Shopify Markets has made selling internationally much easier in recent years.
It lets store owners manage multi-currency, multi-language, and localized content from one single Shopify store.
(Historically merchants often had one Shopify subscription per country, to manage all settings individually.
This created a lot of overhead for them in terms of keeping everything in snyc across multiple stores / countries.)
International selling can mean different things for different businesses:
- Some store owners want to translate their website content into different languages.
- Some want to display product prices in different currencies.
- Some want to change product prices based on local purchasing power, which also includes offering local payment methods.
- .....
Getting started using Shopify Markets
The easiest way is access the Shopify Markets dashboard is by using the search bar inside your Shopify admin area.
Simply type in “Markets”, and select it from the results.
Here you can now manage markets, currencies, languages, and regional settings for your store.
How to structure your Markets
By default, Shopify creates one main market, called the Primary Market. This primary market usually represents the country your store was originally created in.
Shopify allows you to create multiple markets based on your business needs. Each market, either contains a single country or groups multiple countries that share the same settings.
For example, you can create a single market for German-speaking countries by grouping Germany, Austria, and Switzerland together.
You can also go broader and create one market for the entire European Union.
Grouping countries like this makes it much easier to manage shared language settings, pricing rules, and regional configurations.
So it really depends on how broad you want to go in terms of shared settings.
Setting up multiple Currencies
Giving customers the option to check out in their local currency is one of the easiest ways to improve trust and conversion rates in international stores.
People are far more likely to buy when prices feel familiar and transparent.
To offer multiple currencies, you need to enable Shopify Payments.
Once that’s active, Shopify automatically unlocks multi-currency support.
As soon as you create a market with multiple countries, Shopify gives you the option to sell in each customer’s local currency,s o just make sure that option is enabled for the market.
After setting this up, most modern themes will show a currency or country selector on the storefront.
If you don’t see one, check your theme’s customizer settings first.
If the theme doesn’t support this out of the box, you’ll need to add the selector manually with a small theme tweak.
Pro Tip: For the best shopping experience, enable automatic country/region redirection under Online Store → Preferences.
Shopify will then automatically show the correct market and currency based on the customer’s location using GeoIP.
Shipping and Delivery
The shipping and delivery setup is critical when working with Shopify Markets.
If a market doesn’t have valid shipping rates configured, customers in that region won’t be able to complete checkout.
After creating new markets, you must configure shipping zones and delivery rates for each region under Settings → Shipping and Delivery
In most cases, you can start by using your existing shipping setup and ship from your main warehouse.
That’s usually enough to get a new market live and accept orders.
As you expand, Shopify also allows much more advanced setups—like multiple warehouses, location-based inventory, and independent shipping rules per region.
Those more complex configurations can get technical quickly.
If you plan to go beyond a simple setup or want to avoid checkout issues, it’s a good idea to get professional help.
(If you need support with a more advanced shipping setup, feel free to reach out via our Shopify development services page.)
Language and Domains
Language and domain setup go hand in hand when selling internationally.
While Shopify lets you run multiple languages on a single domain, this setup usually relies on a language selector and has a downside for SEO: search engines only rank for the primary language of the domain.
So the cleanest and most SEO-friendly approach is to use one domain per market or country. For example:
myshop.de for Germany
myshop.fr for France
myshop.com for global or English-speaking customers
With this setup, each domain can rank independently in search engines, and customers land directly on the correct page for their market.
Translating Your Store Content
Once your languages and domains are set up, all relevant store content needs to be translated.
Translations happen on three different levels:
1) Theme elements
2) Admin content
3) Section content
Let's go over each and what they imply.
Translating Theme elements
These are texts built into the theme itself, such as button labels, “Add to Cart,” cart headings, and system messages.
Most modern Shopify themes already include translations for common languages, so this part is often handled automatically.
Translating Admin content
This includes all content managed through the Shopify admin: product titles and descriptions, collections, pages, blog posts, and any custom text fields.
This content must be translated separately for each language.
Shopify does not handle translations automatically, you need an app for that.
There are several solid options available. Premium apps like Langify offer advanced workflows, but for most stores, the free Translate & Adapt app by Shopify is more than enough.
After installing the app, you can translate content manually or use the built-in auto-translate feature to generate translations with one click.
Translating Section content
Section content is added through the theme customizer, such as banner text, image captions, sliders, promotional blocks, or any editable section fields.
Since this content is theme-specific, it also needs to be translated per language.
Translate & Adapt also lets you translate individual section content. You can translate headings, text blocks, and even swap images per language.
This is useful if you want to show different visuals for different regions, for example, winter clothing images for European markets and lighter outfits for Middle Eastern or Asian markets.
Pro tip: Shopify also supports automatic language redirection, which you can enable in Online Store → Preferences.
The language and currency redirects behave differently though: currency is selected based on the customer’s location (IP), while language is chosen based on the user’s browser or system language (not necessarily their physical location.)
Changing the full Theme Layout per Market
Beyond translations, Shopify also lets you localize the entire layout of your store per market.
Inside the theme customizer, you can select a specific market from the top bar and then rearrange sections, add or remove blocks, and adjust the design settings only for that market.
This makes it possible for a store in Japan to look completely different from one in Germany if needed.
The important part is separation of responsibilities:
- Use translation apps (like Translate & Adapt) for all content translations (text and images)
- Use the theme customizer only for layout and structural design changes per market
Avoid mixing the two. Translating content partly in an app and partly in the theme customizer quickly becomes confusing and hard to maintain.
Keeping translations in apps and layout changes in the customizer keeps everything predictable, scalable, and easy to manage as your store grows.
Product Catalogue
Shopify also lets you tailor your product catalog per market.
You can decide which products are available in specific regions and exclude them from others entirely.
On top of that, you can adjust product prices per market, allowing you to better match local purchasing power and market expectations in different countries.
Final Thoughts
Shopify Markets makes it possible to sell internationally from a single store without overcomplicating things.
Plan your market structure upfront, keep translations clean, and follow SEO and pricing best practices.
If you want to see how I set this up in practice, check out the YouTube video down below where I walk you through everything step by step.