BOPIS — buy online, pick up in store — means exactly what it sounds like. A customer orders a product on your website, and instead of waiting for delivery, they pick it up at one of your physical stores.
It used to be a nice-to-have. It used to magic. Now, for most retailers, it's table stakes. Customers expect it. The retailers who do it well get more revenue per customer, lower fulfillment costs, and a measurable lift in in-store foot traffic. The retailers who don't, lose those customers to the ones who do.
This guide explains what BOPIS is, how it works behind the scenes, why it matters, and what's required to make it work reliably — without the overselling, missed pickups, and customer service headaches that come with a half-built BOPIS program.
How BOPIS feels from the customer's side
The customer journey looks like this:
- They browse your online store on a phone or laptop.
- At checkout, instead of selecting a shipping address, they choose "Pick up in store" and select a location.
- They pay online.
- They receive an email (or SMS) confirming the order.
- A short time later — usually within hours — they get a second notification: "Your order is ready."
- They drive or walk to the store, often within a day or two.
- A staff member hands them a pre-packed order, or they grab it from a pickup counter.
What feels seamless from the customer's perspective requires a lot of coordination behind the scenes: real-time inventory updates between your online store and your point of sale, a workflow for store staff to pick the order off the shelf, a system that notifies the customer at the right moment, and a way to handle the order if the customer doesn't show up.
Where BOPIS came from
BOPIS has existed for decades — Target was offering "Order Online, Pick Up in Store" as early as the late 1990s — but it didn't become mainstream until the pandemic forced retailers to find ways to keep selling when in-store shopping was restricted. Curbside pickup, a variation of BOPIS, exploded in 2020 and 2021.
After the pandemic, the expectation stuck. Customers who tried BOPIS during lockdowns liked it for ordinary reasons: it's faster than shipping, it eliminates the risk of porch theft, it lets them inspect the product before committing, and it avoids the cost of delivery for items they'd rather not pay shipping on.
By 2024, BOPIS was no longer a competitive differentiator. It was a baseline expectation. Today, customers shopping online for items they could conceivably pick up locally often filter for the option — and choose a competitor if you don't offer it.
Why retailers should offer BOPIS
The case for BOPIS is multi-layered:
Lower fulfillment cost. Shipping a small order to a customer's house costs $5-15. Letting them pick it up from your store costs almost nothing — you've already paid the rent on that location.
More foot traffic. Customers who come in to pick up an order often buy something else while they're there. Industry studies consistently show 20-40% of BOPIS customers make an additional in-store purchase, often higher-margin add-on items.
Faster fulfillment. Items can be ready within hours rather than days, which converts customers who would have otherwise gone elsewhere for speed.
Better customer experience for time-sensitive purchases. If someone needs a gift today, or a part for a project they're starting tomorrow, BOPIS is the only option that competes with going to the store and shopping in person — without forcing them to actually browse.
Recovered sales when shipping isn't viable. Large items, fragile items, perishable items, or anything restricted from shipping can still sell online when BOPIS is offered.
The financial case is strong enough that most retailers see BOPIS implementation pay back within a quarter. The operational case — the parts that are harder to set up — is what trips programs up.
What BOPIS actually requires behind the scenes
Three things need to be in place for BOPIS to work reliably:
1. Real-time inventory accuracy. Your website needs to know — within seconds, not hours — what each store actually has on the shelf. If your online store thinks Store A has 3 units of a product but the last one just sold at the register five minutes ago, a customer can place a BOPIS order for an item that doesn't exist. That order becomes a phone call, an apology, and probably a refund. Or maybe a bad review. Real-time inventory sync between your point-of-sale system and your e-commerce platform is what prevents this.
2. A store-side picking workflow. When a BOPIS order arrives, someone at the store needs to be notified, pick the item off the shelf or stockroom, pack it (if needed), label it, and stage it for pickup. Stores that already use a unified POS system can usually fold this into their existing workflow. Stores using separate systems for online and in-store often end up with staff manually checking an email inbox for new orders — which doesn't scale and breaks down on busy days.
3. Customer-facing pickup notifications. The customer needs to know when their order is actually ready, not just that it was received. "Your order is ready" emails or SMS are the difference between a customer who shows up at the right time and a customer who shows up too early, gets frustrated, and leaves a one-star review.
A BOPIS program that has all three of these in place runs well. Programs that have only one or two of them tend to feel "almost working" to customers, which can be worse than not offering BOPIS at all.
Common variations of BOPIS
The category has expanded into several related models:
Curbside pickup. Same as BOPIS, except the customer stays in their car and a staff member brings the order out. Especially common in grocery and big-box retail. The technical setup is identical; the difference is staff workflow.
Locker pickup. Pre-packed orders are placed in lockers in or near the store. The customer gets an access code and retrieves the order without staff interaction. Works well for low-touch, low-value items.
Ship-from-store. Not really BOPIS — instead, the store fulfills an online order and ships it to the customer's home. Same operational foundation (store as fulfillment node) but the customer never visits the store. We cover this in BOPIS vs. ship-from-store.
Reserve in store. Customer reserves a specific unit at a specific store but pays in person, not online. A lighter-weight version of BOPIS that doesn't require online payment processing on the order.
For most retailers, BOPIS and curbside are the headline offerings; the others get added later as the program matures.
How BOPIS relates to your POS and e-commerce platform
The hardest part of running BOPIS isn't the customer experience — it's making sure your online store and your point-of-sale system are talking to each other accurately, all the time, across every location.
If you use a brick-and-mortar POS (Lightspeed Retail R-Series, Lightspeed Retail X-Series, Heartland Retail) and sell online through Shopify, you have two systems that each have their own view of what's in stock. Keeping them in sync — so that what Shopify shows a customer matches what's actually on the shelf — requires an integration layer.
This is where an integration layer matters. Without one, you're either manually keeping inventory in sync (error-prone, doesn't scale) or accepting that your numbers will drift between systems.
How Mortar handles BOPIS
If you sell on Shopify and use Lightspeed Retail (R-Series), Lightspeed Retail (X-Series), or Heartland Retail at your registers, Mortar is the integration layer that makes BOPIS work end-to-end:
- Real-time inventory sync keeps Shopify aware of every in-store sale within seconds, so customers can't buy products that just sold at the register.
- Smart order routing automatically chooses which store fulfills each order line item whether BOPIS, ship-from-store, or local delivery.
- Per-store ShipStation integration surfaces pickup orders to your store team as part of their existing fulfillment workflow.
See how Mortar connects your POS with Shopify →
Where to go next
If you're at the beginning of evaluating BOPIS for your retail business, the next questions are practical: how do I actually implement this, what should I look for in software, and how do I avoid the common pitfalls?
- BOPIS implementation: a practical guide for Shopify retailers — the technical and operational checklist.
- Real-time inventory accuracy: why BOPIS fails without it — the single most common reason BOPIS programs fail, and how to prevent it.
Or, if you're past the research stage and ready to see what your POS connected to Shopify looks like in practice: