One theme to maintain
A design change is made once, not once per region with three of them going stale.
ONE STOREFRONT, EVERY MARKET
Shopify Markets setup
One storefront serving every market, with pricing, catalogue and content handled per region instead of per store. Teabox launched this way, selling from India to the rest of the world from a single storefront.
IN SHORT
- Shopify Markets lets one storefront sell into many countries with per-market pricing, currency, catalogue and domains.
- The biggest operational win is maintaining one theme and one app stack instead of one per region.
- Duties and import taxes can be collected at checkout, which prevents the courier-demands-money experience that loses customers permanently.
- Domain structure and hreflang must be decided before launch; changing them later means redoing the international SEO work.
- Teabox launched on Shopify Markets so one storefront serves every market, alongside a separate Teabox India launch.
What Markets actually replaces
Before Markets, selling into five countries usually meant five stores. Five themes to keep in sync, five app stacks to pay for, five admins to check, and a content team copying the same campaign five times and getting it slightly wrong on the fourth.
Markets collapses that into one storefront with per-market behaviour. Same theme, same admin, same catalogue — with pricing, currency, availability, domains and duties varying by market.
For a lot of brands this is also the reason an enterprise platform stopped being necessary. Multi-region retail was the structural argument for staying on something like Salesforce Commerce Cloud, and that argument has largely closed.
How we set it up
Six stages. Stages two and four are where setups go wrong.
- 01
Map how you actually sell
Which countries, which currencies, which products are available where, and where you already have demand. Markets should be configured against reality, not against a list of countries you hope to reach.
- 02
Choose the URL structure
Subfolders, subdomains or country-code domains. Subfolders concentrate authority on one domain and are the right default for most brands; country domains make sense where the market needs a distinct local identity.
- 03
Configure pricing
Per-market pricing with rounding rules, so converted prices look deliberate rather than like a currency conversion. Price adjustments per market where the local position differs.
- 04
Set up duties and taxes
HS codes on products, country settings checked, and duties collected at checkout so nothing is demanded on the doorstep. This is the detail work that decides whether the feature behaves.
- 05
Catalogue and content per market
Which products appear where, and which content varies — without duplicating the store. Restrictions handled in Markets rather than by maintaining parallel catalogues.
- 06
hreflang and verification
hreflang implemented and tested so search engines serve the right version to the right country, then verified in Search Console per market rather than assumed.
Choosing your URL structure
| Subfolders (/uk/, /au/) | Country domains (.co.uk, .com.au) | |
|---|---|---|
| Search authority | Concentrated on one domain | Split across domains |
| Setup and maintenance | Simpler | More to manage and renew |
| Local trust signal | Lower | Higher in some markets |
| Migration effort later | Lower | Higher |
| Best for | Most brands going international | Markets needing a distinct local identity |
Whichever you pick, pick it before launch. Changing international URL structure after the fact means redirects, split equity and a period where search engines serve the wrong version to the wrong country.
The duties decision
Collect at checkout, or let the courier ask
If duties are not collected at checkout, the courier collects them at the door. The customer paid what they thought was the full price, then gets asked for more before they can have their parcel.
That customer does not order again. Worse, they tell people, and the reviews attach to your brand rather than to the shipping arrangement.
Collecting duties and import taxes at checkout costs a little conversion at the moment of purchase and saves the customer relationship. For anyone intending to sell into a market repeatedly, it is not close.
What gets configured
- Markets and the countries in each, mapped to how you actually ship
- Currencies with rounding rules, so prices look deliberate
- Per-market price adjustments where your local position differs
- Product availability per market, including items you cannot ship or sell in a region
- Domains or subfolders, with hreflang implemented and tested
- HS codes and country settings so duties calculate correctly
- Local payment methods enabled per market
- Analytics split by market from day one
What you get
One app stack
Paid for and configured once rather than duplicated across every regional store.
Consolidated reporting
One admin with performance split by market, instead of reports to merge by hand.
Faster market launches
Adding a market becomes configuration rather than a project, which changes what is worth trying.
Brands running on Shopify Markets
Teabox
Teabox sells tea from India to the rest of the world. We launched the store on Shopify Markets so one storefront serves every market, alongside a dedicated Teabox India launch.
Teabox sells tea from India to the rest of the world. One storefront serves every market, and a separate Teabox India launch covers the market that genuinely needed its own.
Who we have done this for
Clients from the roster whose work this page describes. Each links to what we actually built.
Teabox
Teabox sells tea from India to the rest of the world. We launched the store on Shopify Markets so one storefront serves every market, alongside a dedicated Teabox India launch.
Shopify Markets questions
Shopify Markets or separate stores per country?
Markets when the catalogue and brand are broadly shared — one theme, one admin, far less maintenance. Separate stores when a region needs its own catalogue, entity or fulfilment model.
Does Shopify Markets handle duties and taxes?
Yes, including duties at checkout on Plus. Getting HS codes and country settings right is the work that actually determines whether it behaves.
What is Shopify Markets?
A Shopify feature that lets one storefront sell into multiple countries, with per-market pricing, currencies, product availability, domains and duty handling — instead of running a separate store per country.
Should we use subfolders or country domains for international SEO?
Subfolders for most brands: authority stays concentrated on one domain and maintenance is simpler. Country-code domains make sense where a market needs a genuinely distinct local identity, or where local trust in a country domain is measurably higher.
Can different countries see different products?
Yes. Product availability is set per market, so you can restrict items you cannot ship or are not licensed to sell in a region without maintaining a separate catalogue.
Related
Regional Rollouts
Launch one market, prove it, then repeat — the sequence Moonglow followed from the US into Australia and beyond.
Local Market Launches
A dedicated storefront when a market needs its own, as with Teabox India and Eat Cake Today in Malaysia.
Marketplace Models
Multi-vendor stores where each vendor brings their own catalogue, capacity and fulfilment window.
NEXT STEP
Markets review
We look at how your regions, currencies and catalogue are split today and what Shopify Markets would collapse into one.