Creating and activating markets

You can create markets from the Markets page in your Shopify admin to define where and how you sell to different customer groups. After you create a market, you can configure its customizations and activate it to make it available to customers.

Review your default markets

When you create a Shopify store, the following markets are created for you automatically:

• Domestic market: Your store's home country or region, as determined by your store's address and currency. This is your domestic market and represents the default customer experience. The country in your domestic market is set as your backup region by default.
• International market: A curated list of countries or regions where merchants similar to you also sell. This market is inactive by default.

Review these markets before you start using them.

Steps:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Markets.

2. Review your domestic market to confirm it matches your domestic selling region.

3. Review the international market to determine which countries are suggested for you.

If you find that these markets don't conform to your preferences, then you can create new markets or edit the existing ones.

Plan your market strategy

Plan to create individual markets that you want customized experiences for. For example, if you have one selling strategy for all of Europe, then you can create a single market containing all countries in Europe. If you plan to have different customizations for different countries and regions within Europe, then you can create individual markets for those countries and regions.

Create a market

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Markets.

2. Click Create market.

3. In the Name section, enter a name for your new market.

4. Next to the name field, select the publishing status for your new market. Select Active to display the new market to customers as soon as it's created, or Draft to preview the market before displaying it on your online store.

5. In the Includes section, click Add condition. This condition defines which of your customers the market is displayed to:

   • To create a Regional market, select Regions, and then select the country or regions to create a market for.
   • To create a B2B market, select Company locations, and then select the company locations to create a market for.
   • To create a Retail market, select POS locations, and then select the retail locations to create a market for.
   • To create a Channel market, select Channels, and then select the sales channels to create a market for.

6. In the Inherited section, review the customizations for your new market. These settings are inherited from your store defaults, or from a parent market if the new market has one.

7. Optional: Click next to a setting to change it. After you make a change, the setting is moved from the Inherited section to the Customized section.

8. Click Save.

Configure your market settings

After you create a market, you can configure its customizations to match your selling strategy. Click your market on the Markets page to access its settings. Refer to customizations for more information on the customizations that you can make to a market.

Activate your market

After you've configured your market settings, activate it to make it available to customers. If you create a market as a draft, or if you don't already ship to all the countries in a new market, then the market is inactive by default. Customers in inactive markets can't complete a purchase, and receive the backup region experience when they visit your store.

Before activating a market, ensure that shipping rates are configured for all countries in the market.

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Markets.

2. Click the market that you want to activate.

3. Change the status from Draft to Active.

4. Click Save.