Shopify Markets - Selling Internationally Just Got Easier

[Andrew]

If you were a store owner wanting to sell your products or services in different parts of the world, you use to need to create multiple “expansion” stores, one for each country. This meant that if you wanted to sell cross-border and take your brand international, it would require a lot of time and effort to sync your catalogue, inventory, apps, and themes across stores. 

That’s why we’ve created Shopify Markets!

With Shopify Markets, you can identify, set up, launch, optimize, and manage your international sales—all from a single store.  What’s more, with Shopify Markets you’re not limited to individual countries. You can set up shopping experiences and strategies for whole groups of countries. 

So how and why would you create Markets for different geographic locations or countries? 

Here’s a sample case:

Imagine you run a store in Ireland called YourStore. You primarily sell to the United Kingdom, the United States and European countries Germany, France, Italy and Spain. 

Because the United States and the United Kingdom are non-EU, English-speaking countries, you create a UK-US market so that your store is accessible through the YourStore.com domain. You do this by going to Settings > Markets > Add a Market. Because your store’s default language is English, that is the language for this market. 

In order to fully activate this Market, you need to make sure you have set up shipping rates for all countries/regions that you have added to that market:

With that done, you will also want to set up a market for Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Following the same process, add the countries to a designated European market. 

What’s great about Shopify Markets is that you know that you can now sell in up to 20 languages from a single store. So your French, German, Italian and Spanish customers can each visit your store and they do not have a language hurdle to jump. This is super handy because 40% of customers won’t even consider buying from a store in another language! 

So you go to Settings > Languages and make sure to Add a Language for German, French, Italian and Spanish.  With those added, you can then pop back into Settings > Markets and click “Manage” next to your European market. You do this because you now need to link the language to the domains for each country that you create.

In other words, you’re ensuring that your German customers can reach your site through YourStore.com/DE. And that your Italian customers can reach your site through YourStore.com/it, and so on.

Do bear in mind that in order to display your theme in different languages, you need a theme that's compatible with selling in multiple languages. All the free themes from Shopify are compatible. You might need to update your theme for it to be compatible with selling in multiple languages. If you're using a third-party theme, then you can contact your theme developers to check if it's compatible.

Your theme will also need a language selector. If your theme doesn’t have one, you could use the Geolocation app by Shopify, which will automatically recognize where your customer is coming from and present them with language options.

In order to translate your content, you will need a compatible third-party translation app to translate your content or follow the instructions to import your translations directly into Shopify.

To set up localized domains and languages, you want to click  “Manage” next to Domains and languages, followed by “Domain or SubDomain”, where you will be able to click each language you want to be included in that Market to be assigned to each subdomain.

If your store is on the Advanced Plan, and you meet the requirements, you can also ensure that your customers are charged the right taxes and duties! This is especially useful for customers who are not in the European Union.

And if you use Shopify Payments, you can also: 

• Let your customers pay in their domestic currency, 
• You can accept local payment methods, 
• You’ll enjoy price rounding, 
• You’ll be able to see product price breakdowns.
  

The Bottom Line:

Tailoring the online shopping experience for different customers around the world is one of the most important steps towards success in your brand. It will help you distinguish yourself from your competitors and it will help you connect with buyers who might otherwise be unreachable.

If you’ve invested time and energy in building a business that deserves to be shared far and wide, then you cannot let borders stand in your way. We understand this, which is why Shopify Markets allows you to go further and connect with more people, without having to spend more or spread yourself too thin. Shopify Markets is your ticket to localizing domains, languages, currencies, pricing, taxes, duties, and local payment methods for each market to ensure the optimum customer experience. 

[davidlee9023]

It ruined Hong Kong, Macau markets they combined one Chinese language I cannot sell products to both language users anymore. They don't know real world.

[Doesitdirty]

Thanks for the information

[cupcakepooky]

Thank you for the update!

[Eddyshary]

I don't know if shopily had one of the top African language Hausa Mostly west African majority... I want to enhance my store for the local people in my large community...

Thanks..

[brookpad]

After this update Primary domain was disabled. 

Settings -> Domains - no longer accessible (There’s a problem loading this page

There’s a technical problem with Shopify that has prevented this page from loading. Try reloading this page or going to another page in Shopify...)

Previously my store language was in English + other languages available, after introducing Markets - Primary Market language was changed to one of local language and translations were disabled for primary domain.

When trying to change default langue or add other translated languages I got 

Error: "The primary market must use the primary domain." even though primary domain is set. It is total disaster for SEO as all local links to Posts, Pages are broken as there is no more primary-domain.com/fr , /es , etc.

Does any one have similar issue know how to solve it?

[MartinDR]

We need some help with integration into our Finance system.  Turned on markets and local currency. Sales started coming which was great, but came through the feed as the currency number in the order (eg., £20 can through the feed as $20Au).  So a whole lot of stuff mow to unravel in our finance system (Xero).  have turned off multi currency and sales have slowed dramatically, and still having problems re tax.

Request to shopify - is there an integration app that handles shopify markets and multi-currency integration into Xero?  there needs to be if you can encourage developers asap!

Advice to the community - don't just turn on markets until you've worked through all the integrations.

The concept is great, but the logistics / transaction flows need to be sorted in advance to save yourself a world of accounting pain.

May have to go back to the painful concept of running two stores.

[Andrew]

@Eddyshary Great question! Whenever translations don't exist, your online store shows content in your primary language. You can translate the content of your online store by adding your own translations using CSV files, or by using a compatible third-party app. After translating the store, customers can browse your store, checkout, and receive notifications in their local language.

This information is all from our guide on Translating and localizing your store https://bit.ly/3AV2DMv that I encourage you to read!

[Andrew]

@brookpad  Your primary market is the main country or region that you sell to and is often your home or domestic market. 

A market can only support one version of each language. For example, you cannot have both Spanish and Catalan, or English (US) and English (UK) on your primary domain. Instead, it will be represented simply as /es or /en in the URL.

If you would like to adjust your default languages on your primary market, go to Settings > Markets > Primary Market (Manage) > Domains and Languages (Manage).

Did you have custom multiple languages set up? I'd like to understand a little more about your context and how your store was organized. 

[Andrew]

@MartinDR Hi! That's interesting, though also obviously not ideal. So the information from Shopify Markets is not being shared accurately with your Xero account? Are you using the Xero app?

I'd like to understand what's going on a bit better so that, even if I cannot necessarily rectify it (as Xero is a third-party tool), I can pass your information on to our developers as feedback about how Shopify Markets might impact third-party apps. 

So could you please share any screenshots and/or more information to put me into the picture? 

[ArtyMicheline1]

That's great and what I am doing as my art collectors are global. However, how do you determine shipping cost without knowing how much final order will actually look like. I can put items of 0-1.5 kg at a certain price, then 1.5-3 kg cost depending on country but shipping fees are also variant on tube or large box etc. . Shopify offers an upgraded plan with courier companies calculations upon individual purchases but my NZ postal courier service which is way cheaper isn't offered as an option. 

[Mikoree]

Echoing @brookpad

Before Shopify markets, our customers were able to use a switcher to choose the language they preferred. 

Now with Shopify Markets this is no longer possible.  We can only have one default + one language.  A customer's language preference is not strictly geographical.  Just as an example, Canada has two official languages French and English but so many customers speak other languages.   Likewise just because someone lives in Hong Kong it does not meant they wish to shop in Chinese.  There are many expats or foreigners who like to purchase goods from abroad.  We may be able to serve them better in English or an another language.

It would be great is we could enable all the language translation to customers regardless of the geographical location.

[Fawzi]

The new transition to shopify market has ruin my store and impats the traffics from diffrents countries , what a terrible idea .... Thank you shopify for messing up and making my store dead.

[DualSportEurope]

Unless I am missing something fundamental / obvious, sorry, not convinced you got this right and overlooked a fundamental issue.... 

There is still no solution to have a single store / domain where stock lives in multiple countries, this is just a lang/shipping solution NOT an international selling solution. 

EG

USA stock only available to USA, Canada, Latam

UK store to sell UK inventory 

France warehouse to western europe

Polish warehouse to Eastern Europe.

Managing multi-location inventory in Shopify is a nightmare unless you use expansion stores. 

AND it has killed the SEO listings and no longer see them by country language ie: google fr showing langfr results, it only indexes lang en...

[Fastmonkey]

@Shopify  when can we expect this market functionality as advertised?

• "Market-specific inventory and fulfillment controls. Surface the right inventory to your online store based on your various warehouse or inventory locations that ship to a particular market."

[Jivamukti_EU]

I can only agree to the complaints by others - we're running two separate shops at the moment, one for the US and one for Europe and some other countries. The idea was to fullfill orders from a German warehouse so shipping time and costs would be reduced for our European customers.

We're now trying to merge our two shops and only operate from the US shop by using markets with geolocation, but we're not able

- to find the settings for a market-related inventory management

- to automatically assign fullfillment tasks for either our US or EU warehouse

Is this just us, or has Shopify not provided such settings?

How will Shopify know from which inventory it has to subtract when an order is made / how will an article that's out of stock or generally unavailable be blocked for the market / region that is being served by the warehouse where the article is missing?

[Fastmonkey]

Take a look at the “advanced store localization“ app. We are testing it now and it looks like it will solve these problems.

Shopify markets just doesn’t have all the features it needs to function correctly *yet.

[Andrew]

@Mikoree  Hi! I'm not sure I fully understand your point, would you please elaborate on that for me? The reason I'm confused is that, except for Shopify Lite, each Shopify plan gives you the option to sell in up to 20 languages from a single Shopify store. You simply need to meet the requirements:

 You can read more about that in our Localization and Translation guide, but if I've misunderstood your question please do let me know!

[Andrew]

Hi @DualSportEurope, that's a great point! At the moment, the Inventory and Fulfillment feature you are referring to is in beta but may be available upon request - feel free to contact Shopify Support to see if you're eligible for that beta. 

[Andrew]

Hi @Jivamukti_EU!

As I mentioned to @DualSportEurope, at the moment, the Inventory and Fulfillment feature you are referring to is in beta but may be available upon request - so please feel free to contact Shopify Support to see if you're eligible for that beta. 

[Mikoree]

@Andrew  The problem I was having has been fixed thankfully.

When I originally posted in July, the problem was Shopify translation had a limited us to one default language + one translation/geographical country.  It was not functioning to allow up to 20 languages from one store in each country.  

Thankfully, it is working now.  It took a while to fix but better late than never.

[Jivamukti_EU]

@AndrewThank you! We'll look into the Beta version asap

[UKPreppingShop]

Hi

Ok set up markets, im based in UK so all products showing to uk customers, for EU market i want to only show certain products that will be stored in EU and shipped across eu, but will that charge them import duty as were now on the advanced plan if say a customer in france buys from us, how will shopify know to send from location 2 ie eu warehouse and not from location 1 uk warehouse as both products are in each, my point is will they be wrongly charged import duty buying from uk based shopify if that fulfills the order first out of the two locations? i just dont see how it will be able to distinguish and not charge import duty?

[DualSportEurope]

@UKPreppingShop 

in a nutshell you can’t do this, I’m now forced to run a uk site and shop under a co uk domain and a .com for the euro market as shopify markets is incapable of separating inventory by customer local. So all you stock from all locations is available to all customers irrespective of location. 

even the new updates where shopify is pushing markets, again they have completely missed inventory management by location. 

they really are not thinking international but cross border shipping, it’s a different thing. 

[Fastmonkey]

We solved this same problem — it took a moment to set up, but now we are able to offer our AU customers stock that is only available in the AU warehouse / location from our single USA based shopify store. Check out the app ADVANCED STORE LOCALIZATION

[ArtyMicheline1]

@UKPreppingShop I had to leave shopify for this reason. All my customers are international. If all my business was in NZ it would have been great but I ship regularly to different countries. 

[UKPreppingShop]

Thanks for replies, ok so...I've got uk market with all products at  .Co.uk...I've created the sub domain. Com for EU market...with languages and shipping set up...yes so what's missing is making the .com version only picking from location 2 so eu warehouse...seems not possible on shopify?

[UKPreppingShop]

@Andrewcare to answer my problem, its not possible is it?

[UKPreppingShop]

Ok shopify have confirmed it cant be done, you cant have a location inventory fulfilling for each market zone, so pointless really, all markets is a languages option and ability to charge import duty if you pay more for advanced plan...it is NOT an international multiple locationg SELLING solution as made out to be.

[sahilmittal1313]

What is that one thing you really need for international markets but shopify doesnt provide it.

[UKPreppingShop]

@sahilmittal1313well for markets to work as it should you need tobe able to add a location to a Market you want THAT stock and THAT market to fulfill, shopify admit they cant do that so have to make a workaround and struggling...

[DualSportEurope]

Stock sales by visitor location to physical inventory. 
shopify to understand stock and that not everything makes sense to send cross border

oob shopping feeds in market currency and language 

SEO compliant  multi lingual / location site. Not how it is now. 

[UKPreppingShop]

@DualSportEuropehi just emailed you via your site, i see you have managed to set up both on one store, toggling between co.uk and .com?