Managing markets
International helps you manage the experience of your brand by assigning different settings to different countries and regions. A market can contain a single country or region, or a group of countries or regions. For example, you can create a market called "North America" that targets Canada, the United States, and Mexico, all with one group of settings. If you have a different group of settings that you want to apply only to Japan, then you can create another market that targets only the country of Japan.
The maximum number of markets that you can have depends on your store's Shopify subscription plan:
- Pause and Build - 3
- Shopify Starter - 3
- Basic Shopify - 3
- Shopify - 3
- Advanced Shopify - 3 included, 50 max
- Shopify Plus - 50
On this page
Accessing markets for the first time
When you create your Shopify store for the first time, the following markets are created for you:
- Primary market - The primary country or region that you will sell to. This is determined by your store's address and currency, and is often your domestic market. The primary market represents the default customer experience for your store.
- International market - A curated list of popular countries or regions that merchants similar to you also sell to.
- Countries you don't sell to - All other countries or regions that don't belong to another market. Customers in these countries can’t check out from your store.
The International market is inactive by default. This means that customers in these countries can’t check out until you activate the market.
The maximum number of markets allowed on your store depends on your store's subscription plan. However, after migration, your store might have more markets based on the amount of unique countries or regions you previously had active. You can still use these existing markets, but adding additional markets will only be possible after you have fewer than the maximum allowed on your store's subscription plan.
It is recommended to combine countries or regions that have a similar pricing strategy into multiple-country markets. For example, if you previously had Canada, the United States, and Mexico active in your payment settings, but you didn't have any customized prices or specific strategies for each country, then you can move these three countries into a single market called North America
.
Staff permissions required for managing markets
Store staff members can access markets based on a combination of existing permissions. A staff member needs all of the following permissions to access the Markets page:
- Home
- Orders
- All permissions
- Products
- All permissions
- Analytics
- All permissions
- Discounts
- All permissions
- Catalogs
- Create and edit
- Store settings
- Manage settings
- Shipping and delivery
- Taxes and duties
- Domains
Market types
There are different types of markets that are created for you by default:
You can also create custom markets to match your selling strategy:
Primary market
Your primary market is the primary country or region that you sell to, and is often your home or domestic market.
For new stores, your primary market is determined by your store currency in Settings > General, even when your store currency doesn’t match the country or region that's in the store address section. For example, if your store address indicates the United States, but your shop currency is set to Canadian Dollars, then your primary market is set to Canada.
Your primary market can contain only one country or region, and it can't be deleted.
All changes that you make to your store affect your primary market by default. When you change your product prices or set a new inventory location, the changes apply automatically to your primary market.
Changing your primary market
You can change your primary market to a different country or region that better suits your selling strategy.
Steps:
- From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Markets.
- In the Overview section, select an active market that you want to make your primary market. If the new country or region doesn't exist yet, create a market with the country or region first, then activate it.
- Click More actions.
- Click Make primary market.
- Click Save to confirm.
The domain that was attached to the previous primary market is detached and then attached to the new primary market. If the new primary market previously had its own dedicated domain, then that domain is disconnected and the traffic to that domain is redirected to the primary domain. The previous primary market remains active after this operation.
Limitations:
- International with subfolders - to avoid creating 404s, markets with subfolders can't be made into a primary market. If you want to make a market with subfolder domain configuration into a primary market, then update the market's domain settings to either using the primary domain or using a seperate domain.
- International with more than one region - as primary markets are limited to contain only one region, you can't make a multi-region market into a primary market.
When you have changed your primary market country or region, you can also change the currency to match your preference.
Steps:
- In your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Markets.
- In the Overview section, click your primary market.
- Click Products and pricing.
- In the Pricing section, select your desired currency from the drop down list.
By default, your primary market uses your store's base prices. If your primary market currency is different than your store currency, then your base prices are automatically converted using a daily currency conversion rate.
If you want your primary market to have different prices than your store's base prices, then you can set price adjustments or fixed prices for your primary market.
Changing your store currency
When you use Shopify Payments, changing your store currency won't have any impact on the currency used by your markets. If you change your store currency and also want that to be the currency on your primary market, then follow the steps to change the currency of your primary market. If you don't use Shopify Payments, then changing your store currency will also change the currency of all of your markets to match.
Learn more about changing your payout currency.
Each country or region can only be a part of one market.
Single-country markets
Single-country markets contain only one country or region. When you create a new single-country market, the base currency for the market is set to the currency for that country. If the currency is not supported, then the base currency is set to your store's base currency.
You should use single-country markets to sell to countries or regions that you have a specific targeting strategy for. For example, if your primary market is Canada and a significant portion of your international sales begin to come from the United States, then creating a market targeting only the United States can help increase your sales and conversions by giving United States customers a dedicated and localized experience when browsing your store.
Multiple-country markets
Multiple-country markets contain more than one country or region. When you create a multiple-country market, the default base currency is set to your store's base currency, and local currencies are activated. If you deactivate local currencies for a multiple-country market, then all customers in that market shop in the market's base currency, or another base currency that you select.
The base currency for a multiple-country market is used to set fixed product prices.
For simplicity, combine countries or regions with similar targeting strategies together into multiple-country markets. For example, you might sell to Germany, France, Belgium, and Italy, and each of these countries share the same product pricing, shipping rates, and domain. In this case, you can create one market that contains all four countries.
International market
An International market is created for you when you first access Markets. It includes a curated list of countries and regions that other merchants similar to you might sell to. The International market is inactive by default. You can start selling to all countries within the International market by making it active.
Countries and regions you don’t sell to
Your Markets page includes a market called Countries/regions you don't sell to. This market is created automatically and can't be deleted. It includes all other countries or regions that you don’t sell to currently. When a customer from any of those countries or regions visits your online store, they view the default language and currency associated with your primary market, but they can't check out.
When you add countries or regions from this market into new markets, they're removed from this list.
Add a market
When you want to customize your online store experience for customers in a specific region, you can add a new market from the Markets page. For example, you might want to target a group of countries, such as North America, or a single country, such as Canada. International lets you create the markets that are relevant to your business.
When adding a new market, recommended markets are suggested based on stores that are similar to yours. These recommendations indicate countries or regions where you're most likely to have success selling, based on data from similar merchants within the same primary market.
If you create a new market that includes countries or regions that are already part of another market, then the new market overrides the existing one. The country or region is added to your new market and is removed from the existing market. If the existing market contains no other countries or regions, then it is deleted automatically, and any associated international prices, domains, subfolders or customizations are also deleted.
If you already ship to all of the countries and regions that are included in a new market, then the market is active by default. Otherwise, the new market is inactive and you need to activate the market before customers can check out from your store.
Steps:
- From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Markets.
- Click Add market.
- Enter a Market name. This name helps you identify the market within your Shopify admin, and isn't displayed to customers.
- In the Countries/regions section, search for the country or region that you want to add, and select the checkbox next to its name. You can add multiple countries or regions to a market.
- Click Add market.
The number of markets that you can have on your store depends on your store's subscription plan. If you have reached your maximum for your store, then consider grouping several countries or regions with similar targeting strategies together into a multiple-country market, or upgrading your plan.
Preview a market
You can preview the customer experience for a market in your Shopify admin. You can preview active and inactive markets in any language that you have added to that market. When previewing a market with multiple languages, make sure that you have a language selector active on your theme so you can switch between them in your preview.
Steps:
- From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Markets.
- Click the market that you want to preview.
- Click Preview.
Activate a market
If you don't already ship to all of the countries and regions in a new market, then the market is inactive by default. This means that customers in those countries and regions aren't able to check out from your store.
Before you can activate a market, you need to have shipping rates for all countries and regions in that market. You might want to configure additional market settings, such as domains, languages, currency, and pricing, before you activate the market and begin selling to those countries and regions.
Steps:
- From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Markets.
- In the Inactive section, click the market that you want to activate.
- Click the Inactive drop-down menu and select Active.
- Click Save to confirm.
Deactivate a market
If you no longer want to sell physical products to customers in a particular market, then you can deactivate that market. This action doesn't affect any of your existing orders. When you deactivate a market, all market settings are saved, meaning that you can choose to reactivate it at some point in the future. Deactivating a market doesn't change or delete your shipping zones, however, customers from countries in inactive markets can't check out.
If you deactivate a market that had a top level domain or subdomain associated with it, then that domain will automatically redirect customers to your primary market’s domain. However, deactivating a market that was set up with subfolders will cause those subfolder URLs to stop working. It’s recommended that you set up redirects to ensure customers can still access your storefront.
Steps:
- From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Markets.
- In the Active section, click the market that you want to deactivate.
- Click the Active drop-down menu and select Inactive.
- Click the Save to confirm.
Remove a market
You can remove a market from your Markets page. This prevents customers in that market from checking out with physical products, and subfolder URLs no longer work, but it doesn't affect existing orders. Removing a market deletes the market permanently.
Steps:
- From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Markets.
- Click the market that you want to delete.
- Click More actions.
- Click Remove market.
- Click Remove to confirm.
Editing the countries or regions within an existing market
You can add or remove countries or regions within your existing markets as your cross-border selling strategy changes.
Add a country or region to an existing market
You can add countries or regions to an existing market. For example, if you're already selling to France and Germany in a multiple-country market, then you might decide that you want to start selling to Italy as well. You can add Italy to your existing multiple-country market.
Steps:
- From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Markets.
- Click the market that you want to add an additional country or region to.
- Click Edit, and then in the Countries/regions section, click Edit again.
- Search for the country or region that you want to add, and select the checkbox next to its name.
- Click Save.
Removing a country or region from an existing market
You can remove countries or regions from an existing market. For example, you might have a North America market that contains the United States, Canada, and Mexico. You've tried all you can to be successful in Canada, but sales aren't what you expected them to be, and you decide to focus your efforts elsewhere. In this case, you can remove Canada from the North America market. This moves Canada to Countries/regions you don't sell to and customers from Canada can no longer check out.
If you want to remove a country or region from an existing market and add it to its own market, then create a new market to automatically remove the country or region from the existing market. For example, if you have a multiple-country market that contains all countries within the European Union, and your sales have been growing quickly in Germany, then you might decide to have a more targeted strategy for the sales in Germany. Adding a new market for Germany creates a dedicated market for Germany, and automatically removes Germany from the European Union market. All other European Union countries in the original multiple-country market remain unchanged.
Steps:
- From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Markets.
- Click the market that you want to remove a country or region from.
- Click Edit, and then in the Countries/regions section, click Edit again.
- Search for the country or region that you no longer want to sell to in this market, and deselect the checkbox next to its name.
- Click Save.