What if you could make in-store shopping feel as convenient as ecommerce without losing the hands-on experience customers still want? Phygital retail helps you connect physical and digital touchpoints so shoppers can move from discovery to purchase, pickup, and support with less friction.
Key Takeaways
- Phygital retail connects your store, website, and customer data so shoppers can browse, buy, and get support across channels seamlessly.
- Practical tactics like BOPIS, endless aisle, self-checkout, and review displays can improve convenience without requiring expensive experimental technology.
- A unified commerce platform helps reduce stockouts, personalize service, and give staff the visibility they need to support omnichannel journeys.
- Start small by auditing customer touchpoints, piloting one or two tactics, and measuring results like pickup rate, repeat purchases, and satisfaction.
Whether you’re a large retailer adding digital technologies to physical locations or a digital-first brand venturing into brick-and-mortar, combining physical and digital elements in retail is what Shopify calls phygital retail.
Phygital retail blends in-store and digital experiences so customers can browse, buy, pay, and get support across channels seamlessly.
It’s more than a buzzword. This omnichannel sales strategy helps retailers create a connected physical and digital storefront.
In this article, you’ll learn what phygital retail is, why it matters, which tactics retailers use, and how to start building a more connected customer experience.
What is phygital retail?
According to GWI’s Commerce report, shoppers commonly move between digital and physical touchpoints before they buy. Many consumers research products online, while others still prefer to complete some purchases in person. What this means for retailers is simple: customers expect flexibility across channels.
Merging your physical and digital storefronts is one way to meet that expectation. Phygital retail combines the best parts of ecommerce and brick-and-mortar retail to improve the customer experience and support sales across channels.
For example, you may have a retail store and an online shop and you make 25 sales per month in person and 200 online sales in the same period. You may think your brick and mortar store isn’t succeeding, but some online purchases may be influenced by prior in-store visits, especially in omnichannel journeys. And by creating an omnichannel shopping experience you can continue engaging with those customers both online and offline to grow repeat sales.
Having a physical store lets you provide experiences you can’t accomplish online, and having an online store gives customers the flexibility to choose how they shop, pay, and fulfill their orders.
"When we opened our flagship store in Munich last year, we quickly realized how simple it is to integrate Shopify POS. This is definitely an option for the future as we're already evaluating whether to open additional stores."
— Matthias Egbers, Team Lead E-Commerce & Store at Junglück (Source)
3 elements of phygital retail
A simple way to think about phygital retail is that it should feel engaging, timely, and interactive for shoppers. Streamlining online and offline touchpoints to create a phygital experience involves combining the three I’s—immersion, immediacy, and interaction. Here’s what those concepts mean:
- Immersion involves making the customer part of the experience.
- Immediacy means shoppers get the right message at the right time and they can choose the way their order is fulfilled based on how quickly they want it.
- Interaction means shoppers can touch, feel, and engage with products across physical and digital touchpoints.
Successful phygital retail experiences are convenient, fast, and engaging.
9 phygital retail strategies
Like omnichannel retail, phygital retail gives consumers the choice to discover and buy products through their preferred shopping channel. Whether it’s online, in-store, via social media, or at a limited-time pop-up shop, streamlining all these approaches is part of creating a phygital retail strategy.
These nine tactics show how retailers connect discovery, checkout, fulfillment, and post-purchase service across physical and digital channels.
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Let customers choose how they buy
Buy online, pickup in-store (BOPIS), sometimes referred to as click and collect, lets customers shop via your ecommerce website and then pick up their order in-store or at a designated pickup point. It reduces shipping costs for you and your customers and can also create opportunities for additional in-store purchases when customers collect their orders.
Curbside pickup is another order fulfillment option similar to BOPIS. The order is placed online and collected in person, but the customer doesn’t have to get out of their car. Upon arrival at your retail store, they notify you via text, call, or email and you or your sales staff bring their order out to the curb. This phygital retail strategy can be convenient for customers and may improve satisfaction when execution is smooth.
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Provide self-checkout or low-friction checkout
Amazon’s Just Walk Out concept remains a useful example of checkout-free retail experimentation, but Amazon has scaled back some deployments in US grocery stores. For most retailers, the practical takeaway is to reduce checkout friction where possible rather than assume cashierless checkout will become standard everywhere.
In the meantime, self-checkout is a useful way to digitize the in-store checkout process so customers can pay at their convenience. Self-checkout works best for smaller baskets and routine purchases, but retailers should still offer staffed checkout for complex orders or customers who want assistance. You can do this by placing self-checkout kiosks around your store to reduce the checkout-counter line.
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Try AR and VR applications
Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies blur the lines between digital and physical. Retailers are using AR to let customers try on products digitally, while VR can immerse shoppers in branded experiences that help them discover products in a more interactive way.
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Use endless aisles to keep up with supply and demand
Buy in-store and ship to home, also commonly referred to as endless aisles, is an order fulfillment option that lets customers shop and buy products in-store and have the order shipped to their home or wherever they prefer.
The advantages of endless aisles include increasing in-store sales even if you don’t have the products in stock, and creating a seamless customer experience. You can make this a self-service option with ordering kiosks or assist customers with their orders. In practice, some brands extend this by equipping associates with tablets so they can place orders, take payments, and capture customer details from anywhere on the sales floor instead of sending shoppers back to a fixed register.
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Send local push notifications
Building relationships before, during, and after the sale is important to the success of your retail business. Local push notifications help you do this by communicating with prospective and existing online and in-store customers through mobile notifications. This strategy can be used to alert people within a certain distance when new products arrive in-store or to follow up with them post-purchase to solicit reviews and boost customer engagement and retention.
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Use social media to create a digital storefront
Social platforms can add a digital layer to your physical retail business.
- TikTok
- Other social media networks where your customers already spend time
You can even use the ecommerce features available on Facebook and Instagram to implement a social commerce strategy and sell directly through social media.
Social media is a great place to advertise customer loyalty programs, share special offers, and run ads. And engaging with shoppers via social media is a way to connect digitally and provide a cohesive customer experience across all channels.
For example, one way to combine the physical and digital experience is to run a limited time offer encouraging customers to comment on an Instagram post to win 10% off their next in-store purchase. You can make this deal available to the first five followers that comment on the post.
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Do pop-up stores
If your business is primarily online, doing short-term pop-up shops is a low cost and low risk way to add a physical presence where customers can engage with you and your products in person.
Displaying an iPad at your pop-up shop so shoppers can peruse your collection, read customer reviews, and look up additional product details online while they get to touch and try on the merchandise in person is a great example of phygital retail.
Pop-up stores are also a great way to test the waters to see if you’re ready to open up a physical location to supplement your ecommerce store.
"It's a customer experience second to none. It bridges the gap between the digital and physical worlds and creates emotional customer experiences that can't be had online alone."
— Daniel Knight, Brand Manager at Gymshark (Source) -
Create a Google Business Profile listing
Creating a Google Business Profile listing is another way to complement your physical storefront with a digital presence. It also lets you engage with customers, collect reviews, and promote your retail business online.
Keeping your Google Business Profile listing up to date with images, your location, and special offers is a local SEO strategy you can use to attract customers who are searching locally for your products. Making it easier for customers to find you online also helps increase in-store foot traffic.
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Integrate customer reviews
Customer reviews can help shoppers make purchase decisions and may improve conversion rate, so encouraging people to leave customer reviews is important. And making sure in-store shoppers can also see online reviews is another great phygital retail strategy.
You can do this by displaying online reviews in-store next to the related product(s) so shoppers can save time looking up reviews online and make buying choices faster. You can do this with signage or by strategically placing iPads around your store so customers can pull up product reviews that are relevant to the merchandise they’re considering.
Benefits of phygital retail
Developing a phygital retail strategy has many benefits for both you and your customers. Here are a few of the most common advantages:
Enhance the customer experience
Streamlining the in-store and online shopping experience simplifies the buyer’s journey, making it more convenient for customers to interact with your business across various channels and at any time.
With phygital retail, customers can choose their preferred shopping, payment, and order fulfillment methods. More flexibility leads to a better customer experience, more sales, and increased brand loyalty. For example, BOPIS gives shoppers a fast way to get an item the same day, while endless aisle ordering helps them buy a product in-store even when that exact size or color is unavailable on the shelf.
You can boost loyalty even further by building an omnichannel loyalty program that recognizes customers whether they shop online, in-store, or both.
Build brand awareness and trust
Connecting with customers online and in person lets them engage with your business at multiple touchpoints. By giving shoppers the option to visit your retail store, they can interact with your products before buying them. This helps build brand awareness and trust.
For example, a pop-up store can introduce an online-first brand to a local audience, while a Google Business Profile can help nearby shoppers discover store hours, reviews, and directions before they visit.
Offer personalized recommendations and increase sales
Personalized service and product recommendations are one of the notable benefits of phygital retail—and it’s made possible by using commerce solutions like Shopify POS that integrate with your online store and sync both shoppers’ in-store and online purchase histories to their customer profiles.
This gives store associates a holistic view of what a shopper likes, enabling them to recommend relevant products, create a stronger connection, and support more informed purchase decisions.
McKinsey’s research on personalization found that companies that grow faster drive 40% more of their revenue from personalization than their slower-growing counterparts.
— McKinsey
Personalized interactions can improve the shopping experience and support stronger retention over time. In practice, that can look like app-based offers tied to past purchases, or store associates using unified customer profiles to recommend complementary products during an in-store visit.
Lastly, personalized shopping experiences can support long-term customer retention, increasing customer lifetime value.
Boost brand loyalty
Increasing brand awareness, enhancing the customer experience, and using personalized marketing strategies can all help boost brand loyalty. Customers who feel seen and understood are more likely to make repeat purchases.
For example, a retailer might offer app-based rewards that work both online and in-store, or let customers earn and redeem points no matter where they buy. A unified profile also makes it easier to recognize loyal shoppers across channels.
Prevent stockouts
When you use the same platform to manage both your online and physical stores, one of the benefits is unified inventory levels and accurate reporting, which helps reduce the risk of the dreaded stockout.
With Shopify, you can see how much of a product or variant you have in stock at each of your store locations and in your warehouse. This functionality can help merchants identify low inventory earlier and reduce the risk of stockouts.
Phygital operations can also reduce missed sales through tactics like ship-from-store and real-time inventory visibility. If one location is out of stock, staff can often place an order for home delivery from another location or warehouse instead of losing the sale. Case studies from brands like Dalfilo show how immediate synchronization between ecommerce and POS can help a flagship store launch without disruption while giving associates the tools to process orders and payments anywhere in-store.
Examples of phygital retail
Whether your retail business started online or offline, merging your physical and digital storefronts is a sales and marketing tactic that’s here to stay.
Here are a few examples of retailers trying and succeeding with phygital retail:
Allbirds’ app and store experience
Sustainable shoe brand Allbirds continues to use digital and physical touchpoints together through its ecommerce site, mobile app presence, and retail stores. A practical takeaway from Allbirds is that phygital retail does not have to rely on flashy features—it can also mean giving shoppers a consistent brand experience across online browsing, store visits, and post-purchase engagement.
Because the current official Allbirds site does not clearly verify earlier claims about virtual try-on, carbon-offset selection, and app-exclusive product notifications, those feature-specific claims have been removed here. As a more current example from -, Nike continues to connect membership, app activity, and in-store experiences so shoppers can move between digital discovery and physical retail more smoothly.
Luxury retail and connected fitting-room experiences
Luxury retailers have experimented with connected fitting rooms, appointments, and digital clienteling to bridge online discovery with in-store service. The earlier Chanel and Farfetch example has been removed because the cited rollout is dated and not well supported by a current live authoritative source.
A more durable takeaway is that luxury phygital retail often centers on appointment booking, curated product selection before arrival, and in-store digital tools that help associates personalize service.
Gucci’s interactive displays
For a brand that’s been around since the 1920s, Gucci does a great job of adapting its digital presence to changing consumer behavior and younger audiences.
Instead of relying on a Medium article to support broad claims about social media strategy, it’s safer to focus on the brand’s broader use of digital storytelling, ecommerce, and immersive brand presentation across channels on its official site. Interactive displays and visually rich retail environments remain useful examples of how luxury brands blend physical merchandising with digital content.
Lush’s digital concept stores
Lush is a cosmetics brand known for its cruelty-free products, bath bombs, and retail stores packed with merchandise on wooden product displays. Its longtime customers have also enjoyed product testing at various sinks throughout the store. But the brand is stepping into phygital retail.
Product testing sinks have been replaced with clear shelving creating a colorful bath bomb showroom experience. Now customers can use the #LushLabs app to hold up the Lush Lens to bath bombs. Lush says the tool had reached 2.6 million scans since its launch on iOS in . Shoppers can see product information and digital content on their smartphone screen, which also reduces the need for some packaging.
Lush is using this digital experience to create an online community where customers provide feedback on its products and store design. The advantage is Lush can test new products before stocking them in more locations, and involving customers in the product development process leads to higher engagement and brand loyalty.
Warby Parker’s Virtual Try-On feature
Digitally native glasses brand Warby Parker was an early example of an online-first retailer expanding into physical retail. Today, the brand creates a phygital retail experience by helping shoppers try on glasses virtually before they visit a store or buy online.
Customers can use Warby Parker’s app and its iOS app experience to access Virtual Try-On on supported devices. Warby Parker says its Virtual Try-On tool lets shoppers see frames on their face instantly and helps estimate fit.
Rebecca Minkoff’s touch screens
Rebecca Minkoff is a well-known example of connected fitting-room retail. In one early implementation, shoppers could browse products on oversized screens, request sizes, and receive fitting-room updates by text. Inside the fitting room, a mirror doubled as a touch screen so customers could ask for more items or assistance.
RFID is used on the product tags to track the items customers try on and to keep an accurate view of inventory in real time. At the same time, sales associates are equipped with an iPad to manage customer requests and mobile checkout.
Nike’s personalized experiences
Nike Membership gives shoppers one account to access personalized services online and in-store. That unified identity helps Nike connect digital behavior with store experiences.
In Nike’s local-format stores, merchandise and services have been tailored to local demand, and shoppers have had options to personalize products. This kind of localization is designed to make the shopping experience feel more relevant for local customers.
In New York City, the brand’s speed store showed how app-based product selection, self-service pickup, and fitting-room preparation can reduce friction for busy shoppers. This model gives customers a faster and more convenient way to shop across channels.
Getting started with phygital retail
No matter the size of your business, taking small steps to create a phygital retail experience is something you can start today.
A solid first step into phygital retail is to use the same platform to manage both your online and physical stores. This can create more opportunities to personalize experiences, build a cohesive brand experience, and strengthen long-term loyalty.
To make that more actionable, use a simple rollout framework:
- Audit your current channels. Map how customers discover, research, buy, receive, and return products across your website, store, social channels, and marketplaces.
- Unify inventory and customer data. Make sure store staff can see accurate stock levels and relevant customer history so they can support endless aisle, pickup, and personalized service.
- Choose one or two pilot tactics. Start with practical options like BOPIS, local pickup, digital receipts, review displays, or appointment booking instead of trying to launch everything at once.
- Train store staff. Phygital retail works best when associates know how to use the tools, explain fulfillment options, and continue the customer relationship after the sale.
- Measure the right KPIs. Track conversion rate, average order value, pickup rate, attachment rate, repeat purchase rate, and customer satisfaction so you can improve the experience over time.
That phased approach can also make expansion less risky. For example, Junglück used Shopify POS to connect its Munich flagship with its ecommerce operations first, then used that experience to inform whether opening additional stores made sense.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does phygital retail mean?
Phygital retail is the blending of physical and digital shopping experiences into one connected customer journey. It lets shoppers move between your store, website, app, and support channels with less friction.
How do you start a phygital retail strategy?
Start by mapping how customers discover, buy, receive, and return products across channels. Then unify inventory and customer data, launch one or two practical tactics like BOPIS or endless aisle, and measure results before expanding.
Why is phygital retail important for customer experience?
It gives customers more flexibility in how they browse, pay, pick up, and get support. That convenience can improve satisfaction, reduce friction at key moments, and make your brand feel more consistent across channels.
What are examples of phygital retail tactics?
Common examples include buy online, pickup in-store, curbside pickup, self-checkout, virtual try-on, endless aisle ordering, in-store review displays, and app-based loyalty experiences. The best tactic depends on your products, store format, and customer expectations.
Does phygital retail require expensive technology?
No. Many retailers start with lower-cost improvements like local pickup, digital receipts, Google Business Profile optimization, social commerce, or unified customer profiles before investing in advanced tools like AR or connected fitting rooms.
Build your phygital strategy
Phygital retail can help you create a smoother customer experience, personalize service across channels, and recover sales that might otherwise be lost to friction or stockouts. The fastest path forward is to unify your systems, pick one or two high-impact tactics, and train your team to deliver a connected experience consistently.
Start with the channels and touchpoints you already have, then layer in practical improvements like pickup, endless aisle, or better in-store access to reviews and customer data. If you’re ready to connect online and in-person selling from one platform, explore Shopify POS and start building a phygital retail experience today.
