How to Use Shopify Markets for Smarter Global Expansion

Selling internationally with Shopify meant duplicate stores, messy plugins, and months of manual work. Most customers prefer shopping in their own language, on a local domain, and paying in local currency, which historically forced merchants to run separate storefronts for each country. It was, in short, a logistical headache. 

Today, it’s different. Shopify has evolved from a flexible storefront platform into a true global eCommerce engine. This transformation is powered by two new core components: the Markets API and the Catalog API. 

Together, these features allow Shopify merchants to manage pricing, localization, and regional storefront experiences from one backend, without the usual cross-border eCommerce headaches. In this guide, I’ll explain how it all works.

Let’s dive in!

What Is Shopify Markets?

Shopify Markets has been around since 2021 as a toolkit to simplify cross-border commerce.

It originally helped brands sell internationally by offering features like:

• Localized domains and SEO setup – use country-specific domains or subfolders with automatic SEO tags (like hreflang) so each market’s site is optimized for local search.
• Currency conversion – display prices in over 130 local currencies (via Shopify Payments) so customers can pay in their own currency.
• Language translation – provide storefront content in multiple languages (up to 20 on advanced plans) so shoppers can browse in their native language.
• Regional pricing adjustments – set custom pricing or automatic FX rate conversion with rounding for different markets (on Shopify Advanced/Plus).
• Duties and tax estimates – option to calculate import duties and taxes at checkout (with third-party integrations like Avalara) to avoid customer surprises.
• Local payment methods – offer some local payment options through Shopify Payments. For example, a limited selection via Stripe’s integrations to boost trust with international customers.

These features removed many hurdles to international selling. However, until now, Shopify Markets was mostly a manual tool. You configured everything through the admin UI. It was functional for basic expansion, but it lacked flexibility. Advanced customization (like dynamically showing different content or pricing rules per country) often required duplicate themes, custom scripts, metafield hacks, or separate apps. For a brand looking to truly scale globally, Markets’ point-and-click settings only went so far.

In 2025, all that changes. With the introduction of the new Markets API, Shopify now offers fully programmable control over how your site behaves by region. In other words, your international storefronts are no longer siloed or hard-coded.

They’re an API-driven part of your core website. You don’t need a maze of plugins or to maintain separate themes for each country. Instead, the data, rules, and logic for all your markets live in your Shopify backend and can be managed in a unified way (including via code). This programmatic approach is especially powerful for Shopify Plus brands and headless builds (like those using Hydrogen) where backend automation is critical.

The 2025 Upgrade: Markets API + Catalog API

Shopify’s global expansion toolkit now includes two powerful APIs that work in tandem:

• Markets API – allows developers to define markets, assign pricing adjustments, configure payment options, and apply tax and duty logic programmatically. Any setting you previously clicked in the Markets admin can now be managed via API calls. For example, you can script rules to automatically assign a visitor to the correct market, set a percentage price increase in one region to offset higher taxes, or toggle payment gateways by country.
  
  All of this without touching the theme code. This API essentially exposes all the knobs and levers of Shopify Markets for automation and integration. It’s worth noting that as of API version 2025-04, apps were required to update to this new Markets structure. By July 2025, all stores will be migrated to “new” Markets. In short, it’s the new default. This opens up a new level of flexibility for merchants and developers alike.
• Catalog API – lets you serve market-specific product data and content from a single store. Merchants can customize product details per market, including:
  
  • Different product titles and descriptions (e.g., translated or region-specific messaging)
  • Varying product availability or visibility by market (e.g., only show certain products in Europe, or exclude a product that’s prohibited in a region)
  • Market-specific pricing or bundles (e.g., offering a product as a bundle in one country but as individual items elsewhere)
  • Unique attributes like unit measurements or ingredient lists per region to comply with local regulations.

Previously, achieving these kinds of variations often meant awkward solutions, like duplicating products, using metafields for alternate descriptions, or installing third-party apps to handle per-country catalogs. Now it’s native, secure, and scalable.

In fact, as of July 2025, Shopify’s catalog structure supports multiple markets per catalog natively. This means one product can have different market-specific data under the hood, managed through the API or through the admin UI in the Products section, which now reflects market-specific overrides.

How do these two APIs work together? Think of the Markets API as handling the structure and logic of your international selling, while the Catalog API controls the content and product offer for each market. The Markets API defines what a market is, which countries, what currency, which payment gateways, tax/duty settings, etc. and how checkout should behave.

The Catalog API defines what products and information each market’s customers see (which products, with what titles/prices, in which language, etc.). 

Together, they enable a fully localized experience on the frontend, all powered by one centralized backend system. Shopify’s message is clear: you don’t need a separate storefront for every country. You need a smarter, unified storefront that adapts to every country.

Why Is This Update Important

Before this update, global growth on Shopify was certainly achievable, but often painful. Ambitious merchants resorted to strategies like maintaining multiple Shopify stores for different regions or using “expansion stores,” duplicating themes with minor variations, and spending countless development hours to keep everything in sync.

This led to higher costs and complexity, fragmented analytics, SEO challenges from duplicated content, and slow time-to-market when launching in new countries. In short, selling worldwide was possible, but not elegant.

Now, with centralized APIs and native multi-market tools, global expansion becomes an efficient, scalable layer of your main store rather than a patchwork of separate sites. Let’s break down three key benefits of the 2025 Shopify Markets enhancements:

1. Operational Efficiency

Managing international storefronts is dramatically simpler when you can control everything in one place. Instead of running six separate Shopify stores for six countries, each with its own theme, product catalog, and settings, you manage all markets from one Shopify admin. You set your region-specific logic once, and it applies everywhere appropriate.

There’s no more logging in and out of different stores or copying changes across themes. This cuts down on countless hours of manual work and makes global scale sustainable even for lean teams.

All your markets, one dashboard: Shopify’s Markets interface (shown above) lets you oversee every region from a single admin. You can create new markets, customize settings for each e.g., domains, languages, pricing, etc., and track performance per market in one place.. This centralized approach means you no longer need to maintain multiple stores or split inventories just to go international.

With the new Markets API, operational efficiency goes a step further: you can automate global workflows. For instance, you might auto-tag products or collections to include/exclude them from certain markets, or sync your ERP/PIM with Shopify to update international pricing via API.

Because markets are now first-class objects in Shopify’s system, your apps and integrations can “speak” multi-market natively. The result is less custom code and fewer third-party patches holding your global storefronts together.

2. Higher Conversion Rates

It’s well proven that localization improves conversion. Shoppers are far more likely to complete a purchase if the experience feels native to them. Common causes of cart abandonment for international visitors have been:

• Prices shown in a foreign currency (leading to hesitation or confusion),
• Checkout not offering their preferred local payment method,
• Unexpected duties or fees on delivery,
• Or even a lack of translation, making them unsure about the product.

Shopify Markets, especially with Markets Pro, attacks all these issues head on. By displaying prices in local currencies and rounding them familiarly, you eliminate a major friction point. In fact, 93% of global consumers say pricing in their local currency affects their purchase decision. Similarly, offering popular local payment options can significantly boost conversion. 

For example, a Stripe study in 2025 found that adding just one relevant local payment method (like iDEAL, Klarna, Alipay, etc., depending on region) increased checkout conversion by an average of 7.4% for businesses. 

Shopify Markets Pro / Managed Markets addresses these factors by automatically showing region-specific payment options and calculating duties/taxes at checkout. A shopper in the Netherlands, for instance, will automatically see iDEAL as a payment option, while a customer in the UK might see pounds or other local methods. All with zero extra setup by the merchant. 

And all international orders through Markets Pro come with guaranteed landed costs (the total, including taxes and duties), shown upfront, and no surprises on delivery. This not only prevents customer frustration but also builds trust.

Shopify even provides fraud protection on international orders with Markets Pro, covering chargeback risks that are typically higher with cross-border transactions. In short, a well-localized and transparent buying experience means more of your hard-earned international traffic converts into actual sales.

3. Faster Time-to-Launch

What used to take months can now often be done in days. Launching a new country used to require building or cloning a whole new store, translating all your content, configuring apps, and possibly integrating a new inventory or fulfillment system. A project that could stretch out indefinitely. With Shopify’s unified platform, expanding to a new market is closer to flipping a few switches.

Using Markets, you can spin up a new market configuration quickly by copying an existing market’s settings and making tweaks. For example, if you’re already selling in one EU country, expanding to another may be as simple as duplicating your “Europe” market, then adjusting the language and any product exceptions. You’re not rebuilding your site from scratch; you’re leveraging one core storefront and just adding a locale-specific “layer” to it.

Shopify’s native translation app (Translate & Adapt) further accelerates launch by letting you manage multilingual content within Shopify. There’s no need for complex third-party translation workflows if you don’t want them. You can translate your product details and pages directly in the admin and publish them to the new market.

Markets Pro also removes the biggest legal and logistical blockers (local tax registration, duties, etc.) by offloading those to Shopify’s partner Global-e. That means a U.S.-based merchant can start selling in Europe without waiting weeks to set up VAT accounts or find local payment processors.

The bottom line is that with Markets and the Catalog API in place, your commerce engine becomes global-ready. You can launch into a new market in days, not months. Instead of deploying a new store, you simply add a new market in your Shopify admin (or via API), define the catalog and content rules, and you’re essentially live.

As Shopify’s own team put it, expanding with Markets means “no long integration times, no repetitive processes, and no need to split inventory across multiple stores”. Global growth becomes an iterative configuration, not a massive re-platforming each time.

Shopify Markets vs. Markets Pro / Managed Markets

You might be wondering what the difference is between the standard Shopify Markets features and Shopify Markets Pro (also known as Managed Markets). In short, Markets Pro is a paid upgrade that adds a “turnkey” cross-border solution on top of Shopify Markets. It’s like Shopify Markets on steroids, handling the heavy lifting of international compliance and logistics through Shopify’s partnership with Global-e. Here’s a quick comparison:

In essence, Shopify Markets (the free core features) gives you the tools to localize and manage multiple markets, but you still handle the operational complexity (compliance, payments, shipping). Shopify Markets Pro is a turnkey solution where Shopify handles a lot of that complexity for a cut of the sale..

Note: Shopify Markets Pro has been rebranded inside Shopify as “Managed Markets” in some places. It’s the same program. As of mid-2025, it’s available to U.S. merchants and supports sales into over 150 countries via Shopify’s Global-e integration. Shopify has indicated plans to roll it out to other merchant regions in the future.

If you’re eligible (U.S.-based using Shopify Payments), the upgrade to Markets Pro is often worth it for the peace of mind and conversion benefits, but you’ll need to weigh the added fees against the convenience.

Alternatively, if you don’t want to upgrade to Markets Pro, you can use another solution our team has begun partnering with called Swap Commerce. 

For brands looking beyond Markets Pro but still committed to Shopify, Swap offers a different path. Here’s how Sam Atkinson, Co-Founder & CEO at Swap, puts it:

“Swap is designed to work with Shopify Markets, not around it. For brands that want to scale cross-border without giving up control, we offer the flexibility that Markets Pro and Global-e simply can’t. Our platform integrates seamlessly into your existing Shopify setup — enhancing rather than replacing it — so you can localise checkout, duties, taxes, shipping, and returns while still owning the entire customer experience”.
"Unlike marketplaces or all-in-one aggregators, Swap doesn’t dictate how you sell. We’re here to unlock the operational levers that make international growth sustainable, without the revenue share, the restrictions, or the brand dilution. If you want to take your global strategy seriously while keeping Shopify at the centre of your stack, we’re the ideal partner.“

Sam Atkinson, Co-Founder & CEO at Swap

Learn more: For full details, see Shopify’s documentation on Managed Markets requirements and features, or Shopify’s own comparison guide in their Help Center.

Differences Between Shopify Markets, Expansion Stores & Managed Markets

Besides Shopify Markets and Managed Markets, some brands use what is called Expansion Stores. Without trying to repeat myself, below is a detailed comparison of these three international expansion strategies:

When to Choose Each Approach

Use Shopify Markets when you want a centralised, maintainable setup that supports multiple regions without doubling your stack. This is ideal when your target markets are operationally similar and your team is managing them centrally.

Opt for Expansion Stores when your markets demand deeply distinct experiences such as different branding, completely separate inventory, or region‑specific promos and compliance needs. Only enterprise teams with the resources to maintain multiple setups should consider this.

Go with Managed Markets if you’re eligible, typically US-based with Shopify Payments, and want to avoid managing duties, customs, fraud, and local payment setup yourself. It’s an ideal solution for lean teams who want international coverage without building global infrastructure.

How much does Shopify Markets or Markets Pro cost?

Shopify Markets is included on all plans at no additional cost, but certain advanced features, such as international pricing overrides and custom duty rules, require the Shopify Advanced or Shopify Plus plan.

Shopify Markets Pro, also called Managed Markets, is a paid upgrade currently available only to US based merchants using Shopify Payments. With Markets Pro, Shopify and its partner Global-e handle cross-border tax compliance, duties, payment localization, and customs. There are no upfront fees, but here’s what Shopify charges for each:

Shopify Markets

• No monthly or setup fee.
• Charges are applied only when you use international features such as currency conversion and duties:
  • Currency conversion: 1.5% per transaction, added to customer pricing.
  • Duties & taxes calculation: 0.85% per transaction when using Shopify Payments, or 1.5% with alternative payment gateways.

Shopify Markets Pro / Managed Markets

• No monthly or setup costs. Charges are per international order:
  • 6.5% transaction fee, added to customer pricing, which bundles payment processing, duties, taxes, shipping, fraud protection, and local payment methods
  • Currency conversion fee: 2.5% per transaction, also passed on to the customer

Shopify Markets vs Markets Pro Pricing

In summary, Shopify Markets operates on a pay‑as‑you‑sell model, which makes it a cost-effective option for smaller stores testing international markets. Markets Pro / Managed Markets, on the other hand, bundles all cross-border operations, including duties, taxes, payments, and compliance, into a single transaction fee, making it better suited for brands looking to scale globally with less operational overhead. Most importantly, these fees are passed on to the customer at checkout, so they don’t eat into your margins. Shopify calculates and adds them automatically, keeping your pricing intact.

How to Enable Shopify Markets and Markets Pro

If you’re sold on stepping into Shopify’s new world of unified global selling, here’s how to get started:

Step 1: Enable Shopify Markets (if you haven’t already).

By default, every Shopify store has a primary market, your home country, and an “International” market, usually all other regions, initially inactive. To configure additional markets:

1. Log in to the Shopify Admin, then navigate to Settings → Markets. You’ll see your default markets listed.
   
   
2. Click “Create Market.” Give your new market a name (internal use only, e.g. “Europe” or “Asia Pacific”)
   
3. Select the target countries for this market. You can choose a single country or a group of regions. For example, you might add France, Germany, and Italy to a “Europe” market, or just select Australia for an AU market. (Shopify allows up to 50 distinct markets per store)
4. Configure the market’s settings:
   
   • Domains or subdomains: Decide if you’ll use a local domain (e.g. yourstore.fr) or a subdomain/subfolder (e.g. fr.yourstore.com or yourstore.com/fr) for this market. Shopify will auto-generate URL structures and hreflang tags for you.
   • Default language: Select the language content to show by default for this market (you can manage translations separately in the next step).
   • Currency: Choose the local currency that shoppers should see. (Note: selling in multiple currencies requires Shopify Payments on your store).
   • Pricing adjustments: Optionally, set price rules for this market – e.g. automatic FX conversion with rounding, or a percentage increase/decrease on all prices for this market. This is useful if you want to offset higher operating costs in a region or just price at psychological thresholds (like £ pricing in the UK).
   • Duties and taxes: If you are not using Markets Pro, decide if you want to show duty/tax estimates at checkout (Shopify can estimate, but you’ll still be responsible for handling the actual import fees). Markets Pro users will have these calculated and collected automatically.

5. Save your market. Repeat for other markets you plan to launch. You can start with a few key markets and expand gradually. It’s often wise to start small and learn, rather than flipping on every country at once.

To manage translations for your new markets, install Shopify’s free Translate & Adapt app I mentioned above (if not already). This app lets you add and edit translations for products, pages, and sections directly in Shopify. For example, you can create Greek and German versions of your product descriptions for your European market. The app integrates with Markets so that visitors in those locales automatically see the translated content. Alternatively, you can use any third-party translation app or service; just ensure it’s compatible with the new Markets setup.

Step 2: Apply for Shopify Markets Pro/ Managed Markets, if eligible and desired.

If your business is based in the U.S. and you use Shopify Payments, you can apply to upgrade to Markets Pro directly from your Markets settings. In your Shopify admin under Settings → Markets, you might see an option to “Get Started with Markets Pro” or “Managed Markets.” The application will ask for some business details (to comply with Global-e’s requirements, such as ensuring you’re not selling prohibited items). Once approved (it may take a few days), you’ll unlock the following benefits automatically:

• Duties and tax automation – Shopify (via Global-e) will automatically calculate, collect, and remit all necessary import duties and taxes for orders in your Markets Pro markets. Customers will see a fully landed price at checkout, and you won’t need to register for foreign tax IDs or file taxes in those countries, which, in some countries like Germany, can be a nightmare. This greatly simplifies compliance.
• Local payment methods – Your checkout will seamlessly offer dozens of local payment options where relevant. For instance, buyers in Germany might see Klarna Pay Later, those in the Netherlands see iDEAL, those in Canada see Interac, etc. This is handled natively by Shopify’s integration. No extra gateways for you to set up. It can significantly increase conversion in those regions.
• Shipping and customs – You’ll gain access to Shopify’s discounted international shipping rates (DHL Express, UPS, etc., with duties paid) directly in your Shopify admin. Customs forms and HS codes, also known as commodity codes or tariff codes, are taken care of for you (Shopify auto-assigns HS tariff codes to your products). Essentially, you’ll print labels as you would for domestic orders, and Shopify/Global-e handles the rest behind the scenes.
• Fraud protection and liability shift – Global-e becomes the merchant of record for international sales. They assume the risk. If there’s a fraudulent chargeback from an overseas order, Shopify/Global-e covers it (as long as you followed their terms). You get paid out in USD, or your home currency, for all your international orders without worrying about losses due to fraud or currency volatility.
• Compliance peace of mind – Since technically Global-e is selling to the customer and you’re selling to Global-e, a lot of legal burdens are lifted. You typically won’t need to file foreign taxes, worry about GDPR in every country (beyond Shopify’s standard compliance), or handle consumer rights issues in far-flung jurisdictions. Shopify and Global-e manage those obligations. It’s a big deal for regulated products or complex markets.

Shopify provides a Markets Pro help guide detailing requirements and how to use it. However, be aware that Markets Pro does charge fees on each international order, as noted above (the trade-off for convenience). But for many U.S. merchants, it’s an easy decision to make once they’re ready to scale globally.

Setting Up a Localized Global Storefront

Enabling Markets is the first step. To truly maximize conversions in each region, you’ll want to customize the storefront experience for each market. This is where Shopify’s new contextual features, in themes and in catalogs, come into play.

Customize Your Theme with Market Contexts (No Clone Themes Needed)

In the past, if you wanted different homepage banners or messaging for, say, the German site vs. the US site, you’d have to duplicate your theme or use hacky JavaScript to swap content based on IP. Now, Shopify supports Theme Contexts (Market Overrides) natively. This lets you adapt your store’s design and content per market, all within the same theme.

Here’s how it works: In the theme editor, there is now a market selector dropdown (if you have multiple markets active). You can switch the context to a specific market (or a B2B context) and then make changes to sections or blocks for that market only.

When you save, Shopify stores those differences as overrides tied to that market. To update the Storefront for each Market we need to go to Markets > Edit the Market that need to customize the storefront and Edit the Theme.

Once the Customizer is opened, the Market can be selected from the Customizer Top Bar.

After the Market and the Template we want to edit is selected, we can edit the content on each section, change images, and personalize it based on the Market style guide or needs.

Examples of what you can do with theme market overrides:

• Swap out sections or images – Maybe you have an announcement bar that should only display for Canadian visitors (“We ship free within Canada on orders $50+!”). You can add or edit an Announcement Bar section in the Canada market context without affecting other markets. Or use a different hero image on the homepage for Europe vs. the U.S., reflecting local culture or models.
• Change text content – You might highlight region-specific selling points (“As seen in Vogue UK” on the UK site, versus a different tagline in the US). Simply edit the heading or text block while in that market’s context. The other markets will continue inheriting the default version.
• Reorder or hide blocks/sections – You can rearrange content to better suit local preferences. For instance, maybe German shoppers prefer to see reviews higher on the page. You could move that section up in the German context. Or hide a section that isn’t relevant to a certain country’s audience. Shopify will note these as custom order overrides for that market.
• Bespoke navigations and promotions – Ability to change the menu links for a specific market (perhaps pointing to region-specific collections), or show a special promo banner only in one country.

All of this is done without duplicating your theme. Under the hood, Shopify keeps one theme, but with market-specific overrides for the content you’ve changed. If you don’t create an override for a section in a given market, it simply uses your default design.

This means you have a single source of truth for your theme, and only the differences are layered on top per market. It’s a game-changer for maintaining brand consistency while still localizing effectively. For the technically curious: these overrides live in JSON template files for each market, but Shopify handles them for you. You just use the editor.

Tip: Use theme contexts to localize high-impact elements. For example, show country-specific trust badges or press logos, use local spelling (free “shipping” vs. “delivery”), or adjust images to reflect seasonal differences (summer vs. winter between hemispheres). These little touches assure customers the site is built for them, which builds trust. Shopify’s own guidance encourages merchants to personalize by market to boost conversion.

Leveraging the Catalog API for Market-Specific Products

The Catalog API enables what we might call market-specific merchandising. In practical terms, this means you can customize your product catalog for each market without creating separate products for each country. Consider a few real-world use cases:

• Regulatory compliance – Suppose one of your products contains an ingredient that can’t be sold in the EU, or has a certification only valid in the U.S. With the Catalog API, or via the Shopify admin Products section with markets enabled, you can mark that product as unavailable in your Europe market. Alternatively, you could alter the product description or ingredients list just for the EU market to meet labeling requirements. European shoppers will only see the compliant version of the info, while other markets see the default description.
• Custom assortments – You may want to display a different set of products in various regions based on local demand. For example, a clothing merchant might offer heavy winter coats in Canada but not display them in a Greek market storefront. Rather than managing two stores with separate inventories, you simply toggle product publishing by market. Many merchants plan regional collections. Now it’s as easy as checking boxes for where a product is published, or using the API to bulk manage, instead of spinning up new stores.
• Localized bundles or SKUs – Say you sell a bundle pack in the EU due to popular demand or to offset shipping costs, but you sell those items individually elsewhere. The Catalog API allows you to set that up. The EU market could have a “Variety Pack” product that is hidden in other markets. Conversely, you might hide single items in the EU if only the bundle is promoted there. Inventory can still be shared globally if it’s the same SKUs, but presentation differs by market.
• Country-specific promotions or content: You might have licensing to sell certain products only in certain countries, or run a market-specific promo (e.g., a special edition item for Italy only). With market-specific catalogs, that’s achievable. Only shoppers in that market will see those special products or special pricing. Additionally, you can localize elements such as unit pricing and sizing (e.g., US shoe sizes vs. EU sizes) by creating market-tied metafields or variants.

All these scenarios that used to require clunky workarounds are now handled elegantly within Shopify. From an admin perspective, when you view a product in Shopify now, you can actually preview and edit how it appears in each market (if you have markets configured). The Catalog API simply opens this up for automation and for headless storefronts to query the correct data. 

Security & scalability: Because this is native, you don’t have to worry about data integrity or app conflicts. It’s using Shopify’s core data models. The solution scales to millions of products and variants, which is a big improvement over earlier app-based approaches that could slow down stores. Shopify built this with large, enterprise merchants in mind, who might have 50 markets and need to programmatically manage catalogs for each. Now it’s finally feasible to do so within one Shopify instance.

Expanding Internationally With a Proper Strategy

If you’re already on Shopify and looking to upgrade your global selling strategy using Shopify Markets, a thoughtful migration plan will help you avoid disruptions.

To begin with, watch the video below with my partner, Beth Shero, and Ross Allsop, who is a very experienced eCom strategist and a Swap advisor:

When you have a strategy in place, here’s how we recommend rolling it out:

1. Audit Your International Traffic and Sales:
Start by digging into your analytics. Use Shopify Reports and Google Analytics (or your BI tool) to identify where your current international visitors are coming from and how they behave. Key things to check:

• Top visitor geographies: Which countries are already hitting your site the most? You might be surprised – these are low-hanging fruit markets.
• Conversion or cart abandonment by country: See if visitors from certain countries have high drop-off rates at checkout. For example, is your UK traffic adding to cart but abandoning at payment? That could signal missing local payment options or other friction that Markets can fix.
• Language and currency mismatches: Check if people are manually switching languages or currencies (if you have a selector), or contacting support confused about pricing. If you see demand you haven’t met (e.g. lots of Canada traffic but no CAD currency offered), that’s an opportunity.
• SEO performance: Are you getting impressions in other countries but not clicks? This could be due to not localizing domains or content. Markets can help by enabling local domains and proper SEO tags for each market, so Google knows your French site is for French users.

This audit sets the baseline. It highlights which markets to prioritize and what issues to tackle first (currency, duties, translation, etc). It also gives you metrics to monitor post-launch (you’ll want to see those abandonment rates improve after enabling Markets!).

2. Set Up Your First Market:
Don’t try to boil the ocean at once. Pick one high-potential market to implement first and learn from. A good choice is often a country that:

• Already shows solid traffic or customer interest,
• Has relatively low barriers (same language or easy to translate, not too complex legally),
• and where you can fulfill orders reasonably well (consider shipping costs/delivery times).

For many US-based brands, Canada, the UK, or Australia are logical first expansions. They share the English language, have high eCommerce spend, and minimal extra tax complexity (especially Canada/Aus where Shopify can handle GST/VAT calculations). If you’re in Europe, you might choose a neighboring country or two.

Go into Settings → Markets and add that market (if it’s not already there). Configure the basics: domains, currency, shipping zones, etc. (as described earlier in this post). You don’t have to enable Markets Pro immediately (unless you want to for duties). Get the market live in a simple form and start serving international customers a better experience as quickly as possible.

Also, implement basic localization for this market:

• Translate at least your key pages (homepage, product pages for your top products, checkout messages) if the market isn’t English. Shopify’s Translate & Adapt app can auto-translate as a starting point, which you or a native speaker can refine.
• Ensure your shipping settings and pricing make sense for the market. No crazy $100 shipping charges or missing rates.
• If not using Markets Pro, decide how you’ll handle duties for now. You might start with “delivery duties unpaid” and gauge if it affects sales, then iterate.

Launch this first market and monitor it for a few weeks. This limited rollout helps you catch any snags without a massive scope.

3. Localize Product Data and Pricing Rules:
Once the basic market is running, use the Catalog API or Shopify admin to fine-tune your product offerings for that market:

• Set market-specific pricing if needed. If your strategy calls for it (due to VAT, for example), use Shopify’s international pricing features to adjust prices for the new market. You can apply percentage adjustments or set specific price overrides per product for that market. For instance, maybe all prices in the UK market are 10% higher to cover higher cost of doing business. You can do that uniformly or set certain big ticket items to psychological thresholds e.g. €99 instead of a direct USD conversion.
• Translate product content (titles, descriptions, options) via Translate & Adapt, or ensure they are edited for cultural relevance. Even for English-to-English (US to UK), you might adjust terminology (“sneakers” vs. “trainers”, “aluminum” vs. “aluminium”, etc.).
• Review product availability. Decide if any products should be hidden or added for this market. Use the Products admin and click “Manage availability”. You’ll see your markets listed. Uncheck any that shouldn’t appear in the new market. Perhaps you can exclude “gift cards” or oversized items for international. Conversely, consider creating collections specifically highlighting items that might be popular in that region.
• Compliance check. Make sure your products meet local regulations. If selling apparel in Europe, do you need to list materials in multiple languages? If selling electronics, are any certifications needed? Adjust descriptions or provide info as required. This is part of localization that builds trust and avoids legal issues.

4. Design the Region-Specific UX:
Now that your content and products are in place, refine the experience for the new market. Using Theme Contexts (market overrides), customize your theme where it will improve engagement:

• Add a welcome message or announcement bar for the market (e.g. “Now shipping across Australia. Free delivery on orders $X!” for an Australia market).
• Swap imagery if applicable. For example, if you have lifestyle images featuring people, consider using models that resonate with the region’s audience or ensure diversity that reflects that market.
• Update any sections of the homepage to reference the locale (maybe highlight local press coverage, or change testimonials to ones from customers in that region if you have them).
• Adjust the navigation or footer links as needed. For example, you may link to a region-specific support page or set different store hours and contacts in the footer for that country.
• If you have store pickup or retail info, use the new market feature to tailor those sections (e.g. only show your UK store locations on the UK site, etc.).

All these changes can be done by selecting the market in the theme editor and tweaking the content – no developer needed. Preview the site in that market’s view to make sure it feels cohesive. The goal is for a visitor to feel like the store was built for their region, not a generic site with a currency converter.

5. Monitor and Optimize KPIs by Market:
Once your first market is live and localized, keep a close eye on its performance. Shopify Markets provides a nice overview where you can see sales, conversion rate, and other metrics per market. Compare these to your main store averages:

• Is the conversion rate improving among those international visitors now? Ideally yes, if you solved key pain points like currency and payment methods.
• What’s the average order value (AOV) in the new market? Sometimes localization increases AOV because customers trust the site more and buy more.
• Checkout abandonment. Did it decrease now that you’re offering their local payment options and showing duties upfront? Monitor abandonment at checkout for that country.
• Traffic and SEO. Watch your search console for that market’s domain; you might see an uptick in organic impressions and clicks now that you have proper localized pages.

Collect qualitative feedback too: consider adding a quick survey for international customers (“How was your shopping experience?”) or ask your customer support if they’re hearing fewer complaints about things like currency or shipping from that country.

Use these insights to iterate. Maybe you find that one local payment method is still missing. You can add it or, if on Markets Pro, request it. Or maybe customers in that region really respond to a certain product. You can feature it more prominently on their homepage. Treat each market launch as a learning experience. As you can see, going international isn’t just flipping a switch; it requires ongoing optimization and strategy per region. The good news is that Shopify provides the infrastructure to implement those tweaks quickly.

After you’ve successfully launched one market, you can rinse and repeat for the next. Each subsequent market will be easier as you build out a playbook. Just remember to expand gradually and maintain the quality of localization – it’s better to have 3 well-run markets than 10 poorly executed ones.

How Shopify Markets Compares to BigCommerce and Adobe Commerce

If you’re evaluating platforms for international growth, it’s worth understanding how the Shopify Markets stack compares to BigCommerce Multi-Storefront and Adobe Commerce (Magento) Store Views. All three offer ways to sell globally, but the architecture and effort involved are very different. Let’s look at them one by one briefly:

BigCommerce requires a separate new storefront per market. While you can manage them from one backend, each has its own theme, URL, and settings. You’re still building and maintaining multiple “micro-stores,” which adds overhead.

Adobe Commerce (Magento) offers ultimate flexibility but at the cost of complexity. It’s powerful, but most global builds require heavy customization, ongoing dev support, and a strong in-house team to maintain localization, tax, and compliance.

Shopify Markets now offers the best of both worlds: a unified backend, fully customizable per-market content, and automation through APIs. You scale internationally without multiplying infrastructure or risking SEO.

To make it even easier, let’s see how the three of them compare side by side:

The winner: Having worked with all three platforms, in my personal opinin, for enterprise brands that want speed without sacrificing flexibility, Shopify is the leanest way to scale and sell internationally in 2025.

Shopify Markets Limitations, Tradeoffs, and Recommended Workarounds

Shopify Markets and Markets Pro make global selling easier than ever, but there are still platform limitations you’ll want to consider. Here are some of the key constraints we have come across and common workarounds:

1. Gift Cards Are Always in Your Store’s Base Currency

Gift cards are issued in your store’s default currency, regardless of which market the customer is in. So if your store is set to EUR, and a US customer buys a gift card, they’ll still receive a Euro denominated card. This can confuse international shoppers and create friction at checkout.

Workaround: Add clear messaging during gift card purchase and redemption steps. Alternatively, offer fixed-value gift cards per region using product variants or metafields.

2. No Market-Specific Metafields Yet

You can assign different metafield values only for languages and not for different markets. This means product labels, spec sheets, or badges can’t easily change per region.

Workaround: Use Liquid conditions based on the market object to show different content blocks. For example, if you need different size guides for the US and EU, create separate metafields and display them conditionally by market handle.

3. Shared Checkout Branding and Notifications

Even if you sell through multiple domains and languages, Shopify only supports one global checkout design and one sender email for transactional notifications. This can feel confusing for localized brands.

Workaround: Shopify Plus merchants can use Checkout Extensibility or checkout.liquid (deprecated but still available) to inject market-based customizations. Keep checkout branding neutral and communicate localization through storefront design.

4. Shipping Logic Is Not Fully Customizable

Shopify’s native shipping settings allow country and state-level zones, but not city or postal code-level rules. You also can’t assign different carriers based on the customer’s city or region.

Workaround: Use apps like Calcurates, Zonos, or Advanced Shipping Rules to define granular shipping logic by zip code or region. Markets Pro simplifies international shipping but limits carrier choice to DHL/UPS.

5. Markets Pro / Managed Markets Can Not Be Used By Merchants Outside the US

Markets Pro is only available to US based merchants using Shopify Payments and fulfilling from the US. It also requires routing international orders through Global-e, which acts as the merchant of record. You lose control over carrier choice, payment timing, and localized shipping options.

Workaround: Use Markets Pro selectively for regions where it improves speed and compliance (like the EU or UK), and use standard Markets plus third-party tools elsewhere.

6. Analytics and Reporting Still Have Gaps

Shopify’s built-in reports provide high-level data per market, but lack granular insights like product performance by region, campaign ROI, or multi-market LTV.

Workaround: Set up custom reporting through GA4, Analyzify, (Elevar or Littledata as I mentioned above), or export order data to your preferred BI tool. Track market handle, locale, and subdomain to segment user behavior accurately.

Conclusion

With the 2025 updates, Shopify has truly become a global commerce platform rather than just a store builder. The combination of Shopify Markets, Markets Pro, and the Catalog API has changed the way for international selling. What once required multiple storefronts, custom code, months of development, and a lot of guesswork is now built into Shopify’s core platform.

Merchants, large and small, can approach new markets as a seamless extension of their main business. All critical components, including currencies, languages, domain structure, pricing, tax compliance, payments, and fulfillment, are either automated or centrally managed.

As a merchant, this means you can focus on marketing and product strategy in new regions, rather than rebuilding operational foundations each time. It’s no exaggeration to say that expanding eCommerce operations to new regions has never been easier. Shopify Markets consolidates your global efforts into a single, easily manageable hub, and Shopify Markets Pro / Managed Markets acts as a safety net to catch all the hard parts (taxes, fraud, duties) that used to sink unwary cross-border sellers.

If you’re a 7 or 8 figure brand looking to expand globally, taking advantage of these new Shopify capabilities isn’t just an option. It’s likely the most efficient path forward. Your competitors are either already doing it or about to because it removes excuses and obstacles that once slowed expansion.

At Shero Commerce, we’ve been closely following these developments. We even partnered with Shopify on early access programs and are helping our clients implement the new global features. The results are real: higher international conversion rates, faster launches into new markets, and happier operations teams who aren’t up at 3 AM trying to reconcile inventory across five stores.

Need Help Implementing Shopify Markets? At Shero, we specialize in building and refining Shopify Plus architectures for global brands. We can assist with everything from initial Markets setup and API integrations to full UX localization and performance optimization in each market. Whether you’re upgrading your current Shopify build or migrating from a multi-store setup, our team will ensure you leverage Shopify’s global toolkit to its fullest, without sacrificing speed, UX, or backend simplicity.

Reach out to us for a free consultation on your international expansion strategy and how Shopify’s new Markets APIs can drive your growth. Together, we can take your commerce wherever there’s demand, all on one scalable platform.

Shopify Markets Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)