Every ecommerce strategy eventually runs into the same test: does the parcel arrive when it was promised.

Online shopping now represents 8% to 10% of total national retail, expanding at nearly ten times the rate of traditional brick-and-mortar stores. But the uncomfortable truth is that while revenue is rising, profit margins are shrinking.

Every product claim a distributor repeats must be traceable, accurate and defensible in the local market.

Although agentic commerce is building consumer confidence and helping UK shoppers find and consider more products online, retail fulfilment is struggling to meet the promises made at checkout.

Supply chains face mounting pressure on every front. The traditional response is to manage through trade-offs: faster delivery brings higher cost; lower inventory means lower service. AI agents break those compromises.

No bank card? No address? No problem. Shoppers in Africa increasingly are buying online from big brands such as Amazon or Walmart even though they have no physical presence on much of the continent.

While marketing and sales can scale rapidly, fulfilment infrastructure expands more gradually. Eventually, the warehouse becomes the constraint that determines how much growth the organisation can sustain.

Demand generation was once seen as the main barrier to ecommerce growth. Now, it is the operational challenge of fulfilling that demand efficiently and profitably that is holding retailers back.

Global postal code models are a non-starter for the local informal economy, says geospatial information company AfriGIS.

The next phase of ecommerce growth is being shaped as much by logistics as by technology.