Selling internationally on Shopify: what to set up, in order

Your Shopify store works at home. Then orders arrive from Canada or Germany and the gaps show: prices in the wrong currency, English everywhere, and import charges the customer only learns about on delivery. Shopify Markets handles this from one admin, but the settings depend on each other, so the order you decide them in matters.

What is a market in Shopify?

A market is a group of customers you define, usually one country or a group of countries, with its own settings. A new market inherits your store's defaults, and you customise what needs to differ: currency, prices and product availability, domain and language, duties and taxes, and theme content, which depends on your plan.

Decide the grouping first. A single-country market uses that country's currency by default. A multi-country market uses your store currency with local currencies switched on, so each country still sees a converted price. We give a country its own market when its prices, language or shipping differ, and group countries that can share all three.

How should prices work in each market?

Start with automatic conversion, then fix the prices that matter. By default Shopify converts prices at the current exchange rate, and you can refine that:

• Price rounding, which rounds converted prices and shipping rates to the usual ending for each currency, using Shopify's fixed rules.
• Manual exchange rates, which you then keep current yourself.
• A percentage adjustment on a market's catalog, to raise or lower every price there.
• Fixed prices for individual products, which override the percentage adjustment.

Paying in local currencies needs Shopify Payments or Adyen; otherwise everyone pays in your store currency. Rounding and some other pricing features need Shopify Payments, so check your payment setup and plan first.

Which URLs should each market use?

Subfolders on your main domain suit most stores, and Shopify recommends them if you are setting up international selling for the first time. Each market and language gets its own path:

example.com/          primary market, English
example.com/en-ca/    Canada, English
example.com/fr-ca/    Canada, French
example.com/en-gb/    United Kingdom, English

Secondary markets need a country code in the path: a language-only path such as /fr is only available to your primary market. The alternatives are subdomains such as fr.example.com, or country domains such as example.fr, which you buy and which build authority on their own. If all markets share one URL, Shopify notes there is no search benefit for secondary markets. International domains depend on your plan and can't use a myshopify.com address.

Shopify creates hreflang tags for each international domain or subfolder and lists market URLs in your sitemap. Leave that on unless you run your own setup. Our hreflang guide explains what those tags do.

What needs translating, and how?

Everything a shopper reads, in each language you assign to a market: products, collections, pages, blog posts, policies, menus, theme text and email notifications. Shopify's Translate & Adapt app installs when you add a language. It translates by hand or with Shopify's AI translations, and can adapt wording within one language, such as a Sweaters menu for the US and Jumpers for the UK. Translation apps and CSV imports also work.

Once a language is published, checkout follows the customer's browsing language, and Shopify translates checkout by default for a set of languages. Email notifications go out in the order's language when translations exist, so review each one under Settings, then Notifications. Plan for these gaps:

• Translate & Adapt can't translate product images, tags, collection filters or Shopify Forms, so keep text out of product images.
• Some third-party apps don't support multiple languages by default.
• Translate first, publish second. A language published without your own translations shows only the default theme and checkout translations.

How do shipping, duties and taxes fit in?

Customers in a country can only check out when it sits in an active market and in a shipping zone with rates, so set up shipping before you activate a market.

Duties and import taxes can be estimated and collected at checkout, so customers avoid surprise charges on delivery. Shopify calculates them from each product's HS code and country of origin, both set in the product's shipping section. For each market you choose whether duties show as a line item or you cover them in your price, and how tax is displayed. If you buy shipping labels, your carrier must support delivered duty paid (DDP) labels. A transaction fee applies to orders with duties calculated. Which taxes you must register for is a question for your accountant.

How do you check every market before launch?

Preview each market from the admin: in Markets, open a market and choose More actions, then View online store. In Products, View as shows a market's prices and which catalogs include each product. Then work through this checklist:

1. Every country in each market has shipping rates, and the market is active.
2. Prices, rounding and compare-at prices look right in each currency.
3. Each market's languages are translated, including theme text, policies and notifications.
4. A country and language selector is visible, since automatic redirection doesn't apply to some EU visitors.
5. Apps flagged as incompatible with multiple currencies are replaced or removed.
6. A test order completes in each market with the right currency, tax and duties.

Where to start

Pick the country that already sends you the most international orders and set it up end to end, then repeat the pattern. To have it built and tested with you, see our Shopify development service or talk to us about your store.