Have you prepared your store for global sales?
Did you know that 35% of all Shopify visits come from international visitors? According to a recent survey by Shopify, 92% of these visitors want to browse and purchase products in their own currency and pricing.
If you manage a Shopify store, it won’t take much time to convert your store from local to global. In this guide, we will explain in detail how you can do this.
How to Create an International E-commerce Strategy
Transitioning to international markets can be exciting. Your current market sales strategy may have been successful, and you are looking to expand. However, you need to be strategic in your international e-commerce adventure.
1. Identify Target International Markets
Be intentional about where you expand. The “sell to everyone everywhere” strategy may seem like a good idea to attract as many buyers as possible, but different markets around the world have unique browsing and purchasing habits. Using this general approach may distract your efforts and halt international expansion before it even starts.
Start by looking at the session report by location in the Shopify analytics section. If you already have international visitors from various countries, choose two or three countries to investigate deeper. If you already have some sales from those countries, that’s even better — we are looking for signs of demand for your products from international buyers. Ultimately, you will use these indicators to identify one or two markets where you can start selling your products.
If you don’t have any international visitors or sales yet, don’t worry. You should still choose one or two markets that you consider to have good potential for demand. Markets that are geographically close to you or share the same native language and similar purchasing habits are good options for your initial international expansion. For example, if you are in Canada, selling your products in the United States is a suitable option to start.
Facilitating the Checkout Process for International Customers
A big part of moving to international markets as an e-commerce business is ensuring that your business can accept local currencies for international customers. We make this easy with Shopify – learn more about how to set up payments correctly for international customers. Present prices in the buyer’s local currency (requires Shopify Payments)
After identifying the international market(s) you are targeting, first ensure that these buyers can pay for your products in their local currency. 33% of international visitors won’t even consider making a purchase if local currency is not offered, so this is the crucial first step in converting visitors into customers. Go to the payment settings in Shopify, click the option to add a new country/region, and select the market you want to start selling your products to.
Once you add the country/region, the local currency for your new target market will now be active, and you’ve taken the first step toward cross-border selling!
Buyers from the market you selected will now be able to view prices in their local currency, which is automatically converted from the base prices using real-time foreign exchange rates. For more control over the prices that international buyers see, proceed to the next section.
Independently Set Your International Prices (requires Shopify Payments)
Congratulations! You are now selling in a new international market where buyers can easily discover your products and pay in their local currency. Next, try taking more control over your international pricing.
Automatic exchange rates are what is already set by default, which is a good set-and-forget strategy. Shopify automatically converts your base prices to the buyer’s currency using live exchange rates, taking into account currency conversion fees so you are not at a loss. One thing to note about automatic pricing is that your product prices will change with market fluctuations — which may surprise potential buyers if they visit your site multiple times before making a purchase.
To help
In combating this, use manual currency exchange rates to fix your prices. You can set an appropriate rate in advance that will be used to convert your prices to that currency, which means that your product prices will remain stable until you change this rate again. You should keep in mind that when accepting an order in a different currency, there is a small fee for currency conversion. So when using manual currency exchange rates, be sure to include the fee percentage in the specified rate using the provided formula.
On the Shopify plan and higher plans, you can take more control over your international strategy by adjusting prices and raising or lowering prices for certain countries or regions using percentage factors.
For example, you might be expanding into Germany and France, where both use the Euro. If you want to raise your German prices slightly, input a price increase percentage to raise your German prices while leaving your French prices based on the currency conversion that has been set. For instance, entering a 100% increase will double the price, or -50% will reduce the price by half. Prices will continue to comply with any custom rounding rules assigned for each currency and appear cleanly in the store.
If you are on the Advanced or Shopify Plus plan, you can set specific international prices for all of your products or a subset of your catalog. This is beneficial if you have specific pricing in the international market(s) you are currently targeting or if you have a manufacturer’s suggested retail price that you need to use for different countries.
You can set specific international prices by uploading a .CSV file of your products: start by exporting the products you want to set international prices for and open the .CSV file. Go to the column that contains the international price headers. For example, Australian pricing is executed in the column titled price / AU. Enter your prices for each country/region in the manner you want them to appear in the store before importing the .CSV file back into Shopify.
Displaying Taxes
Expectations vary in different markets around the world when it comes to seeing and paying taxes. In North American markets, products are typically displayed without any taxes and then added at checkout based on the buyer’s shipping location.
On the other hand, other markets, including Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, require products to be displayed inclusive of any taxes that need to be paid. Shopify removes the headache of considering these variables by automatically including or excluding taxes in the product price based on the buyer’s location.
For example, let’s assume you are in the United States and the selected expansion market is the United Kingdom. You sell a t-shirt for $20, which is loaded in Shopify without any taxes. You are selling in the UK using a manual exchange rate of 0.75, where buyers expect their prices in pounds to include the local VAT rate of 20%.
The final price of your t-shirt for buyers in the UK will appear in the store as £18 (20 × exchange rate 0.75 × VAT rate 1.2) instead of adding the 20% VAT at checkout, which could shock buyers and perhaps lead to cart abandonment.
You can find a complete list of countries or regions with their approved tax treatment in our help documentation.
Setting Up International Shipping
You are making great strides in your online store experience on a global level! Next, ensure that international buyers see shipping options tailored for them. Your store will no longer rely on a “rest of the world” strategy, so let’s also make sure this applies to one of the most critical aspects of the buying experience: how buyers will receive their products.
Start
by creating a dedicated shipping zone for your new international market in your shipping settings, and consider your shipping strategy when setting up different shipping rates. Cross-border shipping is likely to be more expensive, so look at the following tactics to remove as much friction as possible for your new buyers:
- Check prices and options with your chosen shipping company. You’ll want to ensure that your preferred shipping company ships to the market(s) you are targeting, and that they are transparent about those prices. If you are using carrier-calculated shipping, simulate the international buyer experience by testing the international checkout process yourself. Buyers appreciate transparency, and when you fulfill your promises regarding shipping instead of hiding longer delivery times, you’ll build trust and earn lifetime customers.
- Provide shipping speeds in your pricing descriptions so buyers know exactly what to expect. Consider using international pricing to increase your product prices for the targeted market to offset offering cheaper shipping options.
- Would you be more likely to purchase a $70 item with a $30 shipping cost, or a $100 item with free shipping?
- Research which countries or regions impose tax liabilities when shipping to them. For example, if you are shipping to the UK, you must collect and pass on VAT to the UK government on any packages you send valued at less than £135. You don’t want your international parcels to be rejected by buyers due to non-acceptance.
- If some of your products are heavy and bulky, and international shipping simply isn’t feasible, you can prevent buyers in other countries from purchasing those items using shipping profiles.
Localizing Your Website
Localizing your website means making it accessible to local populations in new markets. This includes translating content, altering layouts depending on local language direction, creating international domains, and more. Use international domains to specifically target the markets
At this stage, provide a local pricing experience for your international buyers with specific, transparent shipping options for each market – great work. The next step in your global journey is to further localize your store experience with specific international domains.
Not only do international domain names serve as a positive visual cue for buyers that they are browsing a local version of your site, but they also increase the likelihood of buyers paying in their local currency without needing to do anything. They determine the pricing and default language for each market you are targeting.
For example, let’s assume you are a US-based merchant currently selling on johnsapparel.com. To expand your business in the UK, you can leverage international domains so these buyers see johnsapparel.co.uk (ccTLD, the top-level domain) or even uk.johnsapparel.com (subdomain).
If you’re unsure whether to use a ccTLD or a subdomain, we recommend using a subdomain which won’t cost you any extra money. If you are using a domain managed by Shopify, you can set up the subdomain directly in your dashboard. For third-party domains, please refer to their documentation for setup, and then connect your subdomain to Shopify.
Once your new domain is connected in Shopify, set the default pricing and language in the domain management section.
If you are targeting markets that speak different native languages than your own, we will delve into translating your content in the next section.
Translating Your Store and Online Materials
When you are expanding your business globally for the first time, it’s ideal to have suitable target markets that share the same native language as your own. However, if that is not the case, or if you are taking your international expansion to the next level, seriously consider investing time in translating your store into the language of the country or region you are targeting.
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For local pricing and currency, nearly 80% of international buyers prefer browsing an eCommerce store in their native language, making a translated store a powerful tool for increasing international sales. Despite what you may have read elsewhere, you do not need to open multiple Shopify stores to provide a shopping experience in multiple languages.
To get started, browse our collection of compatible translation apps. These tools connect directly to the multilingual section of Shopify, where you will manage the translation of your content. Most apps offer a free trial period ranging from 7 to 14 days, so take your time to browse and test, then choose the app you feel most comfortable with.
Once you have selected and installed your preferred translation app, enable the language you wish to translate your store into from the languages section in your admin panel.
You are now ready to start translating your content in the app you selected. If you are targeting a market that speaks a language you can already communicate in, you can begin translating the content yourself. However, most of the time, it is unlikely that you will speak the language of the market you are expanding into. In these cases, there are two options you can consider:
- Use an online tool like Deepl to create machine-translated content in the chosen language. This is an effective and efficient way to start selling in another language. Aside from your time, machine translations won’t cost you anything. The quality of machine translations is improving day by day, but they are not 100% accurate, especially in some languages like Turkish. If you find that the machine translations are insufficient based on customer feedback, browse the Shopify Experts marketplace for partners who can manually translate your content into the chosen language. Depending on the amount of content you need to translate, the cost of such a project can range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars. For more information on finding specialized help in the Experts marketplace, check out this article.
- If you are still at the beginning stage, we recommend using machine translations to start and not worrying about manual translations until you build some momentum. If you start seeing real growth in the target market, or if you already understand the needs and specifics of that market, consider investing more in manual translations when the time is right. Don’t have a sufficient budget for larger translation projects? Check out Shopify Capital, a business funding program that helps Shopify merchants obtain funding to boost their growth.
Consider translating high-traffic pages, products, and all legal information/terms of service first. Remember to also include email notifications so that buyers from the new target market can understand the automated messages that will be sent to confirm purchases and shipping notifications.
Finally, when you are ready for buyers to experience your site in the new language, make sure to make that language available on the appropriate international domain by going back to your domains section and setting it either as the default or as a language option. Shopify again takes care of search engine optimization by setting the correct hreflang tags for each new language you publish, and the Geolocation application you installed earlier also allows buyers to switch languages if they wish to do so.
Marketing in New International Markets
Advertising is an effective way to attract traffic from the targeted international market while simultaneously increasing demand. You have done a lot of work to localize your online store for international visitors; make sure to leverage all these efforts by localizing your marketing as well.
Whatever channels you plan to advertise on, it is important to create specific campaigns for the regions that target international buyers specifically, directing them to the correct version of your site. Re-running existing online ad campaigns for new countries or regions usually makes it unlikely for people to click on your ads or for those who do click to be sent to the wrong version of your site.
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For example, in Facebook Ads Manager, divide your ads targeting new buyers into different campaigns. Localize any text (one effective tactic is promoting fast shipping to the targeted country), images, and make sure that the destination URLs reflect the international domains you have set up for each market.
Facebook is just one example among many that should be considered here. Make sure you invest the time into localizing your ads across all the online advertising channels you plan to target buyers.
You might also consider creating separate social media accounts for each different market so you can better leverage your audience in those areas. All of your social media posts can be properly localized and allow you to target specific languages and regions.
If you are using dynamic retargeting with Facebook, Google, or Pinterest, ensure that these campaigns are set up for your buyers’ preferences in terms of local pricing and language if possible. To do this, you need to create a product feed from Shopify that supports multiple currencies and languages to display the same prices and copy from your online store. We recommend looking into DataFeed Watch or Multiple Google Shopping feeds for a custom solution for Google.
Conclusions
Global expansion is not without pain points. Global e-commerce is complex and intricate, and it changes rapidly, forcing everyone to evolve and adapt quickly.
But for every growing pain, there lies potential: there are around 4.66 billion internet users on this planet, and creating personalized and frictionless experiences brings them closer to you. It’s the reason for building the things we build, and the reason you should use them. Because together, we want to make commerce better for everyone.
Source: https://www.shopify.com/blog/international-ecommerce
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