Shop The Look vs Complete The Look: What’s The Difference?

technologhy
Jun 26, 2025
10M
Alice Pham

In the evolving world of eCommerce, customer experience is king. Online retailers continually look for ways to enhance browsing and encourage buying. Two powerful merchandising strategies gaining traction are Shop The Look and Complete The Look. While these terms are often used interchangeably, they serve slightly different purposes and can significantly impact your store's conversion rates, upsell potential, and customer satisfaction.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore what each of these features means, their key differences, when to use them, and how to implement them effectively using the Lookfy app.

An Overview about Shop the look and Complete the look

Both "Shop The Look" and "Complete The Look" are visual merchandising techniques designed to improve the customer journey by suggesting complementary products in a contextual, visually appealing format. Instead of showing individual products in isolation, they allow customers to see how items work together in real-life scenarios.

This strategy capitalizes on suggestive selling, a tactic proven to increase average order value by showing how a product fits into a lifestyle or collection. Whether you're selling fashion, furniture, or home decor, both "Shop The Look" and "Complete The Look" encourage customers to buy more by helping them visualize complete ensembles or settings.

However, the difference lies in intent and timing: one is curated upfront to inspire a full look, while the other is based on complementary additions after a product is already selected.

What is Shop The Look?

Shop The Look is a curated shopping experience where customers are presented with a fully styled scene — such as an outfit, living room setup, or table arrangement, and can purchase all the featured items with just a few clicks.

This approach is most common in:

  • Fashion stores: Displaying a model wearing a full outfit (e.g., dress, shoes, bag, accessories).
  • Home décor: Showing a styled room with multiple purchasable products.
  • Lifestyle brands: Presenting bundles in context, like picnic essentials or office desk setups.

It’s about creating a visual story that showcases a collection of products together, giving customers an easy way to buy everything they see and love in the scene.

What is Complete The Shop?

Complete The Look is a cross-selling strategy that suggests additional complementary products once a customer has shown interest in or added a specific product to their cart. It answers the question: "What goes well with this item?"

Examples include:

  • Recommending a coat, shoes, and bag to go with a dress.
  • Suggesting pillows, curtains, and wall art to match a sofa.
  • Offering a mouse and keyboard when a customer views a laptop.

Unlike "Shop The Look," which is a proactive display of items, "Complete The Look" is reactive — triggered by customer interaction. It's especially effective on product pages and cart pages.

Shop The Look vs Complete The Look: Key Features

Though both strategies aim to enhance the shopping journey, they differ in presentation, timing, and purpose.

Shop the Look: Key Features

Shop The Look allows you to showcase multiple products in a single styled scene, making it ideal for storytelling.

  • Curated visual scenes: Customers see products together in a real-life context, like an outfit or room layout.
  • Tag-based product hotspots: Each item in the image is tagged and linked to its product page.
  • Add all to cart: Shoppers can add all tagged products with one click — simplifying the buying process.
  • Ideal for lifestyle and fashion brands: Best used on homepages, lookbooks, and editorial-style sections.

Complete the Look: Key Features

Complete The Look provides smart product suggestions based on what a customer is already viewing or purchasing.

  • Contextual recommendations: Shows matching or related products when a user is on a product detail page.
  • Cross-sell opportunities: Encourages shoppers to add accessories or complementary items to their cart.
  • Flexible implementation: Works well for fashion, home décor, electronics, and more.
  • Often automated: Based on tags, collections, or customer behavior for scalability.

Shop The Look vs Complete The Look: Benefits

While both “Shop The Look” and “Complete The Look” are excellent strategies for boosting sales and improving user experience, their strengths lie in different parts of the buyer’s journey. Understanding their unique benefits will help you implement each method more effectively.

Benefits of Shop The Look

Shop The Look is designed to inspire and simplify the shopping experience, especially for customers who seek ideas or struggle with styling decisions. It transforms your store from a simple product catalog into an engaging visual experience.

  • Inspires Purchase Decisions
    Many shoppers feel unsure about how to style an outfit or decorate a space. Shop The Look eliminates that uncertainty by showing complete combinations in real-life contexts. It helps customers visualize how products work together, making them more likely to buy.
  • Improves Cart Value
    By encouraging customers to purchase an entire outfit or product bundle, Shop The Look naturally increases average order value. Instead of buying one item, shoppers are inclined to add 2–5 related products to their cart with minimal effort.
  • Creates Editorial Experiences
    This feature gives your store a polished, magazine-like appeal. Curated looks with high-quality visuals make the browsing experience feel aspirational and premium, which is particularly valuable for fashion, furniture, and lifestyle brands.
  • Boosts Engagement Through Interactivity
    Interactive image tagging invites users to explore products in a fun and intuitive way. Rather than scrolling through isolated product tiles, they can engage with styled images, hover over hotspots, and discover multiple items at once, creating a richer experience.

Benefits of Complete the Look

Complete The Look is a more targeted approach that helps customers finalize their purchase by offering thoughtful, relevant add-ons once they’ve already shown intent to buy.

  • Enhances Product Pages with Intelligent Suggestions
    By displaying complementary items directly on product pages, Complete The Look guides shoppers toward a more complete purchase. For example, suggesting a matching pair of shoes with a dress, or a nightstand to go with a bed, increases perceived value.
  • Increases Upselling Opportunities Naturally
    Rather than pushing random recommendations, Complete The Look introduces logical, relevant add-ons that feel helpful — not pushy. This subtle upselling approach improves user trust and increases the chance that the customer will add more to their cart.
  • Drives Conversions by Streamlining Decisions
    Decision fatigue is a real issue in eCommerce. When customers are offered curated pairings that make sense, they’re more likely to act quickly. Complete The Look speeds up the buying process by removing guesswork and offering clarity.
  • Versatile Across Industries
    Unlike Shop The Look, which is heavily visual and ideal for fashion or décor, Complete The Look works in nearly any niche. Whether you're selling electronics, cosmetics, or kitchenware, you can suggest logical add-ons — such as cables with a laptop or brushes with a makeup kit.

In summary, Shop The Look builds desire and drives inspiration in the early stages of browsing, while Complete The Look supports conversion by refining the decision process at the product level. Together, they cater to both emotional and practical aspects of shopping — leading to a more satisfying customer experience and stronger sales performance.

Shop The Look vs Complete The Look: When to Use?

Each feature shines at different points in the customer journey, and using them strategically can maximize their impact.

Use Shop The Look when:

  • You want to inspire shoppers through full lifestyle visuals.
  • You're highlighting seasonal looks, featured collections, or curated bundles.
  • You aim to promote new arrivals in a visually immersive way.
  • You need a solution for homepage sliders, lookbooks, or blog embeds.

Use Complete The Look when:

  • A shopper is already on a product detail page or about to check out.
  • You want to recommend smart add-ons to increase cart value.
  • You need a way to cross-sell related items without disrupting the shopping flow.
  • You offer products that benefit from mix-and-match or personalization.

For best results, combine both strategies: use Shop The Look to inspire, and Complete The Look to convert.

It’s Time to Implement Shop The Look and Complete The Look? 

To implement both “Shop The Look” and “Complete The Look” seamlessly on your Shopify store, Lookfy – Gallery & Lookbook which is one of the most effective Shopify lookbook apps available makes it simple to implement both features without any coding knowledge.

Lookfy is a powerful Shopify app designed specifically to enhance visual merchandising. It enables merchants to create shoppable lookbooks with interactive image tagging, perfect for building immersive “Shop The Look” experiences. With Lookfy, you can showcase styled scenes where customers can explore and purchase multiple tagged items directly from a single image.

At the same time, Lookfy supports product bundling features that help you set up “Complete The Look” suggestions. By grouping related products, you can display curated add-ons or complementary items directly on product pages, encouraging customers to add more to their carts.

Whether you're in fashion, home décor, or lifestyle retail, Lookfy combines both storytelling and upselling capabilities, helping you increase engagement, boost average order value, and provide a more intuitive shopping experience, all without any coding required.

Benefits of Lookfy:

  • Visual-first design optimized for modern shoppers.
  • No-code setup for fast implementation.
  • Works with all Shopify themes and is mobile responsive.
  • Supports tagging, bundling, and upsells: all in one place.

Conclusion,

While both Shop The Look and Complete The Look enhance the shopping experience, they serve different but complementary purposes. Shop The Look is all about inspiration and storytelling, helping customers visualize how products work together in a styled context. Complete The Look, on the other hand, is about strategic suggestions, helping customers fill in the blanks for a more complete purchase.

The most effective Shopify stores often use both Shop The Look to draw customers in and Complete The Look to boost conversion once customers are engaged.

By using a powerful Shopify gallery app like Lookfy, you can easily implement both strategies with no technical skills. Whether you're running a fashion boutique, furniture store, or lifestyle brand, these features can dramatically improve how customers engage with your products, and ultimately, how much they spend.