Adapting themes for specific markets

Plan requirement

Customizing themes for specific markets is available only to stores on the Advanced or Plus plan. Learn more about plan requirements for Markets features.

If you've created at least one market, then you can adapt your theme for your different markets. Adapting your theme for specific markets helps you to create a better experience for customers in those markets. For example, you can make the following customizations:

• highlight different collections on your home page for different markets
• promote a sale on product pages for a specific market
• add messaging to your store that's relevant to specific markets

Customizing themes for markets

When you customize a theme, you can select whether you want to edit your store default, or a specific market.

The store default is the standard appearance of your theme, without any customizations for specific markets. The default layout and content of your theme can be inherited by or overridden for other markets. Changes that are made to the store default apply to all markets, unless they're overridden.

You can select which market you want to edit from the markets drop-down menu. The markets for which you’ve already customized your theme are displayed first, followed by the markets for which you have yet to customize your theme in the More customizable markets section.

When you customize a theme setting in Store default, that change applies to all your markets, unless this setting was already customized in a specific market. Changes are applied to your theme settings in the following order:

• Store default: customizing a store default theme setting affects your theme for all your markets and submarkets, unless that setting has already been customized for a market or submarket.
• Market: customizing a theme setting for a market affects your theme for the market, and for all that market's submarkets, unless that setting has already been customized for a submarket.
• Submarket: customizing a theme setting for a submarket affects only that submarket.

Note

Your theme can be customized for a maximum of 250 markets. Theme customizations can be inherited for a maximum of five levels of submarket depth.

Steps:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Themes.

2. Click Customize next to the theme that you want to edit.

3. Click Store default to open the markets menu.

4. Select the market that you want to customize.

5. Make your desired customizations to sections or blocks for that market, or add new sections or blocks.

6. Click Save.

Resetting theme customizations for a market

Any customization that you make to your theme for a specific market can be reset to the store default.

Table of reset types for markets theme customizations.

Reset type	Description	Steps
Individual setting	When you reset a setting override in a market, the setting returns to inheriting settings from the parent market.	In the theme editor, click the reset button next to the title of the setting.
Section or block	When you reset an entire section or block in a market, all of the settings for that section or block return to inheriting settings from the parent market, including the order of blocks.	In the theme editor, click … next to the title of the section or block, and then click the reset button.
Template or section group	When you reset an entire template or section group in a market, all of the settings for that template or section group return to inheriting settings from the parent market, including the order of the sections and blocks.	In the theme editor, click the reset button next to the title of the template or section group.
All theme customizations for a market	When you delete all your customizations for a market, all of its settings return to inheriting settings from the parent market, including the order of the sections and blocks.	On your Markets page, click the market that you want to reset. In the Customized section, click the delete icon next to Online Store.

Change theme inheritance

Tip

This is an advanced tutorial. If you're not comfortable reading and editing theme code, then you can work with a developer or hire a Shopify Partner.

When you customize your theme for a submarket, you can change which market the customizations are inherited from. This is referred to as changing the source of inheritance. When you change the source of inheritance for a theme, the following are the available options:

• the store default (@default)
• any parent market for which the theme has already been customized

Steps:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Themes.

2. Find the theme you want to edit, click …, and then click Edit code.

3. Open the markets.json file.

4. Find the section of the code that controls market inheritance.

5. Locate the market that you want to edit the source of inheritance for, and replace the "parent": value with the market value that you want it to inherit from.

6. Click Save.

For example, you make theme customizations to your Canada market. Those changes are currently based on your store's default settings.

If you decide to customize your theme for the North America market, then you can adjust your customizations for Canada to inherit from the North America market rather than the store default. After making this change, any theme customizations that you make for the North America market are automatically applied to the Canada market.