An online system generates a virtual world including objects, representations of users, and locations for presentation to online system users. The virtual world includes a virtual store including a plurality of objects for presentation to a user. To generate the virtual store, the online system retrieves information associated with the user and selects objects for inclusion in the virtual store based on the retrieved information. For example, the online system selects objects in which the user has expressed an interest or objects in which other users connected to the user have expressed an interest. The information associated with the user may also be used to determine positions of the selected object relative to each other or relative to a position of the user in the virtual store. After selecting and positioning the objects, the online system communicates the virtual store to a client device for presentation to the user.