Shopify blog
Digital touchpoints are the points at which customers “touch” your brand online. This could be via a website visit, a social media post in their feed, an email to support, or anything in between.
Customers typically engage with a company at a minimum of three different touchpoints before making a purchase, according to research from eMarketer and Impact.com. Nailing those customer interactions creates a seamless customer journey and pushes shoppers toward checkout.
Ahead, learn where digital touchpoints appear throughout the shopping journey and how to optimize yours across each marketing and customer service channel.
What are digital touchpoints?
A digital touchpoint is any point of interaction where a customer engages with a brand through an online channel. Digital customer touchpoints can occur throughout the customer journey, both before and after a purchase. They also happen across channels, including your business’s social media, website, emails, online ads, or live chat.
The goals of optimizing your digital touchpoints include:
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Making consumers aware of your brand
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Convincing shoppers to purchase your products over competitors’ products
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Improving conversion rates
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Retaining customers
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Collecting feedback
Key digital touchpoints across the customer journey
Here are the stages of the buyer journey when customers interact with your brand:
Awareness stage
In the awareness stage, prospective customers become acquainted with your brand online. This can occur through search results, AI answer engines like ChatGPT, social media platforms, forums, or other marketing channels including paid advertising. Here are the key touchpoints in this stage:
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Social media ads. Shoppers see your brand in paid social media posts that appear in a user’s feed on platforms including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok.
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Blog posts. Consumers read about your company in informational articles on your website. These blog posts are part of a content marketing strategy.
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Display banner ads. These graphic ads appear across third-party websites.
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Social media profiles and posts. This includes your brand’s organic presence on platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
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Video ads. These are video spots promoting your brand.
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Forum discussions. These are mentions of your brand in online forums like Reddit.
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Search engine results. Your brand appears in search results when users search on Google or Bing. Search engine optimization (SEO) is aimed at improving your visibility in search results.
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AI answers. An AI answer engine like ChatGPT or Perplexity mentions your brand in an answer to a user’s query. Generative engine optimization (GEO) is aimed at improving how often AI engines mention your brand.
Optimizing your touchpoints at the awareness stage is all about maximizing visibility: how likely a potential customer is to see your brand when they’re online.
Search engines are the most popular channel for internet users 16 and older to discover new brands, products, and services each month, according to a 2026 report from Meltwater and We Are Social. Matthew Burrows, founder of plant nursery Plant Material, uses SEO to show up in search engine results.
“We’ve been really focused on that since day one, so that we would pop up and could compete without a lot of ad dollars,” Matthew says on Shopify Masters. “It’s pretty awesome to think that if somebody’s searching for a certain plant, we’re there and we’re competing.”
Matthew says that Shopify’s built-in SEO features, like meta tags and metadata, help Plant Material show up in search results. “That is a back-end thing that you should do, and can do, to be present online without a lot of ad spend,” Matthew says.
Consideration stage
In the consideration stage, a customer is further along in the sales funnel and is showing interest in your brand specifically. In this stage, customers may pass through the following digital touchpoints:
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Website homepage. Your website homepage can educate consumers about your brand and direct them to products and collections.
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Landing pages. These are web pages tailored to individual campaigns or audiences. Brands create landing pages for different traffic sources.
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Product or service pages. On these pages, detailed descriptions, visuals, and feature lists provide information about what you sell. These pages can preemptively answer customer questions about your goods and services.
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Product reviews and word of mouth. Product reviews on third-party sites like Trustpilot and Judge.me are touchpoints you don’t control, but you can shape them by how you ask for reviews and respond to the ones you get.
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Comparison tools or blog articles. Content on your website or a third-party’s website that helps buyers compare features or pricing across your products and competitor products.
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Influencer marketing. Potential customers come across your brand in sponsored posts from content creators.
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Emails. Marketing emails include welcome messages upon sign-up, automated messages including abandoned cart emails, and newsletters.
Track the effectiveness of these touchpoints by seeing what generates interest in your products, then refine your touchpoints from there. Athleticwear brand Set Active, for example, used AI to measure the success of its email touchpoints.
“One thing we did was hire this company called Black Crow AI,” says Set Active founder Lindsey Carter on Shopify Masters. “It was a way to optimize your email flows. AI would tell you what works and what doesn't.”
If you’re on Shopify, you can use the native Shopify Messaging tool to create email campaigns. It integrates with Shopify Flow, which allows you to send messages after customers take certain actions, like viewing a product page or adding an item to their cart.
Decision stage
In the decision stage, customers decide what to buy. At this point, they encounter the following digital touchpoints:
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Pricing pages. More common for service businesses or software companies, these detailed web pages outline costs and features across different tier options.
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Product-specific customer reviews. Testimonials about a specific product or service. They often appear at the bottom of product pages.
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Live chat and chatbots. On-site messaging tools for instant questions and answers and support.
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Case studies. Common in business-to-business (B2B) sales, these in-depth reports are published on your website to showcase successful client outcomes and return on investment (ROI).
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Demo request forms. Present in both B2B and B2C (business to consumer) sales, these electronic forms on your website let a user commit to a sales interaction.
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FAQs section. These web pages or sections within larger web pages include short answers to common pre-purchase questions.
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Checkout page.Ecommerce checkout is the final transaction point in an online shopping sale, whether on a website or a mobile app.
Toral Patel, senior vice president of marketing and ecommerce at beauty brand Kopari, shares her strategies for optimizing the product page digital touchpoint on Shopify Masters.
“We try to anticipate all [of the customer’s] questions and make sure they’re answered on the product detail page really concisely, through both imagery and copy,” Toral says.
“Then, of course, we’re always testing. We’re trying to understand how to reduce friction and making sure we’re just making it an easy, simple process, so that somebody can convert really quickly,” Toral says. “I think simplicity is really key.”
Retention stage
After a shopper makes a purchase, your marketing and customer support teams can continue to offer customers several digital touchpoints to encourage retention and adoption. They can include:
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Post-purchase emails. Automated messages that confirm orders, update customers about shipping, and guide initial use or help customers get the most out of the product.
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Customer help pages. Online documentation, knowledge base articles, and ticketing systems.
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User account dashboard. The logged-in environment where a customer manages their service or product.
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Customer service. Chats with human agents or chatbots on computers and mobile devices. (Phone calls with support agents move beyond the realm of digital touchpoints.)
Customer service post-purchase is a high-stakes digital touchpoint, as 35% of customers will purchase additional products and 53% of customers will tell their friends and family after a great customer service experience, according to a 2025 report from Vonage.
Ellen Bennett, founder of apron and cookware brand Hedley & Bennett, prioritizes a human touch in her company’s customer service.
“Every step of my journey with my team has been about, How do we make our audience and our community feel like real humans? That they’re being treated like real humans, and they’re being served by real humans?’” Ellen says on Shopify Masters.
A few tweaks to your messaging can help you come across as more human. “It’s free to treat someone with respect, and to call them and email them with more emojis and exclamation marks, and say, ‘Hey, how's it going?’ versus, ‘Thank you for reaching out to Hedley & Bennett,’” says Ellen.
The Shopify Inbox app lets customers chat with you while they’re on your ecommerce site. It shows you customer data including product views and past order data, which allows you to tailor your conversation to each customer.
Customer loyalty stage
After a sale, your business can use digital touchpoints to collect valuable insights from customers and encourage them to make repeat purchases. This boosts customer loyalty and customer lifetime value. Digital touchpoints at this stage include:
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Customer feedback surveys. These are forms to collect customer feedback and learn about pain points.
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Requests for reviews. This involves asking your most loyal customers for positive reviews online, sometimes with an incentive like a discount.
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Upselling and cross-selling emails. Follow-up emails often contain a discount code for the customer’s next purchase or information on complementary products.
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Referral program pages. These pages offer existing customers the opportunity to refer new customers in exchange for incentives like points or cash rewards.
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Private community forums and groups. These online spaces like Reddit threads and Facebook groups allow loyal customers to interact with each other.
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Loyalty program pages. Customers earn points on purchases, which they redeem for perks like discounts. Online loyalty programs can also include free merchandise and early access to upcoming sales.
Seventy-two percent of consumers say loyalty programs make them more likely to spend with their preferred brand, according to the 2025 Deloitte Consumer Loyalty Program Survey.
Hair care brand Ouai cultivates customer loyalty by making repeat purchases fun.
“The gamification of loyalty is something that we’re excited about,” former Ouai CEO Hannah Beals says in an interview about 2026 trends.
“How are we going to reward these people for all the ways that they interact with us? That’s something that we’re interested in building.”
Ouai introduces customers to its loyalty program, Ouai Obsessed, with a landing page on its website that outlines the different elements of the program.
Among other features, customers can earn points by completing challenges like submitting a photo of themselves with a Ouai product, and by attending virtual and in-person brand events. Customers access these features through the gamified loyalty app TYB.
Digital touchpoints FAQ
What is a digital touchpoint?
A digital touchpoint is any online interaction where a customer engages with a brand—such as through a website, email, social media, or an online ad—during their buyer journey.
What is an example of a touchpoint?2
In business, a touchpoint is a moment where a customer interacts with your brand. An example would be a customer viewing an ad promoting one of your products.
What is the difference between physical and digital touchpoints?
The difference between physical and digital touchpoints is that physical touchpoints occur through in-person or tangible interactions, like in-store shopping or attending events. Digital touchpoints happen online through websites, emails, social media, and other virtual channels.
What is the seven-touchpoint strategy?
The seven-touchpoint strategy is a marketing concept suggesting that a potential customer typically needs to engage with a brand at least seven times through various channels before making a purchase or taking meaningful action.
