5 holiday shopping trends every retailer should know in 2026

The holiday shopping season has never been more unpredictable. Some shoppers wait until the final days to buy, others spread purchases across weeks of promotions, and many switch between devices and channels before finally checking out. The result is a customer journey that's harder to anticipate—and less forgiving of slow pages, confusing navigation, or friction at checkout.

Success during peak season depends on more than offering the biggest discounts. It means understanding how shopping behaviors are changing, recognizing where customer expectations are rising, and adapting your merchandising, marketing, and digital experience accordingly. This guide explores five holiday shopping trends shaping this season, along with what they mean for retailers preparing for their busiest time of year.

Key insights

• Timing beat volume this year. Shoppers compressed their buying into a shorter window, so the days you use to get ready now matter more than the raw traffic you chase.

• Device roles have split: mobile wins the visit, desktop wins the dollar. By our math, desktop drives roughly 40% of peak revenue from just over a fifth of the traffic.

• Peak is a conversion-efficiency event, not a bigger-basket event. Revenue climbed because more shoppers bought, even as the average order got smaller.

What are the retail trends shaping the holiday shopping season?

To answer that question, Contentsquare analyzed 973 million page views and 202.three million sessions across 2,029 websites in 71 countries, comparing the 2024 and 2025 holiday shopping seasons. We've turned those findings into five actionable trends that explain how shopper behavior is evolving, why it matters, and where retailers should focus their efforts this season.

1. Peak season starts later, and the conversion window is shorter

The real headline isn't that peak moved. It's that retailers lost about a fifth of their pre-peak runway. Shoppers held off, then bought fast, which puts a premium on being ready before the rush arrives.

Here's the shift behind that conclusion. In 2025, traffic didn't enter peak until four days later than the year before, and the pre-peak window retailers use to warm up shrank from 20 days to 16. By our math, that's roughly 20% less runway to audit performance, test landing pages, and fix checkout.

Yet conversion rate (CVR—the share of sessions that end in a purchase) hit its high 1 day earlier. Shoppers arrived later but bought faster, and the close stayed flat: after Cyber Monday, conversion fell back toward its pre-peak baseline of 1.88%, and January hovered near 1.64%.

So a later, sharper peak rewards preparation over reaction. Treat October and early November as a readiness runway rather than a quiet lead-up, build early momentum with teaser promos and gift guides, and plan for a flatter finish instead of banking on a post-peak second wave.

2. Mobile is growing, but desktop still matters

Mobile wins the visit, desktop wins the dollar. The practical takeaway: treat them as two different stores with two different jobs, not one audience on two screens.

Mobile drove 78.7% of peak traffic, but a desktop session was worth far more. By our math, a visit paid out about 2.5x more on desktop—revenue per visit (RPV—the average revenue each session generates) of $9.29 versus $3.72 on mobile. Combine that with the traffic split and desktop punches roughly 2x above its weight: just over a fifth of visits, but around 40% of revenue by our estimate.

The gap is closing from both ends, though. Moving into peak, mobile's RPV grew faster than desktop's (roughly +78% versus +58% by our math), and mobile conversion rose +3.1% year over year while desktop slipped -3.4%. Desktop still earns its keep earlier in the cycle, when shoppers research and compare before committing.

That split points to different fixes for each device. Strengthen mobile for conversion—mobile app analytics and heatmaps show where small-screen shoppers stall—and lean on mobile app optimization to close the RPV gap. Optimize desktop for pre-peak research, then use Journey Analysis to connect the two into one customer journey.

🎯 Real-world example

Australian luxury fashion brand CAMILLA used Contentsquare's Journey Analysis to discover that mobile and desktop users were looping back and forth between product and collection pages—a sign of indecision and friction. Heatmaps revealed why: the "Add to Cart" button had just 36.4% exposure on mobile, sitting below the fold where most shoppers never reached it. CAMILLA made the button sticky across both mobile and desktop, rolled out a mobile-first product page redesign, and lifted both mobile add-to-cart rates and average order value across its regions.

Contentsquare's Journey Analysis showing CAMILLA's mobile and desktop sessions after the product page—the high share looping back to Collection Pages flagged indecision and friction that led to the mobile redesign

3. Peak revenue depends on more conversions, not bigger baskets

Peak is a conversion-efficiency event, not a bigger-basket event. The season's revenue lift came almost entirely from turning more shoppers into buyers—not from getting each buyer to spend more.

Look at what moved. During peak, conversion roughly doubled versus a normal October, yet AOV actually fell (desktop -16.8%, mobile -11.3%) as deals compressed basket sizes. Revenue still climbed because RPV rose sharply. The win, in other words, was efficiency.

That reframes where to put your effort. When baskets are already thin, every abandoned checkout costs more, so the highest-return work is removing whatever stops a ready-to-buy shopper from finishing. Start with the friction points that quietly drain holiday conversions, then prioritize by impact.

🎯 Real-world example

UK retailer Lovehoney used Contentsquare's Journey Analysis just three days after pushing its Black Friday landing pages live and found a high volume of visitors exiting immediately. Heatmaps showed that filter and sort buttons converted at 13.5% per click—higher than pagination—but almost nobody was using them. The fix was simple: pull the top three categories out of the dropdown and onto the page directly. Lovehoney ended the campaign with +30% on-page conversions, a 20% lower exit rate, and a 17% reduction in bounce rate.

Lovehoney moved its top categories out of the filter dropdown and onto the Black Friday landing page directly — a small change that drove +30% on-page conversions and a 17% reduction in bounce rate

4. Peak investment doesn't pay off equally across every sub-industry

A peak strategy that works for one category can waste budget in another. The reason: the steadiest categories grew year-round, not at peak—so pouring more into the holiday window is the wrong instruction for them.

The data from our latest benchmarks report tells two very different stories depending on your category.

Home goods and health & beauty didn't rely on the holiday rush—they grew by getting stronger year-round. Revenue per visit climbed steadily (home goods from $6.20 to $6.80; health & beauty from $2.40 to $2.70), so by the time peak arrived, they were already in better shape than the year before.

Consumer electronics and fashion took the opposite approach: flat most of the year, then a sharp spike when it mattered. Electronics saw RPV lift jump from +57% to +66% during peak; fashion's conversion lift moved from +56% to +61%. The season did the heavy lifting.

Then there were the categories that lost ground. Luxury started softening before peak even began, with pre-peak conversion down -29%. Outdoor held its baseline but saw its holiday amplification cut almost in half—RPV lift fell from +24% to +14%. It got the traffic, just not the lift.

So benchmark how your own category responds before you set the budget. Look at product mix, not just industry—acquisition analysis and user segmentation show which lines actually spike at peak—and match discount depth to your category's price psychology instead of copying a rival in a different one.

💡Our 2026 Digital Experience Benchmarks report tracks exactly these shifts across traffic, engagement, frustration, conversion, and retention, with Conversation Resolution Rate added as a new metric this year for the first time.

Key metrics from the 2026 Digital Experience Benchmarks—traffic, engagement, frustration, conversion, and retention tracked across industries, with Conversation Resolution Rate introduced as a new benchmark for 2026

5. One global peak strategy doesn't fit every region

Peak pays off about 2.4x harder in North America than in EMEA. A single global calendar and message therefore leaves money on the table in every region it wasn't built for.

By our math, North America's conversion lift (+86%) was roughly 2.4x EMEA's (+36%). APAC traded the steepest order-value drop (AOV -28%) for its gains, and individual markets diverge even more: France nearly doubled conversion (+85%), the U.K. was the most muted major market (+48%), and Japan barely registered a peak at all (+2%).

That range means regional teams need room to adapt. Build local calendars around the demand that actually exists in each market—Lunar New Year, Singles' Day, Boxing Day—use customer language to localize messaging, and compare experiences across regions before you standardize them.

🎯 Real-world example

Skincare brand fresh, which sells across 25+ countries, used Contentsquare's Journey Analysis and Heatmaps to compare how users navigated its homepage market by market. The team could see at a glance where users in each region bounced, looped, or ignored key content—and used those insights to declutter underperforming markets without touching what was working in others.

Contentsquare Heatmaps in action

How to prepare for the 2026 peak season

The thread across all five trends is the same: this peak rewards precision over volume. Shoppers give you a shorter window, thinner baskets, and very different behavior by device and region, so the retailers who win prepare early and act on their own data rather than last year's assumptions.

Carry four priorities into 2026:

• Start early. Use October and early November to test, fix, and build momentum before the shorter window opens.

• Segment by device and region. Design mobile for conversion, desktop for research, and each market around its real demand.

• Fix friction before you buy traffic. Thin baskets make conversion rate optimization (CRO) the highest-return work you can do.

• Benchmark against your category. Compare your peak with the Digital Experience Benchmarks, not a blended market average.

FAQs about holiday shopping trends