I’m a developer and for my first APP for Shopify, I decided to build a Shopify Embedded App that Merchants can choose products that gives discounts based on Customers geolocation. I’ve seen custom made eCommerce stores offer discounts based on the lower purchasing power of some countries and thought this is a neat feature to could potentially make it possible for more people to buy a product based on their relative purchasing power. Of course it works better for information products like courses that have high margin. Would any Merchants want to use an APP like this if it was made?
Just be aware that this topic is a very sensitive one. With geo-blocking forbade in EU, the pricing based on location can’t have a better future.
Also, remember the Orbitz mistake. They noticed that Mac users were open to spending up to 30% more on bookings, so they’ve started to display different prices.
And yes, eventually their visitors found out, and they didn’t like it.
Although, a discount could be interesting. A discount based on specific events in that country - Public holidays, local events, etc.
Yes, I am thinking in terms of mainly a discount feature. The geo-targeted price will never be higher than the original price of the product.
I’ve seen this feature on digital products in the past such as courses. Eg. If a course sold for 100$, for countries like Thailand where the the average monthly salary is 750$, That person would never be able to justify paying 100$ for the product which is 14% of the persons’ monthly income. On the other hand, the seller loses a chance to make the sell on a essentially infinite margin product.
In order to provide “free shipping” (which is expensive because long distances) my prices are set to US prices including shipping. But, there is demand where the product is made in the Philippines, and I would like to set much lower prices, just in that one country, because rather than US$40 delivery, it’s US$5.
So rather than tiered pricing, same pricing plus shipping cost included for shipping to the appropriate market. I don’t want to the customer to see the high shipping cost.
I’m trying to direct ship from the Philippines, so I have estimated
shipping prices
This applies to 90% of my SKUs. +is dollars added to the price. This is DHL
shipping, but may also add in duty and deliver duty paid to customer.
SEA +10
Rest of Asia + Australia +20
North America +40
Europe +50
So there is one app where I can have different prices based on IP address.
I can hack with a currency converter, by fixing the exchange rate to get
closer to normal price with shipping. (if actual FX is 50:1, use 20:1, or
instead of 1.35:1, 1.10:1)
But, this doesn’t help me for SKUs with higher shipping.
Hi, your idea might provide a neat solution to a problem I (and I suspect many other EU-based Shopify stores) have. As you may know, within the EU consumer retail prices have to be displayed including VAT. We therefore run our website with “my prices include taxes” set. But even though we set all non-EU locations as zero tax (VAT is not chargeable on sales to outside the EU), the system still charges the same VAT-inclusive price even though the sale isn’t taxable. The result is the overseas customer doesn’t get the VAT taken off, but still pays the customs VAT/GST charges levied by customs on import. This is a big problem in selling to such customers.
We tried to get around this by switching to ex-VAT pricing, but with our theme modified to recalculate prices to include VAT when displaying on the website (this is an approach suggested by the Shopify support pages). The problem we found (carefully NOT mentioned by the Shopify support pages) is that we get rounding errors when the ex-VAT prices are translated into with VAtT prices at the checkout - eg a £2 and a £3 item adds up to £5.01.
Your app would enable another approach - offer a discount equal to the VAT component (ie 16.67% off the with VAT price), to any customer coming from a non-EU country. Since the UK exits the EU at the end of this year, this feature would be even more useful as it could then be applied to all non-UK customers.
Ideally the app would also enable the display of ex-VAT prices for such customers in addition to the normal VAT-inclusive price, and would be compatible with Shopify’s new multi-currency feature.
Hi, your idea might provide a neat solution to a problem I (and I suspect many other EU-based Shopify stores) have. As you may know, within the EU consumer retail prices have to be displayed including VAT. We therefore run our website with “my prices include taxes” set. But even though we set all non-EU locations as zero tax (VAT is not chargeable on sales to outside the EU), the system still charges the same VAT-inclusive price even though the sale isn’t taxable. The result is the overseas customer doesn’t get the VAT taken off, but still pays the customs VAT/GST charges levied by customs on import. This is a big problem in selling to such customers.
We tried to get around this by switching to ex-VAT pricing, but with our theme modified to recalculate prices to include VAT when displaying on the website (this is an approach suggested by the Shopify support pages). The problem we found (carefully NOT mentioned by the Shopify support pages) is that we get rounding errors when the ex-VAT prices are translated into with VAtT prices at the checkout - eg a £2 and a £3 item adds up to £5.01.
Your app would enable another approach - offer a discount equal to the VAT component (ie 16.67% off the with VAT price), to any customer coming from a non-EU country. Since the UK exits the EU at the end of this year, this feature would be even more useful as it could then be applied to all non-UK customers.
Ideally the app would also enable the display of ex-VAT prices for such customers in addition to the normal VAT-inclusive price, and would be compatible with Shopify’s new multi-currency feature.
Cool, that does sound like a good idea especially with UK exiting. We can try that.
Can we contact you if I have any more questions about the implementation to make sure we get it right? Would also like to test out going through checkout from your store to get a better idea of the feature you’re describing. I’m from the US, so should experience the rounding error.
Do you know any others who may have the a similar problem as this?
Hi, great to hear you’re interested. Very happy to be contacted and to review specs, participate in testing, etc. - I have an IT background so should hopefully be able to help.
Contact details are:
email: dan@shadowhorse.co.uk
cell: +44 7721 885670
Cell is also contactable via FaceTime & Whatsapp.
In terms of others who might be interested, I have participated in a conversation on the Shopify Forum complaining about the issues with Shopify handling of VAT for Europeans - almost all UK posters. If we get something working I’ll post back onto that conversation to alert others to the solution.
For now no ideal Solution. I use now the App https://apps.shopify.com/geo-targeting?locale=de and show geo targeted popups. The App Can also Apply discount Codes automatically but it would be much better to have the prices reduced
An ideal solution for me would include the possibility to reduce all prices by e.g. 15.9%, which corresponds to the value of the VAT. The target is to show customers outside EU net prices, despite having set up Shopify to show prices including tax.
Would be nice if can provide me with updates on your development
Hi. I am not doing a development, I am just another long-suffering user seeking the same solution you are.
I wouldn’t hold your breath on Shopify providing a solution - I have been complaining about this for over 6 years. But being UK-based Brexit has made the issue more urgent as I expect to need to charge ex-VAT prices to all EU customers from next year. I will post on this thread if I find a solution - at the moment I am exploring apps that can give discounts based on user location, which may provide a way forward.