Shopify Markets acknowledges that there is a world of ecommerce outside of Canada and the USA.
Shopify has always had one major flaw when compared against global ecommerce platforms. It wasn’t global. Like most ecommerce platforms – the focus was North America and a couple of smaller, English speaking markets like the United Kingdom and Australia.
The promise of Shopify is that you don’t have to be an IT guru to sell online. You can concentrate on being a merchant. But not If you want to sell in multiple languages or multiple currencies on the Shopify platform.
Build Your International Shopify Store in 5 Days : Live-In Boot Camp. Accommodation Included
Shopify Markets Launched to Help Existing Stores Grow Internationally.
Like most Shopify announcements, the marketing team are trying to spin this as Shopify being the ‘giant-killer’ – helping the little guy compete against ‘closed shops’. They are “changing the game”! Well – actually they are just catching up.
And like most Shopify product launches, it’s pretty light on detail. Lots of pretty graphics and animations and not a lot of substance. On the one hand its “Everything you need to sell worldwide”, and on the other hand it’s some AI that lets drop-shippers automatically adjust their prices for different markets.
Shopify Markets – What’s in the Box?
There are two versions of Shopify Markets.
- Some localisation elements for A store. You have one store, one catalogue, one price list and you can display those in local language and currency. You also get some smarts to help you know what’s selling in different places.
- Tools to manage international ecommerce including custom market pricing, market specific catalogues & storefronts and calculation of customer charges like import duty and taxes.
All Plans
- Instead of having to run multiple Shopify instances for each country, you can have a store with some localisation elements like currency and language.
- Use Shopify Payments to sell in 133 currencies. There is a 1.5% fee ‘when currency is converted’. We assume this means that you have to have a ‘home’ currency and any transaction not in that currency incurs fees.
- Sell in up to 20 languages. (Not listed)
- Market or Country specific domains without fees for new Shopify instances.
- “Smart settings that optimise market operations” No idea what this means. We assume it is automatic price adjustments and catalogue recommendations based on sales from other Shopify stores.
Advanced & Plus
- Custom pricing per market. The basic version of Shopify Markets allows you to show converted price in a different currency, but the price is the same for all markets.
- Market specific catalogues & Storefronts. Probably one of the most important aspects of an international store – being able to control which products are sold where and what the user experience is like for that market.
- Estimate and collect duty and import taxes at checkout. Perhaps a feature accelerated by Brexit. This is something that US based shops don’t get – they do international Instagram advertising but don’t realise that the Customer has to pay big taxes over and above the delivery. There is a charge for this – 0.85% if you are using Shopify Payments. 1.5% when using an alternative payment provider.
- Manage fulfilment locations per market.
Build Your International Shopify Store in 5 Days : Live-In Boot Camp. Accommodation Included