Cross-Border E-Commerce with Shopify Markets — The StoreHero Approach to Shopify Markets

Shopify Markets is the core feature set for running cross-border e-commerce on Shopify. By using Shopify Markets, you can manage optimized sales settings for multiple countries and regions from a single Shopify store.

In this article, we explain the features of Shopify Markets, share real-world examples, and walk through StoreHero's strategy for succeeding in cross-border e-commerce. If you're a Shopify merchant looking to expand internationally, this is a must-read.

Shopify Markets

Shopify Markets is the core feature set for running cross-border e-commerce on Shopify. It allows you to manage optimized sales settings for multiple countries and regions from a single Shopify store.

Shopify Markets offers a wide range of features designed to address the challenges of cross-border e-commerce.

Market Management

At the heart of Shopify Markets is the ability to group countries and regions into units called "markets" and manage them centrally. This allows Shopify merchants to flexibly apply different settings (pricing, language, domain, available products, etc.) for each target market. The maximum number of markets you can create in Shopify Markets varies depending on your Shopify plan.

Localization

Providing international customers with a natural shopping experience — as if they were buying in their home country — is essential for improving conversion rates.

• Currency: If you use Shopify Payments, product prices can be automatically converted and displayed in over 130 international currencies based on the customer's location. Customers can complete the entire journey — from browsing and checkout to refunds — in their local currency. Exchange rates are automatically updated to the latest values, and rounding is applied. You can also manually set exchange rates or configure different product prices (price adjustments or fixed prices) per market.
• Language: A single store can support up to 20 languages, allowing you to serve international customers in their native language. By integrating with translation apps such as "Translate & Adapt," you can localize your online store content (product pages, blog posts, collection pages, etc.) into multiple languages.
• Domain: You can register different domains for each market, taking SEO across multiple countries into account. There are three specific methods:
  
  
  
  • Subdirectory: Create country- or region-specific subdirectories within your primary domain (e.g., your-shop-name.com/ja-jp). This approach is also recommended from an SEO perspective.
  • Subdomain: Create a subdomain by adding a prefix to your primary domain (e.g., jp.your-shop-name.com).
  • Country-Specific Domains (ccTLDs): Obtain a unique domain for each country or region (e.g., your-shop-name.jp). Shopify Markets also includes a feature that automatically redirects visitors to the most appropriate market's site based on their geographic location.
• Content: You can choose which products to make available per market. For example, you can hide products that are difficult to ship internationally or have no demand in certain countries from those markets.

Duties and Import Taxes

If you are on the Shopify Advanced plan or higher, you can calculate estimated duties and import taxes for international transactions at checkout and present them to — and collect them from — customers. This allows customers to understand the total cost before purchasing, preventing unexpected high additional charges upon delivery and reducing the risk of refused deliveries. Using this feature requires configuration such as applying HS codes to products.

However, this feature does not guarantee duties or handle tax compliance on your behalf. The merchant retains operational responsibility — this is a key distinction from Managed Markets and Global-e, which are discussed below.

Managed Markets

Managed Markets is an upgraded plan built on top of Shopify Markets that aims to reduce the operational complexity of international selling. Rather than simply providing tools, it takes on a portion of the legal, tax, and logistics responsibilities on behalf of merchants, enabling smoother global expansion. It is extremely convenient, but currently not available in Japan.

Global-e

Managed Markets is built on Global-e's technology, but since it is currently unavailable in Japan, another option is to contract directly with Global-e and integrate it with your Shopify store. The service provided directly by Global-e is characterized by its broad range of support.

• Broad Market Coverage: Supports selling in over 200 countries and regions.
• Advanced Localization: Supports 160 currencies, over 150 local payment methods, and enables region-specific pricing.
• Logistics Network and Support: Global-e has an extensive network of international shipping carriers, allowing access to discounted shipping rates.
• Comprehensive Risk Management: Advanced fraud detection systems help mitigate fraud risk in international transactions. Global-e also acts as the Merchant of Record, taking on the legal and tax risks associated with sales.

Shopify Markets Case Studies

We researched successful case studies of businesses leveraging Shopify Markets. Each example highlights the key factors that enabled them to launch operations across multiple countries in a short period of time using Shopify Markets.

Best Practices for Market Segmentation

To use Shopify Markets effectively, how you group your target countries into "markets" is critical. This segmentation directly impacts the precision of your localization efforts and operational efficiency.

Strategic Market Grouping Approaches

The optimal way to group markets varies by business situation, but here are some general approaches to consider.

• Group by Similarity of Tactics: The most fundamental approach is to group countries and regions that can share the same tactics (pricing, promotions, product assortment, etc.) into a single market. This avoids duplicate configuration and management, simplifying operations.
• Create Single-Country Markets for Key Markets: For countries or regions where you want to deploy focused tactics (full localization into a specific language, unique campaigns, etc.), setting them up as single-country markets is effective. This allows you to concentrate resources and apply fine-tuned optimization for that market.
• "Rest of World" Market: For countries outside your strategic markets that are not yet ready for full localization, group them into a single market for streamlined management. This market receives standard offerings, with the option to promote promising countries to their own dedicated markets in the future.
• Incremental Optimization: Rather than aiming for a perfect market structure from the start, it is also effective to begin with broader groupings and gradually refine them by analyzing sales, customer, and traffic data over time.

Criteria to Consider

When grouping markets, a multi-faceted analysis is required. The following are key factors to consider.

• Geographic Distance: Affects logistics costs, shipping times, and cultural similarities.
• Language: Countries that share a common primary language are often grouped together. Even with the same language, differences in expression and cultural nuances may require minor content adjustments.
• Currency: Countries using the same currency (e.g., the Eurozone) or those with similar levels of exchange rate risk (volatility and currency trends) can be grouped together.
• Culture and Values: Countries with similar consumer lifestyles, purchasing behaviors, and preferences are easy to group from a marketing and product strategy perspective.
• Purchasing Power: Countries with similar income levels, price points, and online shopping adoption rates are well-suited to sharing pricing and product strategies.
• Marketing Channels: When countries share the same popular social media platforms and search engines, you can improve the efficiency of your customer acquisition efforts.

The StoreHero Approach to Cross-Border E-Commerce

Shopify Markets is a powerful tool for cross-border e-commerce, but maximizing its impact requires a strategic approach. Here, we explain the cross-border e-commerce strategies that StoreHero puts into practice.

Leveraging the Power of Community

In the early stages of a cross-border e-commerce launch, simply listing products is rarely enough to drive sales. When brand awareness is low, leveraging the power of community is an effective way to build trust and convert visitors into buyers.

StoreHero recommends building connections with ambassadors and influencers even before ramping up sales, using platforms like Shopify Collabs and Meta's Creator Marketplace. These platforms make it easy to find creators who are a natural fit for your products and invite them to affiliate programs and similar initiatives.

Below is the creator recruiting screen in Shopify Collabs. You can filter creators in your target country by genre and audience size.

Once you find a creator who is a great fit, you can review their content and follower count, set up an affiliate program or welcome offer, and send them an invitation. Payments can also be managed entirely within Shopify.

Beyond growing buzz on social media, creating an ambassador page within the store and featuring their content helps visualize community engagement on the storefront itself. This makes trust tangible and contributes to higher conversion rates.

Optimizing CRM Strategy by Market

A fundamental principle of CRM is delivering scenario-based communications tailored to purchase history and customer attributes — but in cross-border e-commerce, it is further necessary to optimize those scenarios for each market.

StoreHero analyzes repeat purchase trends and which customer segments (age, gender, etc.) prefer which products in each market, then designs scenarios accordingly.

For example, recommending different products to female customers in the US versus male customers in the EU — tailoring proposals to each market to drive repeat purchases.

StoreHero integrates with Klaviyo to automatically build the product catalogs needed for each scenario, streamlining product recommendations.

Optimizing Ad Delivery by Market

Advertising is also a critical channel for acquiring new customers in cross-border e-commerce. StoreHero emphasizes connecting Shopify with platforms like Google and Meta to deliver highly targeted ads powered by customer and product data.

Just as with CRM, we build catalogs and customer segments grouped by purchase data that combines demographic attributes such as age and gender with market segmentation, enabling optimized ad delivery for each market.

Additionally, if strong ambassador relationships have been established in a given market, leveraging Meta's Partnership Ads is highly effective. This allows you to extend your reach to the ambassador's followers and promote your products and brand in a more authentic way.

Summary

We have covered how to make the most of Shopify Markets. Shopify Markets is a powerful feature set that strongly supports international expansion on Shopify. By using Shopify Markets effectively, you can deliver an optimized shopping experience to international customers and drive revenue growth.

Furthermore, to fully leverage the capabilities of Shopify Markets, a strategic approach — such as the one advocated by StoreHero — is just as important as the features themselves.

Use the insights shared in this article — optimizing community building, CRM, and ad delivery by market — to unlock the full potential of Shopify Markets.