Guide to Shopify Markets - Expanding Your Business Globally

Selling across borders has never been more important than in today’s global economy. Expanding your business internationally isn’t just an opportunity but a necessity to sustain your business growth.

With Shopify Markets this is easier than ever. Shopify Markets equips your business with all the tools it needs to sell, manage, and deliver products to any point on Earth.

In this article, we’ll talk about Shopify Market’s pricing, features, and the opportunities it brings to your e-commerce business.

Shopify Markets is Shopify’s way of simplifying the international sales process.

With a few clicks, you can create customized shopping experiences for different segments of your customers simultaneously.

You can tailor your store’s language, prices, products, currencies, and more to match your target country.

Moreover, Shopify Markets helps you simplify and control your e-commerce operations like:

• Order Management

• Inventory Management

• Fulfillment

• Package tracking

• Taking care of taxes and duties

Overall, Shopify Markets is a one-stop-shop for enabling you to sell at scale internationally.

With Shopify Markets you can leverage geolocation tracking and adapt your store to the country or region of your visitor.

This way your store stays locally, culturally, and seasonally relevant and maximizes your conversion rates.

Tweak your store’s international versions to provide a frictionless shopping experience for all of your customers, regardless of their location.

This way, you can maximize your store’s conversions and average order value.

You can also set separate product prices for each of your target markets through your Shopify admin.

Shopify Markets helps you tailor a pricing strategy that fits your target markets.

You can make prices vary to fit each market, or you can make them fixed for some or all of your products and their variants.

These conversions are based on the latest foreign exchange rates and rounded up in your store for a smooth shopping experience.

Local currencies are crucial for the shopping experience of your international customers.

With Shopify Markets, you can provide your international customers with a smooth multicurrency experience from storefront to checkout.

Translating your store to the language of your target customers is of paramount importance for your shop’s success.

This is especially helpful for markets like Europe, where there are a lot of developed countries with different languages.

Moreover, Shopify claims they saw a 13% increase in conversions when buyers were shown the same store in their language, as opposed to the default language.

Shopify’s free Translate & Adapt app works great in combination with Shopify Markets.

It allows you to auto-translate your store in two languages, and manually add or edit as many language translations as you wish.

Overall, Shopify Markets enables you to provide consistently positive shopping experiences to your international customers in their primary language.

Equipping your store to conquer international markets involves a few technical aspects as well. Custom domains and local payment method integrations help you go a long way in reaching shoppers organically and making the payment process as frictionless as possible.

Shopify Markets makes setting up international domains a breeze.

Having an international domain or subdomain that is tailored to your target country or region is important because it boosts your visibility in search engines and can improve your website’s speed and accessibility.

For example, you can set your store to have multiple versions such as en.yourstore.com or de.yourstore.com, etc. for each country that your store shows up.

You can set them to yourstore.com/en to specify this is the English version of your site or even to yourstore.co.uk to show this is the local UK version of your site.

Shopify Markets helps you offer local payment methods that your customers know and trust. The right payment method can have a big impact on the buying decision.

That’s why having diverse payment methods available can be a conversion game-changer.

Moreover, setting up and optimizing payment methods with Shopify Markets helps you revolutionize the checkout experience.

Import taxes and duties are the hidden pitfalls of international e-commerce. When unclear and unaddressed, they can result in frustrations for your customers, parcel refusals, and chargebacks.

For example, a US merchant shipping products to the UK would likely have to pay the standard 20% VAT and possibly between 8-12% as an extra import tariff. However, these values greatly depend on the category of your product, as well as its price, and the time of year when you’re shipping them.

Typically, your product will be held at the local country’s customs and your customer might face extra charges or have to lose time for pickup and to deal with the customs bureaucracy. These challenges greatly increase the odds of parcel refusal.

If you're looking to simplify your international sales process and minimize these hurdles, see Migration to Shopify.

Instead of leaving your customers to pay their duties and taxes, you employ DDP (delivered duty paid) shipping terms.

This means that the merchant takes care of all the costs, which greatly reduces friction for the customers.

Not employing DDP is one of the biggest mistakes for international retailers, as unexpected fees, delays, and import tariffs for your customers will drive your successful deliveries into the ground.

With Shopify Markets all of the duties and taxes for your products are automatically calculated and collected at checkout. This provides your customers with complete clarity about costs and removes most of the shipment friction.

To improve your checkout experience in 2024, see Checkout.liquid to Extensibility Checkout Migration

Shopify Markets gives merchants great flexibility to optimize and tailor their offerings to each target market. Merchants can do this either by changing the products they offer or by changing the price at which they sell. 

The pricing strategy that’s best for you depends on a lot of factors. These include multiple supply and demand factors, as well as your product quality, brand recognizability, competitors, and more. Here’s a pricing strategy refresher by Shopify.

Selling internationally often requires a flexible pricing strategy.

This can be due to a difference in customer purchase power, the presence of local competitors, or something else.

With Shopify Markets you can take complete control over your international prices.

You can leverage geolocation tracking or localized subdomains to set percentage-based price adjustments to account for increased shipping costs.

You can also set a custom fixed price for each specific market if you want to follow a special pricing strategy.

You may want to make a certain product exclusive to a specific market, or you may include or exclude a market due to regional regulations or licensing agreements.

You could also offer different packaging in different markets to better align with buyer preferences.

Shopify Markets helps you take control of your product offerings and sell the right products to the right audience at the right price.

With these features, Shopify Markets enables you to pursue any international merchandising strategy you see fit.

Managing and fulfilling orders is a crucial part of your international e-commerce operations. Shopify Markets equips you with the tools you need to smoothly manage your inventory and order fulfillment across borders.

Opportunities with Shopify Markets:

• You can select localized fulfillment centers to drive down costs and transit time to shoppers.

• You can set specific shipment rules for products of varying size, weight, perishability, or fragility.

• You may also set different delivery times, shipping rates, localized return policies, etc.

Overall, Shopify Markets has all the features you need to tweak your shipments and ensure your products successfully reach the right destination with the least amount of cost and the maximum number of happy customers.

Managing your product inventory is crucial for your international e-commerce success. Shopify Markets allows you to keep tabs on your stocks and storage in real-time across your fulfillment centers.

You can allocate specific products or quantities to be sold in certain countries based on regional demand. You can control which products are available in which markets to accommodate local regulations or preferences.

To manage your inventory storage, tracking, and fulfillment, you can use Shopify Locations. Through it, you can set up locations relevant to your business such as retail stores, warehouses, popups, or any other place where you manage or stock inventory and track and manage all of your inventory numbers in real-time.

There are two ways you can get started with Shopify Markets. There is the more basic Markets plan and the more advanced Markets Pro plan.

However, this method makes it more difficult to calculate what you’re actually paying.

Moreover, your bottom line varies depending on your Shopify plan and if you use Shopify Payments.

Moreover, small businesses won’t be able to feel the full impact of the pro features.

Whereas larger organizations would be limited by the comparative lack of customization options of Shopify Markets.

Here’s a full features comparison of Markets and Markets Pro.

Shopify Markets offers a streamlined solution for businesses aiming to tap into the global market.

It simplifies international selling with features like language translation, currency conversion, and localized product offerings.

The platform efficiently handles complexities such as tax and duty calculations and international shipping, making global expansion more accessible than ever.

To ensure your storefront resonates with international audiences, see our Custom Theme Development services.

Shopify Payments is undoubtedly an internationally competitive gateway and greatly streamlines your multi-market store’s sales. However, it’s only available in a number of countries.

For businesses needing advanced features, Shopify Markets Pro provides a comprehensive suite, including exclusive shipping rates and enhanced tax management.

The choice between Shopify Markets and Markets Pro depends on your business size and specific needs: Markets is ideal for those starting to explore international sales, while Markets Pro suits larger businesses with extensive international operations.

Whichever solution you choose, our Shopify agency can help you develop, design, and deploy your online store into any international market.

See also: What is a Shopify Partner