How To Sell Digital & Physical Products Together Without Confusing Your Customers

Are you interested in selling digital and physical products in the same store but are worried your customers will become confused and unable to distinguish between the two?

It’s a genuine concern and something that does happen wherever both product types are sold.

In this post, we share tips on how to offer digital and physical products in the same store.

Why is selling digital and physical products in the same store such a problem?

The reason why selling digital and physical products in the same store is usually not recommended is because selling such vastly different product types on the same website can cause confusion among your customer base.

For example, a customer may buy a downloadable workbook from you and become angry when it never shows up for delivery, even though it’s been available for them to download from your website the entire time.

You’ll have to process more refunds as a result, and some customers may leave bad reviews that claim you never fulfilled their orders.

Site navigation may also be a mess.

While you can create a dedicated menu option for different product types, both product types will show up when customers search for products on your site.

You’ll also need to choose an ecommerce platform that sells both product types natively.

If you already have an ecommerce platform, and it doesn’t allow you to sell one or the other, you’ll need to rely on third-party apps or even custom code to accomplish this.

Finally, when you offer different product types, marketing both can be quite difficult as customers who browse the advertising channels you market to may become just as confused as customers who browse your store do.

You’ll also need to produce marketing messages for different target markets: one who prefers physical products and another who prefers digital products.

This can lead to you targeting too broad of a niche, which could impact sales.

Advantages of selling both product types in the same store

Although you’ll have to target a slightly broader audience in marketing messages, offering both digital and physical products in the same store allows you to give your customers the privilege of choice.

This is especially true if you’re able to offer digital versions of physical products, and vice versa, such as offering a book version of an online course or downloadable worksheets from a workbook you sell.

Offering both product types in the same store will also make it easier for you to cross promote complementary products.

For example, if you sold a physical crochet kit, you could also sell a digital ebook full of project patterns that are suitable for that kit.

Finally, offering every product you sell that belongs in the same niche under the same brand name is much less confusing for customers than distinguishing between two different product types is.

For example, if you were to sell “Sally’s Winter Afghan Crochet Kit” to a customer, then cross promote a “Little Sally’s Winter Afghan Patterns” ebook from a different domain, they might get confused about why they’re having to give their payment information to a different website.

Offering both product types in the same store and under the same brand name allows you to use a unilateral marketing strategy.

9 ways to sell digital and physical products in the same store

1. Choose an ecommerce platform that lets you sell both

The easiest way to launch an online store in general is to use an ecommerce platform.

In this case, Sellfy is your best option. It allows you to sell physical and digital products in the same store natively. This means there’s no need to install third-party plugins or apps.

Try Sellfy here completely free. 

Shopify is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms on the web, but it provides the ability to offer digital downloads as a free app that you need to install.

Unfortunately, that app has 2.6 out of 5 stars with users citing a recurring issue in which the app suddenly stops working, which leads to an even larger problem of customers not being able to download their purchases.

You can sell digital products natively in WooCommerce, but WooCommerce is not an ecommerce platform in the same way that the others are. It’s a plugin for WordPress, which requires many more steps to set up than an all-in-one ecommerce platform like Sellfy does.

If you already have an ecommerce platform, see what options are available to you when you create a new product.

2. Create different categories for each product type

Create two new primary categories in your store: one called Digital, and one called Physical.

Then, go through your products, and assign each one to one or the other.

These categories will keep digital products and physical products organized wherever you use categories on your website.

3. Create filter options for product types

When customers search for products in your shop, they should be able to filter by category.

This will allow them to choose between your Digital and Physical product categories.

If your ecommerce platform allows you to set up your own filter options, set one up named “Product Type,” and have the options be your Digital and Physical categories.

This will keep your Product Type filter separate from your category filter on the frontend of your site, making it easier for customers to see that you offer two different product types and that they’re able to filter one or the other from product results.

4. Optimize your navigation menu

You can also make it easy for customers to find your product types by adding links to them in your primary navigation menu.

Add a new parent section to your menu called “Product Types,” and add your Digital and Physical categories as child menu options.

That way, as your customer browses your website, they’ll hopefully spot the Product Types option in your menu and interact with it to find the product type they’re looking for.

5. Offer digital and physical products in the same listing

If you offer digital versions of physical products, or vice versa, don’t hope that your customer chooses the option they truly want.

Make them choose the right option.

The way to do this is by creating product variants instead of product categories and making choosing a product variant a requirement for adding the product to the shopping cart.

To use “Sally’s Winter Afghan Patterns” ebook as an example again, Sally’s could create a product in Sellfy called “Winter Afghan Patterns Book,” then create a product variant called Digital for the ebook version and another variant called Physical for the physical version that will be shipped.

The most important part is to make this decision a requirement. That way, your customer cannot place the product into their shopping cart unless they choose which version they want.

6. Create product bundles

If you offer digital versions of physical products or different product types that complement one another, consider bundling them together instead of offering them separately.

That way, your customer cannot mistakenly buy the wrong version, and you get to create higher-priced product listings by offering your customers more value.

You can even copy the previous tip by offering bundles as separate product variants for the base version of the product.

7. Label each product clearly

Consider adding labels to certain products so customers are more aware of what types of products they are and how they’ll receive them.

For example, you might consider adding the label “(Digital Download)” at the end of product titles for digital products.

This will distinguish them from physical products you offer that need to be shipped.

You can try to label products in your product description and with tags if your ecommerce platform allows them, but these might not be as obvious to your customers as they seem.

Here’s a great example of this in practice from AbsoluteMusic:

They actually go one better and swap their “In Stock” label for something that says “Electronic Delivery” instead.

8. Depict products accurately in product images

If your digital product has the potential to be a physical product, you might be tempted to create 3D product images that depict it as a physical product even though you do not offer a physical version of that product.

This is a mistake.

For example, if you offer an ebook and create a 3D render that makes that book like a physical book, customers might get confused when they purchase it and only have the option to download that book.

Consider adding small icons to product images as well that depict how customers will receive these products.

For example, you could add a download icon to product images for digital products and a delivery truck icon to product images for physical products.

Another place where this mistake happens a lot is on Etsy. Take woodworking plans for things like sheds as an example.

There are a lot of listings that have confusing imagery. They’ll include the word “plans” in the title and the price will typically be below $20 but the images are still confusing.

I particularly like this example because its so overt:

9. Add a delivery disclaimer to each product listing

Not every customer will read your product descriptions thoroughly. This is why you’ll always receive questions and bad reviews for things that were answered in product descriptions.

Even so, you should add a disclaimer to the description of each product listing that lets customers know how they’ll receive their products.

For digital products, you could say, “Delivery: This product needs to be downloaded.”

For physical products, you could say, “Delivery: This product will be shipped.”

Final thoughts

Selling both digital & physical products in the same store has some huge advantages but you’ve got to be smart about how your store is organised.

Otherwise, you’ll end up with a lot of angry customers. That’s the best case.

Worst case, they hammer you with 1 star reviews.

So, instead, follow the 9 methods we discussed above and your customers will be far less likely to get confused.

This isn’t a case of picking 1 or 2 items from the list and doing those. I’d follow as many of the 9 methods as your ecommerce platform will allow.

Make it impossible. Or near impossible for your customers to misunderstand what you’re selling.