The order to configure markets, domains, catalogs and duties in, what breaks downstream when each one is wrong, and which settings need a recurring check.
A Shopify Markets setup is spread across four places: the Markets page, your domains, your catalogs, and Settings > Taxes and duties. Configuring it takes an afternoon. Keeping the written steps true to the screen is the part that fails.
This SOP works through those places in order: market structure, domains, currency and catalogs, duties, then the checks before launch. Each step names what breaks downstream when it is wrong. The last section lists the settings to check on a schedule, so a seasonal hire is never working from a launch-day screenshot.
A market is a group of customers, defined by conditions. Shopify's overview of Markets lists four kinds of condition: countries and regions, B2B company locations, retail locations, and sales channels. For each market you decide the currency, the catalogs, the domain and language, the shipping options, and how duties and taxes show at checkout.
Two rules shape the rest of the setup. First, a customer can match more than one market, and a country can sit in more than one market. Second, a submarket inherits its parent market's settings until you change them. So a change on a parent market reaches every submarket that has not overridden it.
That is why the SOP has to record what each market inherits, not just what it sets. A reader working from an old copy can miss a price or catalog change that was only made on the parent.
Start with one country where demand already exists. Shopify's guide to international sales tools suggests planning the first launch around one market and using the results to guide the next. It points to the Sessions by location report in Analytics. Compare that traffic with your existing orders and shipping costs. Then create a draft market, review the settings it inherited, and set shipping rates before you activate it.
The same guide gives the grouping rule. Group countries into one market when they share a selling strategy. Give a country its own market when it needs different settings, such as different pricing.
A new market also changes which warehouse ships an order, because Shopify's default routing favors locations inside the order's market. How Shopify inventory locations work covers that check pass by pass.
A second location or a new international market changes what the Shopify admin does with every order.
Shopify's help page on international domains says that if you are setting up international sales tools for the first time, you should consider subfolders such as example.com/en-ca, "which are straightforward to set up and offer SEO benefits." Subfolders use your primary domain, so they share its existing search ranking. Subdomains and country domains are the alternatives.
International domains need a custom domain, bought through Shopify or another provider. You can't build them on your myshopify.com address. A market also doesn't translate your store. To sell in another language, translate the content with the Translate and Adapt app or a compatible third-party app.
One note for whoever edits the theme. Shopify's theme documentation warns against hardcoding URLs like /cart in links or scripts. A shopper browsing another market gets pushed back to the domain defaults, so they may see the wrong currency.
A catalog is a set of products, with optional custom pricing, that you assign to a market. Shopify's catalogs page explains the default. Without a catalog, every product is available in every market at your store's default prices.
Create a catalog from Markets > Catalogs. Name it, choose Active or Draft, set its currency, and then decide how prices work:
Parent and submarket catalogs can stack. When the same product sits in two catalogs at different prices, Shopify uses the more specific one. If neither is more specific, the lower price is shown. Write down which catalog is meant to win for each market.
Two notes belong in the SOP for bulk edits. When you type a fixed price in a catalog CSV, leave out currency symbols. And a catalog export only includes products with fixed prices. Anything priced by percentage alone is left out, so the export is not a full record of your pricing.
Shopify's page on selling in local currencies says only Shopify Payments or Adyen support it. Orders through other third-party providers are processed in your store's default currency.
Try it on one of your own procedures.
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Duty collection is switched on under Settings > Taxes and duties. Shopify's page on collecting duties at checkout sets three requirements:
Shopify's considerations page adds one more. You can't collect duties in the Rest of world shipping zone, so the country needs its own zone or a shared named one. Country of origin matters too. Shopify calculates duties from each product's HS code and its country of origin, so add both before you switch collection on.
Whether the customer pays duties at checkout or at the door is a support and fulfillment decision as much as a tax one. DDP vs DDU shipping sets out the procedure each choice needs.
Calculating duties carries a transaction fee. The same Shopify page gives the standard rates: 0.85% when Shopify Payments is the primary gateway, and 1.5% with other providers. It also says the fee has been temporarily lowered to 0.5% since February 2, 2025. The fee applies even when the calculated duty is zero. Domestic orders, orders shipped between EU member countries, and abandoned checkouts are not charged. Confirm the rate in your own admin before you build it into prices.
Preview the market in the admin first. On the Products page, click View as and pick the market. Prices switch to that market's currency, the Catalogs column shows which catalogs include each product, and anything the market can't buy is marked unpublished. Click a price to see how it was calculated.
Then test the storefront as soon as the market is active, because customers in an inactive market can't complete a purchase. Open the market's subfolder, confirm the currency, add an item to the cart and reach checkout. Check that the duty line appears the way you set it up.
For a planned price change or product launch, use a rollout instead of switching the catalog by hand. A rollout sets a catalog to Active or Draft at a scheduled time. A Launch keeps its changes. An Event rolls them back when it ends. Edits to catalog prices and products are not held for the rollout. Shopify saves them straight away.
One cleanup step belongs in the SOP too. If you delete a market that used subfolders, Shopify's domains page says visitors to those URLs get a 404 page. Import URL redirects by CSV to send them somewhere useful.
Treat Shopify as the only source of a market's price. Don't let an app or a spreadsheet work one out from your base prices. If an app does its own pricing, have whoever owns it check its figures against Shopify's View as preview.
Bundle apps are where this shows up. Simple Bundles' help center says that with Markets, B2B catalogs or customer-specific price lists, bundle components may not check out at the market's catalog price. The price can fall back to the default catalog price with a standard currency conversion. It calls this a limit in how Shopify prices bundles today, affecting every bundle app that expands bundles at checkout.
So add one line to the test script. For every bundle, confirm the checkout total in each market's currency, not just the product page.
Admin settings change faster than most SOPs get updated. Put these on a recurring check instead of trusting a launch-day screenshot:
This is ordinary SOP drift. A missing HS code or a dropped DDP label is cheaper to catch on a schedule than in a customer's complaint about paying duty twice.
Start with the duties step. It carries a per-order fee and depends on product data most stores have gaps in. It is also the one customers feel at the door.
ReccordSOP turns a screen recording of that setup into a step-by-step SOP, with a screenshot for each step. Record the same task again later and it compares the two versions, flagging which steps changed instead of replacing the old copy. Workspace admins get an email when a published SOP has gone 90 days since its last review or edit. A person still runs the check.
The free plan covers 3 SOPs in total. Team is $19 per user per month, with a 3-user minimum. Record your Markets setup on reccordsop.com.
It is the configuration of customer groups inside the Markets section of the Shopify admin. For each market you set the conditions that put a customer into it, its domain or subfolder, its currency, the catalogs that control products and prices, and how duties and taxes show at checkout. Creating markets is part of Shopify, not a separate purchase.
Not to create markets. But Shopify says selling in local currencies is only supported by Shopify Payments or Adyen. With other third-party providers, orders are processed in your store's default currency.
Usually not for a first launch. Shopify suggests subfolders on your primary domain, such as example.com/en-ca, because they are simple to set up and share your main domain's search ranking. Subdomains and separate country domains are options when a market needs its own presence.
The product is not in any catalog available to that customer's market. Shopify hides it from that market's listings, and a customer who opens the product's direct link sees your store's 404 page. Add the product to the market's catalog, or confirm the exclusion is on purpose.
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Last reviewed November 2, 2026
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