How Top E-Commerce Brands Are Already Prepping for 2026

Until recently, ecommerce planning followed a predictable cadence. 

Teams reviewed performance at the end of the year, adjusted budgets, refined channel mixes, and prepared for the next cycle. Strategy lived in quarterly reviews and annual roadmaps, often anchored to peak moments like Prime Day or Q4. 

What’s changing isn’t the importance of seasonality, but the pace and nature of the forces shaping growth. 

AI, retail media ecosystems, shifting consumer demographics, and operational complexity don’t wait for planning cycles. They evolve continuously. And the brands performing best today are responding by planning differently, not more aggressively, but more intentionally. 

For them, preparing for 2026 isn’t about locking in a rigid plan. It’s about building the right conditions to adapt. 

The common thread among high-performing brands 

When you look closely at leading ecommerce brands, what stands out isn’t a single tactic or technology. It’s a mindset. 

They spend less time asking what trend to chase next and more time understanding how decision-making is changing for consumers, platforms, and internal teams. That shift matters. 

Mintel’s Consumer research highlights the expansion of the Extended Middle, consumers who remain active, digitally engaged, and consumption-oriented for longer than previous generations. 

Together, these dynamics create a more competitive environment with more touchpoints, more data, and higher expectations for relevance and clarity. 

Top brands aren’t trying to control all of it. They’re focusing on being prepared for it. 

How AI is quietly reshaping early planning 

One of the earliest signals of this shift is how leading brands think about AI. Not as a silver bullet. Not as an urgent mandate. But as groundwork. 

AI already influences discovery, recommendations, and comparisons across search, marketplaces, and retail platforms. High-performing brands are paying attention to how their products and content are interpreted within these systems, often before making major investments. 

This usually starts with relatively simple questions. 

• Is our product information consistent across platforms?  

• Is our value proposition clear enough to be summarized accurately?  

• Would an AI system understand what differentiates us or blur us into the category? 

These brands aren’t assuming AI visibility will drive growth on its own. They see it as an area where early understanding creates flexibility later. 

Some choose to move faster. Others prefer to observe and test. What matters is that the choice is intentional. 

Retail media as a learning engine, not just a spend line 

A similar shift is happening with retail media. 

Retail media investment is growing but among top ecommerce brands, the focus isn’t just on scale. It’s on insight. 

Retail media environments sit incredibly close to the moment of decision. That makes them powerful not only for conversion, but for learning how shoppers actually behave when choice is immediate. 

Leading brands use retail media to understand: 

• Which messages resonate at decision time 

• How pricing and availability influence conversion 

• Where friction appears in the journey 

Those insights don’t stay siloed. They inform content strategy, assortment decisions, and even broader brand positioning. 

Retail media becomes less about performance optimization in isolation, and more about closing the loop between marketing, merchandising, and operations. 

Why flexibility matters more than perfect forecasts 

Mintel refers to this shift as the Extended Middle: consumers who continue to behave, shop, and engage like younger audiences well into later life stages. As a result, demand patterns become less predictable and less seasonal. 

Peaks are less concentrated. New shopping moments emerge. Historical benchmarks become less reliable. 

Top ecommerce brands aren’t trying to forecast perfectly. They’re building operations that can adjust when assumptions shift. 

That often means tighter alignment between growth teams and operations. Marketing plans are developed with supply realities in mind. Scenarios replace single-point forecasts. Processes are designed to absorb variability instead of collapsing under it. 

Flexibility doesn’t eliminate risk, but it changes how risk shows up. Instead of firefighting, teams gain room to respond. 

Over time, that becomes a competitive advantage. 

Content clarity as a long-term investment 

Another quiet priority among high-performing brands is content clarity. 

Not more content. Clearer content. 

As consumers move between AI tools, marketplaces, and owned channels, they encounter brand information in fragments, often out of its original context. Brands that perform well are those whose content still makes sense when it’s summarized, compared, or surfaced indirectly. 

This doesn’t require simplifying everything. It requires being intentional about how information is structured, how value is explained, and how consistently messages show up across environments. 

For many brands, this is less about redesigns and more about alignment. Making sure product stories, benefits, and positioning don’t shift depending on where the consumer encounters them. 

It’s a subtle investment, but one that compounds over time especially as AI systems play a larger role in shaping discovery. 

What preparing for 2026 really looks like 

Across AI, retail media, operations, and content, the same pattern keeps emerging. The brands ahead of the curve aren’t making dramatic bets. 

• They’re building readiness. 

• They plan earlier, but they leave space to adjust.  

• They invest in understanding before committing at scale.  

• They prioritize clarity, internally and externally. 

Most importantly, they treat planning as an ongoing discipline, not an annual exercise. 

2026 isn’t a deadline. It’s a continuation. 

The advantage doesn’t come from predicting every change correctly. It comes from being positioned well enough to respond when change arrives. 

A final thought for leadership teams 

The question isn’t whether to prepare for 2026. It’s how deliberately you want to do it. 

Some teams will choose to lead in areas like AI visibility or retail media integration. Others will move more cautiously, validating patterns before scaling. Both approaches can work when they’re conscious choices, not defaults. 

At HatchEcom, we work with leadership teams to help them understand what top-performing brands are already doing, where their own foundations are strong, and where early preparation can create optionality rather than pressure. 

Not to dictate a single path forward, but to support smarter, more confident planning for what’s next.