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Virtual stores:
an end-to-end solution overview
October 9, 2025
Virtual stores are online retail environments powered by AR and VR technologies that simulate real-world shopping settings. They enable customers to engage with lifelike products from any device, transforming digital commerce from transactional browsing into immersive, interactive experiences.
With proven expertise in providing ecommerce services for 20+ years, Itransition supports businesses in designing, implementing, and optimizing virtual store solutions that deliver memorable customer experiences and increase brand loyalty and conversions.
Virtual stores in retail: key market insights
Scheme title: US virtual reality in retail: revenue growth forecast (2018–2030)
Data source: Grand View Research
$261.6 bn
the projected virtual reality market size by 2029
4/5
of brands using AR say it helps to drive sales, acquire new customers, and drive performance metrics
79%
of consumers are interested in using AR to interact with a product before buying
Types of virtual stores
Depending on specific business objectives, virtual retail solutions differ in their level of immersion and interactivity, as well as in the range of features they offer, accessibility across devices, and integrations with a broader retail ecosystem.
Virtual showrooms
Using a 360-degree viewer in a browser, mobile phone, or VR headset, customers can enter a virtual replica of a physical store, navigate around it, click on products to view details such as descriptions, pricing, and specifications, and complete purchases via an integrated ecommerce checkout.
3D webstore
Customers explore products, navigating an interactive, gamified 3D environment using keyboard, mouse, or touch controls. Shoppers can zoom in, rotate, and interact with detailed product models, which makes the process user-friendly and playful.
Virtual try-on
By enabling customers to try on products online, this technology enhances consumers’ confidence in their purchasing decisions and minimizes the likelihood of product returns. Using AR overlays or digital avatars, consumers can assess how items such as clothes, footwear, eyewear, or cosmetics suit and align with their personal style.
Virtual try-out
With the virtual try-out capability, consumers can visualize virtual items such as furniture, artwork, or kitchen appliances within their real-world environments. Using a smartphone or AR glasses, they can adjust the product’s colors, sizes, and placement to ensure it fits their surroundings and needs.
Live video consultations
Live video consultants in virtual storefronts help combine the convenience of online shopping with the value of in-person service. Sales associates guide customers through product choices, answer their questions, and provide personalized advice, bringing a human touch to online experiences.
AR user manuals
Augmented reality user manuals enable customers to overlay interactive instructions, such as text or images, directly onto real-word products via a smartphone or AR glasses. This capability helps customers avoid frustration during initial product setup and supports self-service troubleshooting, enhancing the overall post-purchase experience.
Planning to elevate your retail experience with virtual reality?
Virtual store benefits
For businesses, implementing virtual store environments brings a range of operational and strategic advantages, ranging from optimized internal operations to enhanced responsiveness to shifting customer demands.
Increased sales
Virtual stores enable customers to see how products would look on them or within their personal environment, supporting customer decision-making and consequently increasing sales.
Improved customer engagement
Interactive, immersive environments encourage customers to actively explore products, which helps retailers create emotional connection with their products and increase time spent with their brand.
Streamlined marketing research
Virtual stores help companies gather behavioral data, test product placement, evaluate store layouts, and experiment with merchandising concepts that would be too costly and complex in physical stores.
Lower return rates
Since customers can explore and try on products virtually, they feel more confident in their purchase decisions, which reduces the risk of mismatches in customer expectations and product returns.
Stronger brand awareness
Virtual stores and the immersive user experiences they create help retailers stand out in the market and increase brand visibility through organic customer sharing and social media coverage.
Faster employee onboarding
Retailers can train new hires in the safe environment of virtual stores, where employees can learn common store operations and customer interaction protocols. This minimizes the risk of business process disruptions and streamlines employee onboarding.
Unbound accessibility
Virtual stores remove geographical and physical boundaries, enabling customers to interact and shop for products without location or time restrictions.
Reduced reliance on store-based inventory
Since there is no limit to the number of products displayed, virtual stores enable retailers to offer a wider selection of products, which ultimately enhances customer satisfaction.
Virtual store technologies
Virtual retail experiences rely on digital technologies that recreate physical store elements in an interactive online setting, providing the foundation for engaging, realistic, and interactive shopping experiences.
Augmented reality
Augmented reality enhances the physical shopping experience by overlaying digital content, such as product 3D models, usage guide, or contextual instructions, onto the real world through a smartphone or smart glasses to enable product try-ons, in-home item placements, and reduce purchasing uncertainty.
Virtual reality
Virtual reality allows retailers to create computer-simulated shopping environments that either replicate physical stores or introduce entirely new ones. Using VR headsets, customers can walk through the shopping isles, engage with products in a life-like manner, and interact with virtual shopping assistants.
Computer vision
Computer vision allows the virtual store solution to recognize and respond to customer gestures and facial expressions, enabling natural interactions and more intuitive user experiences.
Machine learning & artificial intelligence
Being foundational to creating personalized and immersive shopping experiences, AI and ML technologies power recommendation engines that deliver tailored product offerings based on browsing behavior and facilitate 24/7 customer support with AI chatbots and virtual shopping assistants.
Internet of Things
IoT connection enables the seamless integration of real-time data, including inventory levels, customer movement, environmental conditions, into virtual store environments to ensure the digital experience aligns with the physical world.
Upgrade your store with interactive virtual simulations
Immersive retail experiences: real-life examples
AiBUY’s interactive video commerce platform
AiBUY offers a platform that transforms live and recorded video sessions into immersive shopping experiences, helping brands drive customer engagement and conversions. Powered by machine learning algorithms, the solution analyzes over 1.5 million images to recognize products within videos or recommend the closest matches. This way, the platform allows customers to watch videos showcasing products and purchase items directly from the stream, providing a seamless and uninterrupted shopping experience.
Dyson Demo VR environment
Dyson, a British technology company, allows its customers to interact with products through its virtual reality store. Customers can clean the floor with Dyson’s latest cordless vacuum or experiment with different hairstyles using its hairdryer. To ensure actual representation, Dyson employs high-precision 3D modelling technologies, mirroring those used in its R&D processes, to create virtual environments that reflect the true dimensions and performance of its products.
Sephora Virtual Artist
Sephora, a global beauty brand, has released an AR app that allows users to virtually try on makeup products before purchase. The AI-powered solution accurately detects facial features, such as eyes, lips, and cheeks, for product application and lets shoppers see how skin foundations, eyeliners, and lipsticks will look on their faces. The app also provides personalized product recommendations and step-by-step virtual makeup tutorials. Within eight weeks of the launch, the app recorded 1.6 million visits and 45 million try-ons, highlighting strong user engagement.
RL virtual experience
Ralph Lauren, a global fashion brand, created a virtual version of its Beverly Hills flagship store called The 888 House using WebAR technology. Customers can navigate the store directly via a web browser, no app or headset required, explore clothing and accessories displayed on mannequins and tables, and view product details with direct links to purchase online. Background music and lighting replicate the atmosphere of the brick-and-mortar store to create a fully immersive experience for shoppers.
Ashley furniture VR showroom & AR app
Ashley Furniture has launched two immersive 3D shopping solutions, a virtual showroom and a mobile app, designed to improve the way customers explore and select furniture. The Ashley 360 in-store VR showroom allows shoppers to plan and customize room layouts using an iPad-based design tool, then view them in a full 360-degree environment through HTC Vive headsets. Complementing the in-store experience, the Ashley HomeStore iPhone app allows users to preview the same furniture pieces at home, placing true-to-scale 3D virtual store items directly into their living spaces.
Virtual store implementation challenges & their solutions
Challenge | Solution | |
|---|---|---|
High technology costs & executive buy-in |
Building and operating virtual stores requires significant investments in technology infrastructure,
development talent, and integration effort. These costs can quickly escalate as the solution evolves and
scales, making it challenging to justify further funding.
| To reduce upfront capital expenditure and demonstrate early value, it is recommended to start the virtual store initiative with an MVP targeting a specific customer segment and a limited, but relevant product assortment. Such an approach allows to validate customer engagement and conversion potential without investing in full-scale online store infrastructure to secure stakeholder commitment for further development. |
Data privacy |
Virtual stores collect vast amounts of personal data, including payment and transaction details, biometric
data, and customer purchase history. Unauthorized access to this data can lead to identity theft, financial
fraud, and reputational damage.
| To minimize the risk of data breaches and misuse, a company must devise a robust data governance strategy, which covers the following aspects:
|
Customer onboarding |
Some customers may perceive virtual stores as another passing trend, rather than an efficient shopping
channel. Combined with usability concerns, such as the necessity to use unfamiliar VR headsets or 3D
navigation, this skepticism can lead to trust issues and low adoption rates.
| To reduce friction and accelerate software adoption, companies should design a deliberate customer onboarding strategy that encompasses:
|
Technology ROI estimation |
Because of the lack of a structured approach for measuring customer engagement in immersive environments,
companies often struggle to evaluate the effectiveness and ROI of their virtual store initiatives. Without
defining clear project success criteria and KPIs, businesses risk implementing innovative technology
solutions that deliver limited measurable impact.
| To secure positive technology ROI, ROI estimation must be built into the early project planning stages. This involves defining key customer engagement parameters, such as time spent in the store, product interactions, or conversion rates from immersive experiences, and aligning them with business KPIs like sales growth, customer retention, or brand awareness. With a well-defined measurement framework in place, organizations can continuously monitor solution adoption and customer engagement, evaluate business impact, and adjust virtual store experiences to maximize long-term returns. |
Our services
With solid experience in AR/VR implementation and ecommerce consulting, Itransition supports businesses in integrating virtual store capabilities into their retail systems as well as in designing and implementing comprehensive virtual store ecosystems.
Virtual store consulting
Our experts elicit and analyze your commerce needs and objectives as well as carefully audit your current technology environment to conceptualize a virtual store solution, select an appropriate technology, and develop a step-by-step implementation roadmap, guiding you along the entire project.
Virtual store implementation
We deliver customer-centric virtual store solutions tailored to your specific workflows and customer needs. Our services cover the full implementation cycle, from business needs analysis to post-launch support, ensuring the seamless integration of virtual store capabilities into your daily operations.
FAQs
The final cost of implementing a virtual store solution depends on multiple factors, including:
- Functional scope of the solution, including the number and complexity of features such as virtual try-on, 3D product images, cross-platform support, and AI-driven recommendations
- Integrations with third-party systems, including ecommerce platforms, ERP, CRM, payment gateways, and inventory systems
- Technology stack
- Development team expertise
- Data security requirements
- Ongoing solution operation and support
The integration of virtual try-on functionality into an existing ecommerce platform typically ranges from $5,000 to $30,000, while developing a full-scale virtual store solution with multiple custom integrations and interactive features, can exceed $100,000.
To learn the ballpark estimate for your virtual store project, reach out to our consultants.
The duration of the implementation project is strongly affected by the app’s functionality and the complexity of its elements and can vary from several months to a year or more.
To extend the capabilities of their virtual stores, companies can integrate them with:
- Ecommerce platform to synchronize product catalogs, pricing, and stock availability data across physical and virtual channels
- Predictive analytics software to provide insights into customer behavior and forecast demand for more personalized online shopping experiences
- AI-powered chatbots to provide instant responses to customer queries, recommend products, and assist with transactions
- Payment gateways to enable secure remote payments within the virtual retail space
To create immersive and interactive shopping experiences, virtual stores rely on a set of features, including:
- Store editing tools for modifying the virtual environment, from the entire store layout configuration to the placement of individual products on shelves
- Virtual clienteling to offer personalized support during the shopping process, replicating the assistance customers usually receive in physical stores
- Incorporation of game elements into virtual stores to foster customer loyalty and build trust, capitalizing on human competitiveness and a sense of accomplishment
- Interactive product data displays for customers to access detailed product information by exploring with virtual store items
- Data analytics capabilities to capture and analyze customer interaction patterns, including dwell times, movement paths, and engagement frequency, and derive actionable insights into virtual shopping experience optimization
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