Shopify launches Shopify Markets to bring cross-border commerce to UK businesses

• Launch of Shopify Markets will help remove the complexity of international commerce and empower existing British independent merchants to sell to consumers across the world 
• Shopify Markets will enable merchants on the platform to identify, set-up, launch, and optimise for international markets—all from a single Shopify store, presenting new growth opportunities for UK firms

Shopify has launched Shopify Markets, a new cross-border solution designed to make it easier for UK businesses and merchants of any size to sell internationally.

British Shopify merchants, including Ooni Pizza Ovens, Gymshark, Huel, and The Pangaia, are already selling overseas to meet demand from international buyers with over a third of web traffic to UK stores on Shopify coming from customers outside the UK.

However, despite the tremendous opportunity, selling outside of a home country can be challenging. Currency conversion, language localisation, selecting local payment methods, customs and duties can all act as barriers to international selling, especially if entrepreneurs don’t know where to start.

Shimona Mehta, Shopify’s EMEA Managing Director, said: “Connectivity is essential to the success of any business. As society becomes more global, and the UK aims to continue to be a key player in international commerce, thinking beyond our own borders to the customers that live in other countries will become more and more important.

“By radically simplifying cross-border selling, we will enable our 135,000 UK merchants to access millions of more customers, giving them the potential to transform their businesses. It’s all part of our mission to make commerce better for everyone, everywhere.”

The rapid growth of e-commerce globally has shifted consumer expectations for independent and enterprise brands alike. Shopify Markets will centralise global commerce for merchants, empowering them to show up wherever their customers are.

With Shopify Markets, merchants can:

• Enter new markets easily: With just a few clicks, merchants can enable new markets and open their business to more global customers. Merchants can then manage these markets from a central dashboard for a unified view of their entire business.
• Increase buyer trust and conversion with tailored experiences for each market: We’ve seen that the conversion rates for storefronts with localized languages and currencies is up to 1.13x and 1.40x higher, respectively. To help merchants deliver meaningful experiences to their customers across regions, Shopify Markets will help merchants easily customize:
  • Local currencies and payment methods
  • Pricing and price rounding rules per market
  • Product availability per market
  • Local languages
  • Local domains with automatic SEO optimization
  • Automatically show the right currency / language based on buyer country
  • Duties and import taxes on behalf of the buyer to eliminate surprise costs at product delivery (merchants can now account for these fees at checkout)
• Optimize cross-border operations with actionable insights and smart settings: Insights surfaced by Shopify will help merchants determine where, when, and how to most effectively sell in a new region based on aggregate data from Shopify’s more than 1.7 million merchants globally. Smart settings let merchants automatically optimize for the best results, without needing a dedicated global operations team. For example, merchants won’t need to keep track of what local payment methods are most popular in each market. Shopify knows what converts best, and will automatically surface the best payment methods at checkout.
• Save time with a central global management platform: Merchants can seamlessly create localized storefronts from one store, which means they can manage all cross-border commerce in a single place in the Shopify admin with tailored consumer experiences in each market—whether that market is a country, like the Netherlands, or a region, like all of Europe. Merchants will have a unified view of their entire business and monitor how their business is performing in activated markets—both domestic and international—thanks to Shopify’s centralized commerce platform.

Darina Garland, Director and Co-Founder of pizza oven company Ooni, said: “From our crowdsourced beginning to the global pizza oven brand we are today, selling internationally has been essential to Ooni’s success. Shopify helps us navigate the complexities of global trade in areas like language localization, payment options, currencies, taxes, and import duties that would have been a nightmare to sort out on our own. That allows us to stay focused on what we’re most passionate about: helping everybody make great pizza at home.”

Shopify Markets will be available in early access globally starting today, rolling out to all merchants in the coming months. Visit shopify.com/markets to learn more.