Selling to Canadians in CAD, to Americans in USD etc. etc.

[CSF_Robert]

Hi there,

I'm brand new to Shopify and in the process of setting up a shop to sell digital products (stock footage). I have two domains of the same url (canadastockfootage.ca and canadastockfootage.com).  I would really like to sell to Canadians in CAD, and to Americans in USD and perhaps to other countries either in USD or their own currency. 

My questions are:
Does it make sense to use the .ca url to sell to just Canadians and the .com to everyone else and does that mean setting up two stores somehow? ...or perhaps should i just stick with a .com url and have a drop-down currency selector so the customer can choose their preferred currency? ...Or is my site better off with some kind of location (IP?) identifier which will automatically select the customer's native currency? I've also read that using an IP identifier can have a negative impact on SEO via Google, though i'm not sure if that's true?

Any light anyone can share on these topics would be highly appreciated! ...or if there's any resources that answer these questions i'd love to know.
Thanks in advance,
Rob

[CSF_Robert]

Hi Thomas,
Thanks for your thoughts. Yes, I would much prefer to have just a .com with a drop-down currency selector. Do you have a store yourself? 
Rob

[Skye]

HI, @CSF_Robert.

That's a great question. Thanks for posting!

Luckily, you can achieve exactly what you're looking for with the help of Shopify Markets. This feature allows you to sell to your customers in their regional currency, domain, and even language. The best part is it is automatic from the customer's experience. Check out our guide on how to set this up and if you have any questions on the process let me know!

I see in your response below that you would prefer not to use your .ca domain. With Shopify, you can set a primary domain, while hosting subdomains such as .ca. When your Canadian customers view your .com store, Shopify Markets will automatically direct them to .ca and display CAD. Since you already own this domain, it's something I recommend keeping. It also adds a touch of additional professionalism to your business. 

In the meantime, I hope you don't mind I checked out your site, and it's fantastic. Were these photos all taken by yourself? I did notice that your curated collections redirect to pond5.com. Are you going to migrate these products to Shopify? I would love to learn more and see what additional support I can offer. For example, if you need help creating a new marketing strategy or learning how you can improve your SEO, we have some great resources and advice I can provide! 

[CSF_Robert]

Hi Skye,

Thanks so much for your answer(s) and apologies for taking so long to respond. (summer etc. lol).
In reply to your questions, yes that's all my content and they're actually videos not photos, and yes i will be migrating that content to Shopify.  

That's great to know that i can have .ca as a subdomain of .com using Shopify Markets, though i'm curious as to your opinion if i should be a) having .com/USD as the primary market with .ca/CAD as a sub-domain or b) have it the other way around with .ca/CAD as the primary and .com/USD as the sub-domain? Is there an advantage either way from an SEO perspective? Also is Shopify Markets an option on the basic Shopify plan, as its not super clear on the current Shopify Plans features list?

A couple of other questions:
1. Something else i'm curious about is price-rounding. I would like to have prices rounded to the dollar when selling in different currencies (after they've been converted). Eg. I would much rather have a price rounded to $135 instead of $134.67! Is rounding prices a feature of the basic plan?

2. Also for Canadian customers shopping in CAD on a .ca url, are taxes automatically added for them? (based on the province they're shopping from)

Best regards,
Robert

[Skye]

Hi @CSF_Robert 

Those are great questions! First and foremost, yes, Shopify Markets is available on the Basic Plan! However, you have a few more feature options on the higher plans. That being said, price rounding is a feature available on all plans. Therefore, you don't need to worry about wonky prices when the currency is changed. However, if you are on the basic plan, your price would round according to that day's market changes. Whereas on the Shopify or Advanced Plan you have the ability to set a fixed exchange rate.

In regards to SEO, it shouldn't matter which you choose to be your set primary domain, as long as you purchase both .ca and .com. The way this works is when a user is using google.ca to search your .ca will rank much higher than if you only had a .com and vice versa. 

When it comes to taxes, they will not be added automatically, you will need to set this up to collect. The way in which this is done is dependent on where your store operates. The same goes for American Taxes. I recommend checking out our guide here to see if you are required to charge tax and what steps to take in order to collect.

I hope that helps! If you have any more questions please let me know.

[CSF_Robert]

Great info @Skye. Thank-you very much.
Robert

[laraspence]

Skye! Great post to Robert about Shopify Markets and using a .ca and a .com - my small team and I just helped a client do that (today!) - he had a .ca domain and bought a similar (shorter) .com and my colleague used Shopify Markets to get US pricing, cart behavior for those in US (I tested it in browserstack!) and keeping the .ca for Canadian customers. What should we do for Google Analytics - can we track .com separately from .ca (though there's only one site/products) - and, for optimal ranking for USA, should we do something for SEO at this point? (prioritize one domain over other?) - thanks! We have GA4 done for the .ca. 

[derek-at-bold]

I am *way* late to this party, but I wanted to say that right now in 2024, using ShopifyPlus and the Catalogs feature with Markets, it looks like you can set a fixed exchange rate per product, per catalog, BUT that does not actually work. It uses the daily exchange rate no matter what. We filed a bug against this, and Shopify confirmed that it was a bug, and that while all documentation says this works fine, when they dug into the code to verify, it was not actually coded that way. Accounting says that's a dealbreaker for us, so we are currently unable to support Canada and the USA the way we had intended to, and are in "wait and see mode", hoping the bug will be fixed in the Summer 2024 edition.