By 2024, worldwide retail ecommerce sales are expected to grow by 47%, to a staggering $6.3 trillion. That’s a massive pie we want all of our merchants to enjoy a piece of. But we knew that selling internationally needed to be easier, better, more efficient—and just as simple as selling domestically.
That’s why we created Shopify Markets to help you sell in multiple countries easily—and all from a single store.
Markets helps you scale and optimize your international selling strategy with what you need to easily identify, create, and manage a multi-country store from your Shopify admin. With Markets, you can reach new international customers in just a few clicks, increase sales with custom buying experiences by market, and optimize your expanding business for cross-border selling.
Shopify Markets features to help you sell internationally:
Increase international sales with localization
Markets helps you localize your online store by creating tailored experiences for your customers with currencies, languages,domain names, and payment methods that build trust and drive conversion.
Local currencies
Your international customers expect to shop seamlessly in their local currency, and our own data shows that stores that price their products in a customer’s local currency increased their conversion rates up to 40%.
When using Shopify Payments, Markets lets you automatically convert your storefront prices to130+ international currenciesand rounds them up based on the latest foreign exchange rates. From storefront and checkout to notifications and refunds, Markets provides a consistent multi-currency experience so your international customers can shop with confidence.
Store translation to local languages
A survey of 8,709 global consumers in 29 countriesfound that 65% prefer content in their language when making purchases online, and 40% won’t even consider buying from websites in other languages. Our own data shows a 13% relative increase in conversion when buyers were shown a store translated into their language compared to the same one in the default language.
Markets simplifies translating your store using third-partytranslation appsthat support a combination of both manual and machine translation. Similar to currencies,languageswork consistently across your store to provide your customers with a holistic localized experience.
Domains and SEO
International domainsincrease the visibility of your store on search engines, help attract new customers, and help drive conversion. Markets makes setting a region-specific domain strategy simple by automatically creating subfolders when you create a new market. This means that your US market can be atexample.comand your Canada market atexample.com/en-ca. You can also choose to set a subdomain (ca.example.com) or a country domain (example.ca) based on your preference.
Whatever you choose, Shopify automatically sets the right SEO tags so your international buyers see the right domain in their search results. In instances where auto-redirects don’t work as intended (like in the EU, where you aren’t allowed to automatically redirect visitors), theGeolocation appcan prompt customers to choose the correct market based on their IP address.
Payment methods
Online payment methods can heavily influence buying decisions. In some regions, customers prefer to pay using services they recognize and trust, whichvary around the world.
Offering your international customers local payment methods can have a significant impact on conversion. For example, our own data showed that adding Bancontact as a payment method led to a significant increase (150 basis points) with Belgian buyers. When using multiple currencies, Markets makes it easy to add major Europeanpayment methodsto your checkout to help reduce abandoned carts.
Duties and import taxes at checkout
International buyers can find it unclear if additional duties, import taxes, or other fees will apply to their purchase, which can result in less-than-ideal customer experiences, parcel refusals, and chargebacks. As such,duties and import taxesare an important part of your international strategy.
Markets make it easy for international customers to have a great experience with your business by collecting duties and import taxes at checkout. This gives your customers total cost clarity on their purchase and fewer surprises at delivery.
How Shopify Markets supports multi-country expansion on your terms
Turn key market optimization
Markets streamlines the process of international expansion by automatically implementing the right currency and domain subfolder when you create a new market. This ensures that your international customers can find you online and browse in the currency they’re most likely to convert in. What’s more, data-driven recommendations help you enter the most viable markets strategically and efficiently to ensure you’re set up for success.
Configurable market areas
Markets lets you organize your international business in the way that makes sense for you. Depending on your business, it could be more beneficial to manage multiple countries or regions as a group versus individually, which can help you expand more broadly without having to duplicate your localization work. For example, you may want to create a single market for all of Europe or Asia Pacific (don’t worry, you can do this and still present prices in local currencies with local payment methods to your buyers in those markets).
Custom pricing by market
One size doesn’t always fit all, andthe pricing strategy that works in your primary marketlikely won’t be the same for every market you want to expand to.
Markets helps you take greater control of your pricing strategy by allowing you to adjust your store’s profit in international regions to account for cost differences in shipping, you can make quick percentage-based adjustments by market. Or, if you need to set specific prices for select products in different regions based on your agreements with resellers or retailers in that region, Shopify Marketslets you do that, too.
Coming soon: More customization
Customizing your store’s pricing is just the beginning. Soon, we’ll be releasing additional functionality for Markets that gives you greater control over your international operations, including:
- Custom storefront content by market.Go beyond translation by displaying fully unique content to your customers in specific markets.
- Sell different products in different countries.Customize the products you sell by market to align with buyer preferences, seasonality, and regulations.
- 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.
The future of international selling is here
Global e-commerce isn’t an option anymore; it’s a necessity, and your company’s growth, perhaps even its future, depends on it. It’s why we’ve made selling internationally easier than ever with Markets.
