eCommerce trends 2026: Innobyte, a Romanian company specialized in services and solutions for eCommerce, is outlining five strategic priorities for online retailers and brands in 2026: (1) retention before acquisition, (2) treating performance and checkout as direct revenue levers, (3) decision-oriented product pages, (4) operations and automation aligned with the promise made to customers, and (5) a mature approach to security, where the question is no longer “if” but “when” an incident will occur.
eCommerce trends in Romania 2026
The Romanian eCommerce market has moved beyond the stage where the discussion was about the survival of the online channel. The real question now is how sales can be sustained in a profitable, predictable and secure way.
“We are in 2026, and consumers already expect fast delivery, parcel lockers nearby, digital payments and transparent returns. At the same time, retailers’ budgets are under pressure, acquisition costs are rising, and shoppers’ tolerance for technical or operational friction is decreasing year after year. Nearly 80% of our clients have implemented or are in the process of implementing targeted strategies to improve the areas that directly influence margin and experience – platform stability and security, clarity of the checkout flow, cost-to-serve and the quality of operations.”
Cătălin Bordei, Managing Partner, Innobyte
In addition to security incidents, which range from unauthorised access to data to service outages, companies are also facing increased regulatory and compliance pressure. According to Innobyte specialists, these are the five strategic priorities for online businesses this year:
Five strategic priorities for online retailers and brands in 2026
Retention before acquisition
For many retailers, most efforts still focus on attracting new visitors and turning them into first-time customers. At the same time, consumers are more selective and acquisition costs are rising.
Innobyte recommends rebalancing budgets and roadmaps in favour of existing customers: understanding how and why they return and buy again, identifying bottlenecks between the first and subsequent orders, and treating retention explicitly as a business objective rather than just a marketing KPI.
Performance & checkout as revenue levers, not just “IT problems”
“Website is up” is no longer enough. Page load times, the stability of integrations with payment methods, delivery options including lockers, and the way the checkout behaves under peak load all have a direct impact on conversion and revenue.
From Innobyte’s perspective, performance and checkout should be managed as part of the profit and loss discussion (P&L), not only in technical reports: granular monitoring, stress testing before major campaigns, and a clear correlation between experience degradation and sales impact.
Decision-oriented product pages – “conversion-ready product pages”
Under higher budget pressure, shoppers spend more time in the evaluation phase. Category pages, search results and product pages become spaces for decision-making, not just for display.
Innobyte recommends treating the product discovery experience – from listing, filtering and sorting to the product page – as a single flow that helps the customer decide: clarifying use cases and limitations, transparent information on delivery and returns, using reviews and Q&A sections, and reducing friction related to sizes, compatibility or special conditions.
Operations and automation aligned with the promise
Messages such as “next-day delivery”, “easy returns” or “frictionless experience” must be backed by real processes and systems, not just by communication.
For 2026, Innobyte underlines the need to bring operations and automation into the same conversation as customer experience, performance and margin: coherent integration with logistics and payment partners, efficient handling of exceptions, and using AI in areas of operational efficiency (better search and sorting, forecasting, customer support) rather than only in visible, image-driven features.
Security: from “if” to “when” an incident occurs
Security in eCommerce can no longer be treated as an occasional or purely technical topic. For a retailer with a significant online presence, the question is no longer “if something will happen” but “when” and “how prepared we are to limit the impact”.
Innobyte recommends integrating security into business planning, not just into IT checklists: clear assessment of the risk surface (platform, integrations, customer data, payments), scenarios for business continuity, procedures for incident management and responsible communication in sensitive situations.
Security thus becomes part of the promise made to customers and partners, not only a compliance requirement.
“In eCommerce there is a lot of debate about traffic, new channels and, in the last two years, about AI. What we see in projects with Romanian retailers is that the difference is no longer made by the next campaign or the next feature, but by how solid the foundation is and how priorities are set. If the platform is slow, navigation is cumbersome, payment and delivery methods are not properly integrated, and operations cannot sustain the promises made on the site, any AI initiative or cross-border expansion is likely to amplify the problems rather than solve them. The five priorities we are proposing – retention, performance and checkout, decision-oriented product pages, security and operations aligned with the promise – reflect exactly what we see working in robust projects, and what is most often missing where the platform cannot afford yet another year of improvisation”.
Cătălin Șomfălean, CEO, Innobyte
Press contact
Cristian Moldoveanu
+40 733 215 691 | [email protected]
