The race is on. The holiday shopping season has already started, and the first step to getting it right is understanding what shoppers actually expect this year. Online shopping, especially on mobile, keeps growing every season. This year’s holiday and Christmas shopping trends bring a few new patterns alongside the usual seasonal rush, all of it putting extra pressure on your e-commerce fulfilment operation right when order volume is at its highest.
Here are some tips on how to handle customer expectations for the 2026 holiday season.
Shoppers Desire Personalisation
One of the top holiday shopping trends this year is personalisation. Consumers are no longer buying as much from brick-and-mortar stores. People make specific searches for what they want, and they’re led to specific results for that item. Searches have become more personalised. For example, what’s the best conditioner for my hair type? It is crucial for sellers to offer them the experience they are expecting.
This is an excellent time to review your 2025 holiday sales. If a customer bought baby clothes last year, do they need larger children’s clothes this year? Do you have new items in a product category you sold last year? If so, offer it to your loyal customer. You have the advantage because you have all the customer data at your fingertips.
That same personal touch can carry through to how the order actually arrives as well. NP Fulfilment can add gift-ready touches like branded wrapping, a gift note, or a hidden price on the packing slip, so a purchase feels like a gift the moment it’s opened, without you having to pack it by hand yourself.
They Want a Fun, Easy Shopping Experience
When a consumer first visits your online store, you won’t know much about them yet. But more importantly, a new customer might not know much about your site either. You want to make it easy to find your best-selling products and to navigate your product offerings and options you want to push. Add great pictures and content tied to the holiday season.
During the holidays, you want to make their search experience seamless when looking for potential gifts on your site. Group into potential gift recipients: mom, sibling, partner or co-worker. Make it easy for your customers to take several different tours of your inventory. Be creative and package your products with playful descriptions to increase sales.
Speedy Delivery is Expected
The number one reason for shopping cart abandonment is shipping issues.
Now is the time to secure your shipping and delivery plan for the 2026 holidays. Work to extend your shipping cut-off dates as long as you can. Be prepared to accommodate the procrastinating shopper, as this means better holiday sales. Plus, late shoppers are more willing to pay extra for same-day delivery.
Partnering with a reliable 3PL warehousing and fulfilment partner could make or break your customers’ experience. Choose one with a proven track record of handling seasonal surges due to last-minute shopping. With timely delivery being a huge driver during the holiday season, this could mean the difference between a repeat customer and one you’ll never see again.
Shoppers Expect Flexible, Easy Returns
Returns are as much a part of the holiday shopping experience as the purchase itself, especially with gifts. A jumper in the wrong size or a gadget nobody asked for shouldn’t turn into a drawn-out process. This is a holiday shopping trend, where shoppers increasingly expect an easy, flexible returns policy before they’ll commit to buying. Calling out free returns or a simple holiday-timing policy on your website could be your conversion point.
Extended return windows also matter more at Christmas than at any other time of year. A gift bought in early December, wrapped, and not opened until the 25th, needs a return window that accounts for that gap, not a standard 30-day policy that’s already expired by the time the gift is unwrapped.
A clear, fast returns management process also protects the sale itself. Shoppers are more willing to buy a gift they’re not entirely sure about (in size, colour, or style) if they know that returning it will be simple for them and the recipient. Make your returns policy visible before checkout to ease this process, so customers don’t have to go looking.
Shoppers Want Payment Flexibility Too
How a customer pays is becoming just as important as what they’re buying, especially over a season when spending adds up fast across multiple gifts. Afterpay’s 2025 research found 56% of Australians want to spread the cost of their holiday spending over time, and 44% plan to spend less than they did the year before. These are both signs that budget control is shaping this year’s holiday shopping trends as much as speed or convenience.
Buy now, pay later services such as Afterpay, Zip, and Klarna let shoppers split a purchase into smaller instalments instead of paying the full amount at checkout. That matters more at Christmas than at any other time of year, since a shopper buying gifts for five different people is effectively making five separate spending decisions at once. Instalments make each one feel more manageable on its own.
Today, the category has grown well beyond a niche add-on. ResearchAndMarkets forecasts Australia’s buy now, pay later market to grow 17.5% in 2026 alone, putting it firmly in mainstream checkout territory rather than an optional extra.
Cashback and rewards platforms such as ShopBack are shaping the same behaviour from a different angle. Budget-conscious shoppers increasingly check whether a retailer offers cashback or reward perks before they buy, particularly when comparing several stores for the same gift. A retailer that isn’t set up to work with these platforms can lose a sale to a competitor on that detail alone, even when the product and price are identical.
None of this means every retailer needs every payment option available. But heading into 2026, checkout flexibility, whether that’s an instalment plan, a cashback partnership, or simply more than one way to pay, is becoming as much a customer expectation as fast delivery or an easy return.
AI is Shaping How Shoppers Find and Buy
Out of all Christmas shopping trends, this may be the one to look out for most. AI is changing how customers search and buy, while also affecting the preparation retailers need to make to ensure everything’s in stock.
How AI Impacts the Customer Shopping Journey
AI-powered search and recommendation tools are getting far better at matching intent, not just keywords. A shopper searching for “a gift for someone who’s hard to buy for” or “a waterproof jacket for a Melbourne winter” increasingly gets results tailored to that exact question. Long gone are generic product lists that they’ll have to filter through themselves.
Retailers who invest in this form of search and recommendation experience tend to see it pay off directly in conversion during peak shopping weeks, when shoppers have far less patience to dig through irrelevant results.
AI on the Retailer’s Side
During the holiday surge, AI-assisted demand forecasting is now a real advantage. Instead of guessing stock levels based on last year’s sales alone, forecasting tools now factor in current search trends, social activity and real-time sell-through data to flag which products are about to spike. This means you’re not selling out on your best products in the middle of your busiest week, ensuring well-timed restocks until that wave passes.
Both sides of this change point to one thing. Retailers need to use data to predict demand, not just react to it, with the 2026 holiday shopping trends in mind.
Holiday Shopping Starts Earlier Every Year
Holiday shopping now starts well before December, and often before Black Friday even arrives.
It’s increasingly common for shoppers to begin looking for deals in October or November, chasing early sales rather than waiting for a single blowout weekend. Black Friday is still a big moment, but it’s no longer the actual kick-off it used to be.
The 2025 Christmas Shopping Intentions Report from CPM Australia and Swinburne University’s CXI Research Group found 57% of Australians plan to complete most of their gift buying in November, with 55% planning to buy specifically during Black Friday or Cyber Monday. That report also found Black Friday has grown enough locally to now outrank Boxing Day as Australia’s biggest shopping occasion. A separate Christmas Gift Buying survey from the Australian Retailers Association and Roy Morgan found the shift is still building year on year, with 29% of shoppers buying gifts earlier than the year before, against just 8% leaving it later.
That earlier start doesn’t shorten the season; it stretches it in both directions. The week after Christmas is a major shopping event in its own right: ABC News reported Australians were expected to spend close to $3.8 billion between the 25th and 31st of December alone, as shoppers hit Boxing Day and New Year sales, redeem gift cards and make exchanges.
That’s an opportunity window for e-commerce stores. Promotions and stock planning built only around a Black Friday-to-Christmas window miss both ends of what’s actually a much longer season. Treating the holidays as starting in October and running into the new year gives you more chances to sell.
FAQs
When should I start preparing my holiday fulfilment plan?
Ideally, by September. This year’s holiday shopping trends show a growing share of Australians buying in November rather than waiting for December, which means stock levels, staffing, and shipping arrangements need to be locked in well before Black Friday. If you start planning too late, you’re simply reacting to demand instead of getting ahead of it.
What shipping options should I offer during peak season?
Offering more than one carrier matters more at Christmas than at any other time of year, since a single provider hitting capacity can leave every order running behind schedule. Go for freight and postage systems that compare carriers in real time and automatically route each parcel the fastest option. This gives you a built-in backup rather than finding out your main carrier is overloaded after orders are already stuck.
Should I offer free shipping over the holidays?
Many retailers choose to, since shipping costs are consistently one of the biggest checkout deal-breakers, especially with comparing retailers being one of the top holiday shopping trends.
If you’re unsure, a free shipping threshold tends to be the more sustainable option. It removes the objection on most orders while still protecting your margin on smaller ones.
How do I handle a stock-out during a sales spike?
Communicate it straight away rather than letting a customer find out at checkout. A clear restock date, a waitlist signup or a suggested alternative all perform better than a product simply vanishing from your site with no explanation. If a spike is predictable based on last year’s sales data, holding a small buffer of safety stock on your bestsellers is usually cheaper than the lost sales and support tickets that come from running out entirely.
What should I do if a delivery is running late during peak season?
Tell the customer before they have to ask. A proactive email or SMS update, even one that simply says an order is running a day or two behind, does more for trust than staying silent and hoping it arrives on time. Shoppers are far more forgiving of a delay they’ve been told about in advance than one they discover by chasing up a missing parcel themselves.
