Over the past decade, cash registers have evolved from clunky machines tethered to a counter into simple, handheld gadgets capable of selling from anywhere. With today’s evolving retail technology, store owners can run their entire shop with just a tablet or a smartphone.
Using a mobile device, a robust point-of-sale software like Shopify POS, and a few retail apps, merchants can process transactions in-store or on the go at popups, markets, fairs, and festivals.
But which retailer apps help merchants the most with day-to-day tasks? This guide shares over 35 of the best retail apps that will save you time and money, broken down into four subcategories. Most are free to download and use, while others require a paid subscription plan following a free trial.
Best retailer apps for 2025
Store sales
1. Shopify POS
Best for: In-store and online sales integration

Pricing: Free
Accepting payments and selling your products offline and online shouldn’t be a hassle. Shopify Point of Sale (POS) is a free app for retailers that integrates with your online store so your products, orders, and customers are always in sync—regardless of where you’re selling from.
The latest version of the app, rolled out in April 2025, added a context-aware search that finds products as fast as customers can describe them. The entire experience has improved, too—for retailers and shoppers.
Upload branded videos or images for idle screens, add your logo, and apply your colors across every checkout view, including the PIN pad and lock screen. Shopping carts have cleaner typography, tighter spacing, and a wider pane that displays more line items, allowing staff to scroll less and stay focused on giving the shopper excellent customer service.
Retailers can also take advantage of easy integration with all the necessary hardware to make running your store easier than ever. Robust reporting features give you insight into data that can help you take your business to the next level. Use the Shopify POS mobile retail app to manage your business from anywhere, anytime.
2. Shop Pay Installments
Best for: Flexible customer payment solutions

Pricing: Varies based on products and market
Through the Shop app, Shop Pay Installments gives eligible customers the option to pay in full at checkout, or pay for an order over time. You can also set up Shop Pay Installments for POS and offer flexible payments in-store by letting customers buy now and pay later. These additional payment options give customers the opportunity to purchase more premium items that might not otherwise be available to them, potentially raising customer satisfaction and average order value.
3. Sesami
Best for: Appointment booking for Shopify

Pricing: Ranges from $19/month to $129/month. Free 30-day trial available.
Do you offer appointments to customers? Whether you’re doing Zoom consultations or arranging an in-store private shopping experience, the Sesami retail app can schedule them without double-booking.
Sesami Flows lets you build HTML or plain-text email templates and send them instantly, or schedule them for reminders and post-visit surveys. You can also use webhooks to send booking events into marketing flows, internal dashboards, or payment-collection tools.
Sesami integrates with Google Calendar, Zoom, and Shopify POS. You can schedule appointments with customers from anywhere, online or offline, and never have to double-check your schedule again.
4. Shopcodes
Best for: Creating QR codes for products
Pricing: Free
Create QR codes for your products in minutes with Shopcodes. Customers can scan a Shopcode with any smartphone camera and buy your products quickly and easily. Integrate Shopcodes into your packaging or marketing materials and track conversions and traffic through Shopify Analytics.
5. Filljoy
Best for: Selling products by weight

Pricing: $25/month, plus $10 extra per month per location. Free 14-day trial available
If your product pricing depends on weight, you may benefit from using Filljoy. This retail app can integrate with a scale, so you can weigh an item, calculate its price, and charge a customer through Shopify POS.
Businesses that can benefit include grocery stores, pet food retailers, and butcher shops, among others.
6. Shopify Marketplace Connect
Best for: Multichannel sales management
Pricing: Free to install. First 50 marketplace-synced orders per month are free; 1% fee per additional synced order, capped at $99/month.
Want to expand your customer base and sell online more effectively? With Shopify Marketplace Connect, you can easily tap into some of the highest-selling retail channels of them all by linking product listings across top marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and Etsy. You can manage your listings and inventory on all of those channels from one location in Shopify with real-time marketplace sync, and sell in all regions and categories with built-in currency conversions, all with a single app.
Operations and staff management
1. Jobly
Best for: Creating job boards and managing hiring processes

Pricing: Free plan available, with Professional plan at $4.99/month
Want to hire retail staff more efficiently? When you start to grow and scale up your business, Jobly is a job-posting and career page builder that lets you manage the hiring process directly from your Shopify store.
The platform features two main components: job management and applicant handling. It automatically generates a careers page that displays all job listings with detailed views, and includes a built-in application system for candidates to submit résumés and cover letters.
Not unlike how you treat customers, how you interact with people through the hiring process plays a role in how your brand is perceived in the world. Someone who you’ve inadvertently “ghosted” in the application process is not likely to speak well of your business, much less return as a customer. Run an efficient process that gets you staffed up quickly without letting people fall through the cracks, with help from AI-powered features like:
- A job description generator that drafts job listings that match your brand voice to attract the right candidates
- Smart application sorting that assigns machine learning scores and identifies top candidates.
- Automated candidate emails for confirmations, interview invites, and timely rejections
The free tier provides basic functionality, including job board creation and simple application forms, while the Professional plan adds unlimited applications, file uploads, and candidate rating features.
2. EasyTeam POS staff management
Best for: Employee scheduling

Pricing: Free for up to one staff member, $30/month for up to six staff members +$5 for each additional, $149/month for over 50 employees, with a 14-day free trial available
Track employee working hours accurately using EasyTeam’s POS system integration. It’s ideal for retail stores that need retail staff management features like easy scheduling and evaluating sales performance.
EasyTeam’s latest updates help save you from paying extra to stand around on a day that’s not busy, or providing mediocre customer service when you understaff on a day when you get slammed. The app now features AI-powered scheduling that analyzes historical sales to predict busy windows and suggest optimal rosters, taking the guesswork out of staffing your store. The December 2024 “Peak Hours” release introduced traffic prediction to mitigate over- and understaffing.
Employees also appreciate the mobile app that lets them clock in and out with a tap. You can also schedule working hours, track sales commission, and approve timesheets. All of this data is imported into your payroll software, saving you time and ensuring your employees are paid accurately.
3. magicplan
Best for: Retail floor planning
Pricing: Ranges from $9.99/month to $89.99/month, with free trial available
One of the most important decisions you will make for your retail space is store layout. But for a retailer without a background in interior design, it can be hard to envision how to optimize your space, or present your ideas in a way that staff or contractors can translate into actual results. That’s where magicplan can help.
Using augmented reality, merchants can create professional floor plans by scanning the room with their smartphones or tablets and customizing them with pictures. Use magicplan to generate job estimates, view your space in 3D, plan DIY projects, and furnish your space in a way that attracts customers and increases sales.
4. DocuSign
Best for: Secure electronic document signing
Pricing: The app is free to download; e-signature plans range from $10/month for individual use to $25/month per user for teams with annual billing.
The last thing a busy business owner needs is to have a new project or new hire delayed while digging through stacks of paper or electronic files looking for a key document you just know you had signed last week.
With the DocuSign app, merchants can prepare and send documents for electronic signature—completing contracts, employment paperwork, and other forms—and get instant visibility into each document’s status directly from their smartphone or tablet.
This helps retailers go paperless while still accessing a quick and secure way to sign contracts and send off vendor agreements for signature. Each document is safely stored in the cloud, so you know exactly where to find it when needed.
DocuSign’s new Iris engine and AI agents can scan agreements, flag risks, and extract obligations. These features run in your DocuSign account and are available to any connected Shopify store.
5. Shopify Flow
Shopify Flow helps you automate routine but important tasks and integrate different aspects of your retail operations to make business flow smoothly. The platform uses a visual editor to create custom automations and set up complex workflows using conditional logic. It connects seamlessly with other apps like Slack, Google Sheets, Trello, Asana, and Klaviyo.
Get hundreds of prebuilt templates for common use cases like reordering, restocking, or managing fraud concerns. Flow also integrates with store elements like metafields, tags, fulfillment, and B2B. By automating the routine parts of your workflow, you can focus on bigger-picture projects and growth.
6. Dor
Best for: Foot traffic counting and analytics

Pricing: Free to install, $99/month for analytics, plus a $200 one-time fee for hardware
Do you know how many people visit your retail store each day? Uncover those insights with Dor. Its thermal-sensing camera attaches to your storefront’s entrance and tracks how many people visit.
Dor also integrates with your Shopify POS equipment so you can compare foot traffic data with revenue—the ratio of visitors to sales can tell you if your store layout and staff are doing enough to convert browsers to customers. You can also uncover insights like what time of day your most likely buyers visit—even what type of weather causes an uplift in retail sales.
7. Barcodify
Best for: Speeding up customer identification at checkout

Pricing: $14.99/month with 14-day free trial
Barcodify offers retailers an easy way to speed up their checkout process by assigning a unique barcode to each customer. The app integrates with Shopify POS and allows merchants to create both physical and digital store cards, with support for Apple and Google mobile wallets.
You can distribute these codes through multiple channels, including printed cards, automated notifications, or website integrations, and track usage with built-in analytics. With a perfect 5.0-star rating, retailers praise its ease of use and time-saving benefits during busy periods.
8. Zapiet
Best for: Managing in-store pickup
Pricing: Free plan available
Zapiet adds in-store pickup and local delivery options to your online store, letting customers choose when and where they want their orders delivered or picked up.
This business app also works with Shopify POS to help you manage delivery zones, rates, and order limits through a single dashboard. Its user-friendly interface and integrations with Klaviyo and Shopify Flow make it a key tool for retailers looking to improve their unified commerce strategy. Use these integrations to easily reach out to customers with personalized emails letting them know about delivery and pickup options based on their location.
9. WorkMate

Pricing: Starts at $50/month. 14-day free trial available
WorkMate helps retailers manage work orders right from their Shopify POS system. It lets you create work orders, track inventory, manage vendors, and handle labor charges or fees. With WorkMate, you can send work orders directly to suppliers via email and easily convert them into sales transactions.
Inventory
1. Stocky
Best for: Inventory management

Pricing: Free to install and included in Shopify POS Pro subscriptions
Inventory management can be tricky for a retail business. Stocky shows you what you have in stock, which items are moving quickly, and which stock needs replenishing.
Stocky spotlights your bestselling products in its app dashboard, alongside how many are left in stock. This tool helps you spot upcoming shortages, so your most popular products are always available for purchase, which keeps customers happy and revenue growing.
2. Ordersify: Restocked Alerts
Best for: Restock notifications

Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans range from $9.99/month to $39.99/month.
Experiencing a stockout? Ordersify is a Shopify app that offers email customization and daily inventory reports. There are also low-stock and back-in-stock notifications, which can help you retain customers by keeping them informed.
To receive automated alerts, customers enter their email addresses and get reminders via email or push notifications when inventory is replenished and the product is available for purchase. This interaction makes it easier for customers to get the products they want, and keeps them connected to your store.
3. Freshly Batch Inventory
Best for: Expiry date tracking

Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans range from $24/month to $199/month.
Retailers who sell perishable goods need to keep a close eye on their stock. Food and drink items, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals may include ingredients whose freshness can affect the quality of their products. Failing to keep track of this crucial data could lead to losing valuable stock—or worse, losing a customer when they receive an expired product.
Freshly Batch Inventory helps you track product-batch details and expiration dates of perishable goods. It also supports demand forecasting, preventing you from overordering stock that will expire before you can sell it—and as items approach expiration, you can mark them for automatic discounts. You can use these insights to prioritize which products to sell first and fulfill orders using the first-expired, first-out (FEFO) method. Freshly Commerce also helps you track recalled products based on their batch number.
4. ReturnZap
Best for: Returns and exchanges management

Pricing: Plans range from $29.95/month to $79/month, with a 14-day free trial available.
No retailer wants their products returned—but if your customers can’t figure out how to return a product that’s not quite right, they’re not likely to purchase from you again. No longer an afterthought, modern retailers recognize that an easy returns process is a key part of customer service and retention.
ReturnZap is a highly rated retail app built for Shopify. It helps retailers automate returns, exchanges, and return shipping.
You can build a branded self-serve return portal that’s integrated with your Shopify store. Plus, you can automate return labels for dozens of carriers in the US, Canada, Australia, UK, and EU. ReturnZap is easy and fast to set up and offers world-class customer support. Make the returns process easier for your business—and your customers.
5. PML Stock Take Inventory Count
Best for: Speeding up the stock-taking process

Pricing: Plans range from $10.79/month to $37.79/month. 14-day free trial available.
PML Stock Take Inventory Count is a solution for physical stores that need to manage their inventory through regular stock takes.
The app integrates deeply with Shopify POS, so you can scan barcodes using multiple devices simultaneously and create customized stock takes for any location. It also lets you view the progress of each stock take and export reports to get a full picture of your inventory status, including cycle counts and missing items. Take advantage of this useful app to more efficiently manage a potentially tedious—but important—task.
Marketing
- Shop
- Google Business Profile
- Google & YouTube app
- Facebook & Instagram channel
- TikTok
- Shopify Email
- Loox
- Yotpo
- Klaviyo
1. Shop
Best for: Fast, high-converting checkout

Pricing: Free with Shop Pay
The checkout page is arguably one of the most important pages on any retailer’s website. These days, consumers want fast and easy checkout processes. The Shop app delivers on that with Shop Pay, the fastest and best-coverting accelerated checkout around. Shop Pay is a wallet that automatically fills in a customer’s saved email, payment, and shipping details so they can check out with the click of a button. That ease is why Shop Pay converts up to 50% better than guest checkout.
Shop’s mobile app also gives customers real-time order tracking and a list of popular products from the shops they follow. Retailers can also manage the entire post-purchase journey using push notifications to drive future sales. Stay connected with your customers and keep your business top of mind when they’re ready for their next purchase.
2. Google Business Profile
Best for: Managing online business presence

Pricing: Free
Twenty-one percent of US consumers use the internet to find local businesses on a daily basis. For example, a search query might be “groceries near me.”
The mobile app for Google Business Profile helps you to reach those local shoppers and drive them to your brick-and-mortar store. You can use it to customize your business listing from anywhere, and step out from the crowd with strategies like:
- Personalize your listing for better engagement (such as identify it as a women-owned or Black-owned business)
- Update your opening hours so customers don’t show up when you’re closed
- Post special offers and in-store flash sales
- Share customer and business photos
- Showcase great reviews of your business from real customers
Google now runs Gemini models to spot fake reviews and suspicious listing edits. With millions of policy-violating reviews now auto-removed each year, you spend less effort reporting abuse and more time engaging with real customers.
3. Google & YouTube app
Best for: Advertising on Google

Search engines are the first stop for 30% of online shoppers when they’re looking for specific products.
The Google & YouTube app allows you to reach those shoppers with paid ads, so you’ll appear in the top results even if your organic SEO strategy doesn’t get you there yet. You can use the same app to sell items from your Shopify store through YouTube, giving you another way to connect with shoppers.
The app also lets you list products for free (with a Google Merchant Center account) on Google Shopping. You can also run Google PPC campaigns and adjust budgets without leaving your Shopify dashboard.
The channel also supports Performance Max, AI Max for Search, Smart Bidding Exploration, and AI image-editing for creatives, letting Google’s models take care of your campaign targeting, bids, and assets.
4. Facebook & Instagram channel
Best for: Selling on Facebook and Instagram

Pricing: Free to install, but you must fund your ad campaigns.
Capture the billions of consumers actively using social media with these retail apps. The Facebook & Instagram channel integrates with Facebook Shops and Instagram Shopping so your inventory is accurate and up to date across those valuable channels. Leverage the Instagram channel as a marketing opportunity to create buzz around new products, announce popups and limited product “drops,” and create custom product pages.
Both the Facebook and Instagram apps help retailers build an audience with fun social engagement. You’ll sell directly through two of the most popular social media platforms globally—and can manage your orders through your Shopify admin.
5. TikTok
Best for: Advertising and selling on TikTok

Pricing: Free to install, but you must fund your ad campaigns.
When you’re ready to tap into the hyper-engaged younger demographic, the TikTok app on Shopify makes selling on TikTok easy. You can build TikTok ads in minutes by uploading images or videos, keeping it casual to match the vibe of the increasingly popular platform. Then install the TikTok pixel in one click to measure performance.
Easily sync your product catalog and you’re ready to create engaging TikTok ad campaigns. The app lets you manage and track new orders by selling directly via TikTok Shop if you’re located in the US or UK.
To help build engaging ads, the in-channel Symphony Assistant generates ad scripts, brainstorms hooks, translates captions, and recommends trends, all from a chat-style interface inside TikTok Creative Center.
6. Shopify Email
Best for: Email marketing within Shopify
Pricing: Your first 10,000 emails each month are free. After, pricing starts at $1 per 1,000 emails per month.
Shopify Email is an out-of-the-box email marketing tool that acquires and engages customers. Create branded emails in minutes with a drag-and-drop editor, and choose from sales-ready templates to showcase products directly from your store.
Shopify Email automatically pulls your logo, images, prices, and descriptions into your template, taking the effort out of formatting branded emails, so you can focus on messaging. For additional help, Shopify Magic’s AI writes subject lines and body copy, improves reach with send-time optimization, and lets you generate new variations with one click, built directly into the Shopify Email editor.
When you’re ready to send your email, choose from Shopify’s automation templates to send the right email at the right time to targeted customer segments. You’ll find email templates for all types of campaigns, including:
- Abandoned cart
- Checkout
- Drip campaigns
- Newsletters
- Welcome emails
- Winbox emails
The best part? Your first 10,000 emails each month are free.
7. Loox
Pricing: Prices range from $12.99/month to $299.99/month. 7-day free trial available
Loox is a product review app that automates social proof for Shopify stores. You can use it to:
- Email customers to request reviews (Hint: Offer a 10% discount on their next purchase to customers who submit a review.)
- Reward photo/video submissions with additional discounts
- Display those UGC-rich reviews in fully customizable eye-catching widgets
New one-click referrals turn happy buyers into advocates—you reap the benefits of their good will while they feel appreciated and connected to your business. As shoppers get closer to checkout, specialized upsell blocks highlight well-reviewed products at the perfect time to get them to add to cart.
The app syncs reviews to and from the Shop app, Meta Shops, Google Shopping, and Search. You can also import feedback from other platforms like Judge.me, Yotpo, Okendo, and Stamped. Loox supports multiple languages, fits every Shopify theme, and offers 24/7 customer support.
8. Yotpo
Best for: SMS marketing

Pricing: Free to install; plans range from $19/month to $199/month.
There are several ways to communicate with existing and potential customers, including email, social media, and live chat. SMS marketing is one of the more affordable options—and a top performer when it comes to open rates.
Yotpo is a highly rated app for sending those messages out to your audience. The platform seamlessly integrates with your POS and enables you to personalize your ecommerce campaigns, customer segmentation, and SMS templates to boost conversions.
Yotpo also offers AI audience segmentation, product recommendation blocks, and send-time optimization to boost SMS/email ROI without the extra work of manual rule-setting.
9. Klaviyo
Best for: Email marketing and SMS automation
Pricing: Free plan available with paid plans starting at $15/month for SMS (up to 1,250 SMS/MMS credits) and $20/month for email (251 to 500 contacts)
Klaviyo is a highly rated email marketing and SMS platform for retail businesses. It combines your customer data with marketing automation to create personalized communications. Some key features include customizable email and SMS templates, automated flows for scenarios like abandoned carts and welcome series, and real-time revenue tracking.
Klaviyo’s AI predicts each shopper’s next order date, churn risk, and lifetime value, letting you launch flows that land right as someone is primed to buy, and meeting other segments wherever they are in the conversion funnel. Segments AI turns a plain-language prompt into a message laser-targeted to your audience, while Smart Send Time plus Channel Affinity schedules messages for the exact moment and retail channel (email, SMS, or push) most likely to engage each person.
Customer retention
- Smile
- ShoppingGives - Donation App
- Gift Reggie
- ReConvert Upsell & Cross Sell
- Novel Wallet Pass
- Swym
- Marsello
1. Smile
Best for: Creating loyalty and rewards programs

Pricing: Free to install and use for up to 200 monthly orders; paid plans range from $49/month to $999/month, with additional charges after 7,500 monthly orders.
Not only is it important to introduce your brand to new customers, but you also need to find ways to keep your existing customers and improve their lifetime value. That’s where loyalty programs can help. According to one survey, loyalty programs drive 70% of US consumers to stick with a brand.
Smile is a retailer app that gives you the tools to create a comprehensive customer loyalty and referral program. Reward your customers with points, discounts, gift cards, or coupons for show appreciation for customers who do things like:
- Referring a friend
- Social shares and follows
- Making a purchase
- Having a birthday
When you show your appreciation and reward your customers for their loyalty, they’re more likely to reward you back with their continued business.
2. ShoppingGives—Donation app
Best for: Charitable donations at checkout

Pricing: 7-day free trial includes 20 Donation Credits, then 0.5% + $29/month thereafter.
ShoppingGives—Donation App helps support charitable causes—and in doing so, shows customers the values that drive your brand. It facilitates your social impact strategy by providing the necessary tools to ensure you’re in compliance when making nonprofit donations, managing those contributions and enabling customers to choose from preset charities or pick a cause of their choice for donations (with the brand donating an additional or matching amount, for example).
3. Gift Reggie: Gift registry
Best for: Customizable gift registry service

Pricing: Ranges from $9/month to $40/month; Free 30-day trial available
For merchants with products that make great gifts, gift registries can encourage more sales. But creating your own gift registry or wishlist solution from scratch can seem like a daunting task. Get your products on more registries and wishlists by using Gift Reggie.
Gift Reggie is an ecommerce app that makes it easy for your customers to create a custom registry of your products and share it with their friends and family—generating more sales while introducing your brand to potential new customers.
4. ReConvert upsell and cross-sell
Best for: Post-purchase sales
Pricing: Free for development stores. Paid plans range from $4.99/month to $14.99/month, with a 14-day free trial available.
ReConvert is a popular upsell and cross-sell AI app on the Shopify App Store. It works with your Shopify store to add one-click, post-purchase, and discounted upsells to your checkout and thank you pages.
The app’s 2025 release layers in AI upsells and product recommendations that automatically pick the highest-converting item for each shopper and slot it into every step of the funnel (product, cart, checkout, and post-purchase).
A drag-and-drop editor lets you preview and tweak offers, while built-in A/B testing, advanced segmentation, and real-time analytics track your average order value (AOV) lift. Setup takes about five minutes, and 24/7 live chat is included on all tiers.
5. Novel Wallet Pass
Best for: Digital wallet passes

Pricing: Free plan for developer stores; Premium plan at $199/month plus 10 cents per pass per month
Novel has gained popularity with notable retail brands like Liquid Death, Anheuser-Busch, and Surely since its launch in February 2022. The platform lets you create digital wallet passes for smartphone users that include:
- Push notifications sent directly to customers’ home screens
- Location-based alerts for your retail locations
- Integration with Shopify POS for in-person redemptions.
The app integrates with platforms like Klaviyo, Recharge, and Attentive, making it a valuable addition to your current marketing stack.
6. Swym
Best for: Wishlist management

Pricing: Free plan available
Swym Wishlist Plus lets customers save products they want to buy later, helping reduce cart abandonment and boost sales. The app then sends them notifications when items go on sale or come back in stock, and customers can also share their wishlists with friends. You can also track what products people are saving and use this data to boost your marketing efforts.
7. Marsello
Best for: Omnichannel loyalty

Pricing: Starts at $125 per month, plus a usage fee of $5–$15 for each customer block you add. Higher-tier options that bundle email/SMS, marketing automation, and review management begin at roughly $10 more per month. All plans include a 14-day free trial.
Marsello combines loyalty programs, email marketing, and SMS into one platform that works with both your online and physical stores. It helps you create engaging loyalty programs with points, rewards, VIP tiers, and referrals, while also enabling targeted marketing campaigns based on customer behavior in-store and online.
Beyond managing rewards, Marsello provides detailed analytics that help you understand customers' shopping patterns and make data-driven decisions. The app integrates with Shopify POS and other marketing tools like Klaviyo. If you want to track customer engagement across your retail operation, Marsello also offers unified reporting to show how your loyalty and marketing efforts impact revenue across all channels.
A built-in AI copilot answers plain-language questions, predicts next-purchase likelihood or churn risk, creates data-driven segments on command, and summarizes omnichannel trend performance against industry benchmarks. It also generates subject lines, body copy, and graphics for campaigns when inspiration runs dry.
📚 Read: How Retailers Reimagine Loyalty with Shopify POS and Marsello
Wholesale
1. Faire
Best for: Wholesale marketplace integration
Pricing: Free
Faire is a wholesale marketplace where retailers can find and buy new products for their stores. You can find unique, high-quality products from brands around the world to stock your shelves and diversify your offerings.
Faire’s integration with Shopify means your new products sync automatically to your product catalog. That way, you don’t have to spend time manually entering data, and your new products can start flying off the shelves as soon as they get there.
Emerging trends in retail apps
Artificial intelligence
In case you haven’t heard, integrating some form of AI technology is becoming table stakes for all businesses.
A 2023-24 NVIDIA survey of 400 retail professionals revealed that 42% of retailers are already utilizing AI in production, with another 34% actively piloting projects. Meanwhile, McKinsey estimates generative and traditional AI could unlock $240 billion–$390 billion in annual value for the sector, lifting margins by up to 1.9 percentage points.
Expect AI-driven forecasting, dynamic pricing, and self-service chat to become default features in retail apps.
AR and VR
Immersive shopping is edging toward the mass market. IDC forecasts that global AR/VR headset shipments will jump 41.4% in 2025, driven by cheaper devices and on-device AI.
Shopify’s data reveals product pages with 3D or AR models convert 94% better than standard listings. As costs fall and WebAR loads instantly in mobile browsers, virtual try-ons, in-store smart mirrors, and spatial product demos are set to spread fast across retail.
Voice commerce integration
Hands-free shopping is on the rise, along with smart assistants. The Business Research Company projects the voice commerce market will surge from $116.8 billion in 2024 to $151.4 billion in 2025, a blistering 29.6% CAGR on its way to $421 billion by 2029.
As sentiment-aware speech engines are integrated into retail apps, brands are rolling out voice-activated reorders, payments, and support flows. Shoppers can now buy while driving, cooking, or multitasking around the house.
Find the right apps for your retail store
Shopify apps can unlock new functionalities that optimize your business for better control, better insights, a better customer experience—and more sales.
While these apps are some of the best apps available (including those in the Shopify App Store), there are plenty more, including email marketing, product upsell, and time management apps. It comes down to finding the best apps that match your specific goals. Visit the Shopify App Store to browse even more retail apps by use.
Retail apps FAQ
What is a retail app?
A retail app is mobile software that allows customers to browse products and shop seamlessly from their mobile device. For retail businesses, these shopping apps help retailers run their stores efficiently.
What makes a good retail app?
A good retail app creates a native in-store and online shopping experience. It’s organized, making it easy to find products and collections. It allows customers to add items to their cart and complete the entire ecommerce checkout process, as well as track orders to see when they’ve been shipped and delivered.
Why should retailers have an app?
Retailers should have an app to create an even better mobile commerce experience for their customers. Even if you’re unable to afford the development of an app, a progressive web app (PWA) is a cheaper and more accessible version that allows customers to quickly and easily shop via mobile.
What is the best retail software?
Shopify POS is the best retail software because it unifies in-store and online sales, keeps inventory and customer data synced in real time, and layers on robust reporting. This all happens in the same dashboard you already use to run your Shopify store.
What is the best app to shop on?
The Shop app offers the smoothest shopping experience. Shop Pay’s one-tap checkout autofills saved details for lightning-fast purchases, and the mobile app keeps customers engaged with real-time order tracking and curated product feeds from the brands they follow. If you want the broadest product range, the Amazon shopping app remains the benchmark in 2025. It tops most shopping app lists and usage charts in the United States. Budget hunters also flock to newer discount marketplaces like Temu and SHEIN.





