Shopify markets aims to allow merchants to easily expand their online Shopify stores to reach international markets. Features include multi-currency via the markets dashboard, localised domain control, automated duties collection, custom inventory per market and more! Shopify Markets is a significant update to the Shopify ecosystem which has been introduced to revolutionise international commerce through the platform.
What changes with Shopify Markets?
Although Shopify does already offer many of the core features of Shopify Markets, the new functionality houses these features within one centralised dashboard and enhances the ease to roll out to new markets with limited, if any, development requirements. Shopify markets affects currency, language, domains, duties and inventory management alongside some great automation and analytics too. Let’s dive into a little more detail for each of Shopify Market’s new features.
Currency control with Shopify Markets
Shopify markets comes equipped with 133 different currency options for your chosen market to allow your international customers to shop in their native currency. Selling in a local currency can
reduce cart abandonment rate by 33% as data suggests a large portion of global customers refuse to make a purchase decision based on the currency offered to them on foreign ecommerce websites. From product pages to basket, checkout to refunds, Shopify Markets provides a consistent multi-currency experience to buyers across the world so they can have confidence when buying from your store.
Multi-language
Shopify Markets allows merchants to translate their store to offer a native lingual experience to a global customer base.
Research shows that nearly 80% of international buyers ‘strongly prefer’ to browse ecommerce stores in their native language, and
40% won't consider buying from website in other languages highlighting the importance for stores to be properly translated to improve number of sales and overall user experience for international customers. With the Shopify Markets platform and
integrated translation apps, multiple languages can be dynamically set for an individual store so that customers from all over the world can be catered for with ease, eliminating the need for merchants to create a separate store for each country or region.
Localised domain name
We know from repeated studies the impact of a domain extension on the level of trust. Shopify Markets offers localised domain names that can then be associated with a specific language and country to offer a truly native experience for international customers - they’ll feel right at home on your website. Localised domain names can improve customer confidence that they are browsing a local and relevant version of your website. As a result, customers are more likely to pay in their own native currency as domains set pricing and language defaults specifically for each market that is being targeted.
For example, when a user from Germany browses a website hosted in the United Kingdom, prices will automatically be displayed in EUR and language will be adjusted to German, resulting in a higher likelihood that this customer converts. What's more is that Shopify Markets automatically sets tags for SEO so buyers are able to more easily find your website. In the event that a customer lands on the wrong domain, the
Geolocation app can direct them to the right market based on where they are browsing from.
Duties collection with Shopify Markets
Usually when selling internationally, price fluctuations often arise due to the various tax and duties rules that are specific to different countries and markets. Thankfully with Shopify Markets, merchants can automatically calculate and collect tax and duty fees at checkout for total cost clarity so customers aren’t hit with unexpected charges on delivery. This helps create customer confidence about the total price of purchase, as some users might abandon their cart if they are uncertain of any additional costs. It is noteworthy that a small 0.85% fee per order is taken from the seller per order when duty and import taxes are calculated with Shopfiy Payments, which is a small price to pay as the often improved profitability from increased international conversions offsets this.