Sell Internationally Online in 2024: 11 Things to Consider

Here’s how to take full advantage of Shopify Markets to grow cross-border sales.

In 2023, global ecommerce sales reached $5.82 trillion. Which just goes to show that selling internationally online is a massive opportunity for brands around the world.

Many facets of international selling—like currencies, languages, pricing, domain names, payment methods, duties, shipping, and compliance, to name a few—make tapping into the opportunity of global commerce a challenge. Yet these shouldn’t be barriers to high-growth brands wanting to expand into new markets and reach new customers.

The cross-border experience needs to be easier, better, and just as efficient—ideally just as simple as selling domestically. That’s why it’s important to understand what you need before, during, and after selling internationally online by making sure you have the right tools, strategies, and systems in place.

Localizing and personalizing your ecommerce site for international visitors isn’t just about building trust—it’s also about removing barriers by making the transactions frictionless. 

Ahead, we’ll look at how to sell online internationally in an efficient way, with 11 considerations aimed at impacting your bottom line and scaling for growth. 

Target markets and market research

Expanding into a new market must begin with thorough research. Consider the following: 

• What is the size of the market you’re planning on entering?
• Who is your competition? 
• What regulatory or local laws do you need to adhere to?
• How does your product fill a consumer need?

Ultimately, when going through these questions and more, you’re trying to understand what gap your company fills, if your customers are in that market, and how this will support your brand’s growth goals. 

International shipping and returns

Shipping logistics and fulfillment can be complex when planning to sell internationally online. Consider the following when planning your international shipping and returns process for international customers:

• What are the costs of shipping? Fees are going to depend on the size, weight, and amount that you’re shipping. Duties, taxes, and other fees are something to think through too, especially if that’s something your customers will absorb into the overall cost of getting your product.
• Which carrier makes the most sense for my business? There’s UPS, Fedex, DHL Express, and so many more, not even including local carriers. Consider that not all carriers ship to all regions, the length of time it takes to get product from warehouse to customer, and what delivery guarantees you can make based on the information from your shopping partner.
• How should I process returns? If the cost of return, like additional duties or taxes and shipping fees, is more than the cost of the product itself, customers may end up keeping it. If there are no additional fees for the buyer, but your business will take a hit for shipping smaller amounts of product back, consider how to store returns locally until there’s a substantial amount to send back. 

International currencies

According to Shopify research, 92% of shoppers prefer to make purchases on sites with products priced in their local currency, while 33% of Shopify shoppers are likely to abandon a purchase if pricing is in US dollars only.

Your international customers expect to shop seamlessly in their local currency. Shopify’s data shows stores that price their products in a customer’s local currency can increase their conversion rates up to 40%. 

Shopify Markets allows you to automatically convert your storefront prices to more than 130 international currencies, activating in a single click. By using this capability, there’s an increased likelihood of international customers making a purchase. Note that the ability to sell in multiple currencies requires Shopify Payments. 

International languages

Going local with your site’s language can make or break global sales. Providing customers with the ability to shop in their own language, first and foremost, creates a good customer experience from first impression to checkout. 

If you do want the facts to back this up though, they’re not hard to find:

• One survey noted that 67% of people tolerated a mix of languages on a website, while 40% would rather not shop in a different language than their own at all.
• A survey of 8,709 global consumers in 29 countries found that 65% prefer content in their language when making purchases online.Moreover, 40% won’t even buy from websites in other languages.
• Shopify data shows a13% relative increase in conversion when buyers were shown a store translated into their languagecompared to the same one in the default language.

You can’t rely on shoppers to run your store through Google Translate every time they want to purchase an item. Simplify translating your store using third-party translation apps that support a combination of manual and machine translation. Improve your SEO rankings, appeal to a larger audience, and help your customers have a better shopping experience by translating your store's checkout with the Translate and Adapt app, email notifications, product information, and more into their local language.

Domains and SEO

Using international domains is another key aspect of localizing your website and personalizing the experience for visitors. You can expand your business to a global audience by creating shopping experiences in local languages and currencies for international customers.

Using international domains doesn’t just create a better experience for shoppers, it may also help to improve your store’s SEO rankings. With options for both domains and subdomains available, it also optimizes your site for different languages and countries, allowing you to geo target.

For maximum impact with international customers, don’t underestimate the significance of a robust international domain strategy. International domains can help attract new customers and increase your store’s conversion rates. 

If you use Shopify Markets or Shopify Markets Pro, you can choose to set a subdomain (ca.example.com) or a country domain (example.ca) for a market based on your preference.

Whatever you choose, Shopify automatically sets the right SEO tags so your international buyers see the right domain in search results. If buyers land on the wrong domain, you can automatically redirect them to the right URL based on their IP address, or recommend they switch to their local experience with the Geolocation app.

Payment methods

Visiting a website that doesn’t offer your preferred payment method is like arriving in a foreign country that’s cash-only—if you don’t have any cash on hand and there are no ATMs in sight, the simplest transactions become frustrating. 

• In North America, credit cards are overwhelmingly preferred, while digital payment systems like Shop Pay, PayPal, and Apple Pay are a close second. 
• German and Austrian shoppers might expect to see EPS (electronic payment standard), a secure bank transfer payment system commonly used in both countries.
• In the Netherlands, more than 69% of transactions are made using a domestic payment method called iDEAL. 
• Chinese buyers prefer local payment methods, like AliPay or WeChat Pay.

Ninety-two percent of consumers have concerns about purchasing from unfamiliar websites, so earning the trust of new international visitors is key. 

The answer is to offer local payment methods that are direct and secure, offered in specific regions, and used by online shoppers globally. Offering local payment methods is not only quick and convenient, but can increase conversion at checkout. For example, our own data showed that adding the local payment method Bancontact led to a significant increase (of 150 basis points) with Belgian buyers. 

Once you’re showing prices in multiple currencies, using a tool like Shopify Markets makes it easy to add major European local payment methods to your checkout to help reduce abandoned carts. Like currencies, the ability to offer local payment methods requires Shopify Payments.

Duty and import taxes

International buyers can find it a bad experience when additional duties, taxes, and other fees are applied to their purchase. This may result in less-than-ideal customer experiences, parcel refusals, and chargebacks. 

As such, being transparent about duty and import taxes are an important facet of your international commerce strategy and overall brand strategy, too.

Make it easy for international customers to have a high-trust experience with your business by collecting duty and import taxes at checkout. Give your customers total cost clarity at checkout with fewer surprises at delivery—and ensure you stay compliant in each market you’re doing business in. 

Configurable market areas

Depending on your business, it could be more viable to manage countries or regions as a group rather than individually. This can help you consolidate your strategies to be more efficient and expand more broadly without having to duplicate your localization work. Organize your international business in a way that makes sense for you so you can understand your market performance at a glance. 

International pricing controls

When you’re operating stores in multiple markets, you have to take into account regional variances like shipping, taxes, and duties, making profit margins difficult to determine.

One size doesn’t always fit all—and that’s as true for pricing as it is for anything else. The strategy that works in your primary market likely won’t be the same for every market you want to expand to. Take greater control of your pricing strategy from a single store by setting custom product prices per market. 

If you’re looking to adjust your store’s profit in international regions to account for the different shipping, you can make quick percentage-based adjustments by market. Or, set specific prices for select products in different regions based on your agreements with resellers or retailers in that region. 

Market-specific inventory and fulfillment controls

If you have warehouses or inventory locations in different regions around the world, surface the right inventory to your online store based on the inventory locations that ship to a particular market. 

For example, if you have a setup where the US warehouse ships exclusively to North America and a German warehouse ships to Europe, buyers in Europe will only see the inventory in the German warehouse. This will help avoid situations where you oversell inventory when you have multiple warehouses in different markets. 

Smart settings

Staying on top of changing market conditions and international best practices is a job in itself, and one you shouldn’t have to take on alone. Shopify Markets uses data and insights from the nearly one billion orders made on Shopify to help you enter new markets faster and start converting right away.

When enabled, smart settings monitor how your business is performing in your activated markets and makes automatic changes and optimizations for the best results.

Build your international presence with Shopify

Your dreams have no limits—and neither should your business. With Shopify Markets by your side, you’ll be equipped with everything you need to take your business to a global level. Whether you need more access to new buyers, more sales from diverse markets, or more control with less hassle, we’ve got your back. 

Learn more about how Shopify Markets simplifies your cross-border goals. Learn more

Sell internationally FAQ

How do you sell internationally from the USA?

To sell internationally from the USA, first select your target market carefully. Consider where your product or service fills a gap or need. Research thoroughly to understand what relevant marketing, shipping, and fulfillment needs can be applied in that market, and where you must adhere to local laws, preferences, language considerations, and fees.

What does it mean to sell internationally?

Selling internationally means a business is providing goods and services to customers in markets that aren’t their own.

Why do we sell internationally?

Selling internationally is beneficial for businesses because it expands a brand’s customer base, can positively impact its financial bottom line, and can mean scale and growth that the native market can’t sustain.

What do you need to sell a product internationally?

To sell internationally, businesses need to have a strategy in place that includes market research, shipping and fulfillment, a webstore that has international currencies and languages available, tactics for customer acquisition based on local preferences (such as influencers or social commerce), and market-specific fulfillment concerns.