Can't pick new default language for secondary market

[EmilOliver]

I've got two languages on my Shopify store: Danish and English. Denmark in my main market, and then I got a secondary market, which is international. I want the language for Danish visitors to be Danish and English for international visitors. However, when i go into markets and select international, and then try to pick english as my default language, the option is grey and unclickable. If i switch the default to English on the danish market, then English becomes the default in both markets. 

Any ideas for why this is not working?

[richbrown_staff · Accepted solution]

Hi @EmilOliver , this is because your International market has the same domains and languages configuration as your primary market. You'll see if you go to International > Languages and domains > Manage domains - that it'll have 'Use primary market configuration' selected. This means that International inherits the settings from the primary market. I.e. you can't have /en just for a non primary market. Either include English in your primary market, or use subfolders (or another domain / subdomain) on your international market. Hope that helps, Rich

[Liquify]

Just to add to this - made a loom for another customer as they were still confused:

https://www.loom.com/share/423e2d2f1ba545a88a11674c82acc46e?from_recorder=1&focus_title=1

Note there are some SEO considerations when doing this so be sure to set languages correctly per market 

[ARSystems]

Is setting up for example:
.lv for Latvia
.com for Europe
.es for Spain

and then having a language selector that jumps between these domains in each of the markets a good idea?

[Liquify]

If you're a new site with new content it's largely irrelevant these days - traditionally we would have said yes to using country domains.

Personally I'd just use the one top level domain in 2025 with subfolders.

If you're an existing site with content etc and looking to preserve positions then you need an audit / some consultancy.

[ARSystems]

The main problem I have at the moment is that my latvian market customers go into .com and are frustrated that the English language is in front of them.

So I think that separate domains would fix that and they could just go into .lv not .com.

at the moment I have the .com/{language}, but then it is much harder to achieve that everytime my latvian customers go into the website from google for example then they see the latvian language.

They will probably still stumble upon the standard .com a lot of the time and get frustrated.

The .lv will also rank better for latvian SEO no?

PS. I don't really care about re-ranking the whole SEO positions I have at the moment. They are messed up anyways and I had to delete .es/lv, because that was ranking in front of .com/lv in the latvian SEO I had at the moment.

[Liquify]

Just enable redirection then in market preferences
then people will be redirected by market settings for language
e.g if default for lt is set as lithuanian language then if this is activated they will be redirected
like we do here - you should be redirected to /lt if in lt

https://www.dolitashoes.com/