern did emerge. No matter what they listed, SEO, ads, social… email was almost ALWAYS part of that ecosystem. It showed up more than any other channel. 

And as someone who started this business to show eCommerce business owners the power of email marketing, I was obviously thrilled to see that! Granted, the respondents are heavily weighted to my audience and I’ve been harassing them about doing email for as long as they’ve been in my world… but to see that my nagging is working and it’s positively impacting their business… I’m happy. 

I think the other big takeaway here is that there is no one right way to grow your business. You get to choose where you want to focus, and as long as you have email there to back that up, and be the catch all.

The Biggest Business Influences

Another open-ended question was what do you think is most influencing your business results right now; positively or negatively. 

Nothing too surprising here. 

On the negative side mostly macro-economic factors, economy, tariffs, rising metal costs, etc. Declines in foot traffic, changing shopping patterns, longer times between repeat purchases. 

Business owners are overwhelmed, unable to focus, etc. I felt that big time in 2025 too. Sending you virtual hugs right now.

On the positive side there were a couple of people who said they were focusing heavily on wholesale growth and seeing success from that. One person shared they committed to pitching 5 new wholesale accounts every quarter and sending a quarterly newsletter to existing accounts. They were up 400% in wholesale thanks to these efforts which are covering the 40% in-person loss they experienced… noting they didn’t change anything about in-person. 

I think my favorite answer overall was stressing about it less. I think this is a good lesson for all of us. I know it’s hard, especially if it’s your livelihood. But also, we’re just selling a product. Products that make people happy, solve their problems, etc. Sometimes I think we need to get out of the weeds and into the joy. Bring back the spark we had when we first started and were just so excited about what we were doing. That shines through in your marketing too. Easier said than done of course, but it’s a great reminder. 

Then of course we had the usual suspects of Meta Ads, using data to make decisions, having an overall positive effect.

How Tariffs are Affecting Small Product-Based Businesses

Now onto the biggest culprit of the 2025 uncertainty… the tariffs. 

73% of respondents were affected by tariffs in some way. Either they are paying them because they import their products, their vendors have raised prices, or they sell into the US and their product is subject to tariffs. 

When it comes to how they’re handling it… the top two answers were I raised my prices or I already had enough margin to cover it. 

Those outside of the US, half of them stopped shipping to the US. 

10% of respondents reduced other expenses or adjusted materials, and just 3% negotiated with their vendors. 

I didn’t see anyone charging the tariff as a line item. I think in most cases, if you have a lower-priced product it’s okay to bake the tariff cost into your item price. For higher priced items I would charge it as a line item for transparency, but 75% of respondents have an AOV under $100 so it makes sense not to see a ton of that. 

For the most part the tariff drama has seemed to have calmed down. Admittedly I haven’t been tracking it quite as closely as I did in the beginning because they keep announcing high tariffs and then backing off. As an Italian I wasn’t super stoked about those pasta tariffs.  Of course the drama isn’t over as it will be a bit until the Supreme Court rules on the sweeping tariffs, and larger corporations that stocked up on goods before the tariffs hit will have to start ordering inventory soon. 

While you may not be directly affected by additional tariffs, your consumers will be… and that brings me to what I think we should expect in 2026. 

What Product Based Business Owners Should Expect in 2026

Let’s start with the bad news. I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Inflation, job losses, tightening of the purse strings… I do think it will get worse in 2026. 

I don’t believe the effects of the tariffs have been fully realized yet. Many bigger companies stocked up before the tariffs officially hit. Even if they manage to get themselves an exclusion, just like we saw during the pandemic, and with the bird flu, corporations will charge what they think the market will bear and I expect everyday necessities to continue to rise. The same is true for energy costs. Between the cost of AI data centers being passed to regular customers and oil companies limiting supply to stay profitable, all signs point to prices continuing to rise. 

While the US is not technically in a recession, if you were to strip out the AI investment and luxury spending, we are. The top 10% of earners account for about half of all consumer spending in the US right now and middle and lower income people have slowed spending while racking up credit card debt. 

As credit cards get maxed out and unemployment runs out, people are really gonna slow down their spending. 

I tell you these things not to stress you out, make you fearful for your business, or to be all doom and gloom. It’s just to give you the information so you’re not surprised when it happens. For me personally, it’s the unknown that is the most stressful. Now that I’ve come to terms with it all, it’s much easier to stay focused and move forward. 

And as an elder millennial, this is not my first rodeo. 

I’m not gonna get into the details of what happens with consumer spending in a recession, I covered that on episode 246. Why Recessions Aren’t as Scary as They Sound.  

What Product-Based Business Owners Should Do to Grow in 2026

So. What do you should do in 2026 to grow your eCommerce business? If you’ve been hanging with me for any amount of time I don’t think you’re going to be surprised by any of this but let’s go through it anyway. 

First things first, double down on what’s working and drop the rest. I say this all the time because I know it to be true. It’s proven in the data of this survey, it’s proven in Katie of Proof to Product’s State of the Industry survey, it’s proven in the conversations I have with biz friends and what their audience is seeing, it’s proven in the results of my students, clients, and Lounge members. 

Do less, but better. 

For some of you, that’s going to be the same things that have always worked. For example, ads and email. For others, you might have a channel that stops performing as well as it has in the past and you’ll have to pivot. So maybe instead of focusing on email, social and in-person… now you’re focusing on email, social and wholesale. Or maybe you’re gonna drop organic social and invest in ads instead. Reminder: social media is not free. 

That’s step number one. Identify what those are going to be and commit to that plan for 2026. Give anything new a minimum of 90 days before you throw in the towel and be relentless at it. Think back to that biz owner who said they committed to pitching 5 new retailers every quarter and sending a quarterly newsletter. She saw a 400% increase in her wholesale sales. In fairness, it sounds like she’s newer to wholesale, so of course she’s going to have bigger increases than someone who is already more established there… but still think of what even just a 30% increase could do if you really put your mind to it. 

Next, you want to focus on optimizing for the traffic and customers you already have. That might be site optimizations such as adding bundles and cross-sells, redoing your product pages to make sure people can get the information they need to make a buying decision. it could mean sending 3 emails per week instead of 1, it might look like developing more evergreen products for your existing audience, optimizing your email automations, or updating your product packing. 

Third, figure out how you’re going to get in front of new people. If your existing customers are spending less, you need more new customers to fill in the gap. 

Start with the basics like connecting your product feed to google shopping – someone in the survey mentioned this made a difference for them in 2025. 

Think about where your perfect customer is, and it might be someone different depending on your price point. For example, if you’re a slightly higher-priced item that is somewhat aspirational to your current customer, it’s possible they’re going to find a lower-priced alternative. However, maybe there’s someone who typically buys a different brand that’s aspirational to them, and you are the more affordable option now. 

Maybe it’s time to do more collaborations with other product-based business owners, get into community with other small businesses – since they’re usually the biggest consumers for small businesses, etc. And tap into whatever you discovered in step one. 

Like I said. None of this is revolutionary. But it’s possible that it means something different to your business than it did the last time you heard me say it, so it’s important that you revisit it. 

And then lastly, likely the biggest change we’re going to see in 2026 is the rise of AI search. Shopify announced their partnership with ChatGPT during their winter editions. At the time of this recording the integration hasn’t been released yet. Fill out this form to be notified when the Shopify & ChatGPT integration is released.

While agentic storefronts, that’s what Shopify is calling them, will be super helpful for visibility in search engines, the good news is small business products are already showing up in AI. I talk more about this in episode 328. Your Products in ChatGPT? Here’s How Small Brands are Already Showing Up

And a lot of it comes down to good old standard SEO. 

If SEO wasn’t already on your radar for 2026. It probably should be. I’ll stick some links in the show notes with resources for you. 

My Final Thoughts

One final thought before we go. Focus on controlling the things you can control. There are always going to be outside forces that affect your business that you can’t do anything about. It does us no good to harp on those things. 

As I like to remind myself, sometimes we just gotta put on our big girl (or boy) panties and do the damn thing. 

Do your best to keep your eyes on your own paper, check in with your numbers regularly so you have a true picture of what’s happening in your business, and don’t be afraid to pivot if you feel called to. 

That might look like trying new things in your business like we’ve talked about in this episode, or doing something completely different. I’ve seen people go back to a regular job, some started a new business while they just let their existing product business do what it’s naturally going to do. Some people have retired and decided to travel the world, or sold everything they owned and moved to another country. 

I think the most important thing all of us need to do is get out from behind our computers and I really hate this saying but… touch some grass. I think it’s especially important if you don’t have children like me. When you have kids that sort of just happens naturally. If you don’t, you have to make more effort. 

If you take nothing else away from today’s episode, let it be that no matter how your business performed in 2025, someone else had the same experience. Even if you feel totally alone… it’s just because they aren’t talking about it.

And on the whole, product-based businesses are doing good. Yes, there are some hiccups but the majority of people are flat or up to the previous year. If you’re not one of them, don’t be discouraged. This is just evidence that it’s possible. 

And stick with me in 2026 so I can show you walk you through how to get it done. 

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