How to use localization with Shopify Markets

What I've been thinking of:

Internationalization isn’t always as simple as “enabling” another market:

Last week, I worked on improving the VAT experience for a European B2B business. They were displaying all of their products on their site, excluding the VAT tax. And when the customer arrived at the checkout, VAT was added to the products.

But recent European VAT rules have enforced merchants to always show product prices including VAT. The tricky part is that this VAT prices change depending on the European country the customer is in (20% for France, 19% for Germany, etc.).

To hack this, the client was using Exemptify. It’s a good app, but the issue is that the app was loading the prices via JavaScript in the storefront, not on the backend. So they were having price mismatching issues with Google Merchant Center and their feed.

To actually solve this though, we can use the ‘localization’ object to show different prices Including VAT, depending where the customer is. Here’s the snippet of code I used on the product & cart pages:

After that, we fixed the Google Merchant issue. Now the Google bot can read the same prices on the product page as the prices they receive via feed.

3 links you can't miss:

• Not only languages. This last month, Shopify has added to their GraphQL Admin API (unstable version and release candidate for June) the chance to custom content depending on the country, not only the language. For example, a “Sweaters” menu title for a United States market and a “Jumpers” menu title for a United Kingdom market. So powerful!
• Shopify Audiences. Shopify finally launched Shopify Audiences. A new exclusive audience building tool for US and Canada stores to connect Shopify merchants with high-intent buyers using machine learning. Shopify Devs explained it so well in this Twitter thread how it works.
• List metafields. Now you can create fixed metafields of a list of values and products. Not only powerful for a list of text values for collection filters, but also for quickly selecting a list of products. You can develop a product recommendations section on the product page that your clients can easily customise per product.

One app I really like:

API HELPER by William Belk

This app provides a secure frontend API that provides access to essential functions from Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Omnisend and Shopify that are not accessible due to CORS policies inside Shopify themes. I’ve used it to create newsletter forms on clients’ themes or give custom codes to clients and not reload the page. It’s so easy to use if you know JS. Read more about it here.

One freelance learning:

I’ve learned to turn meetings into projects faster. Unstructured, impromptu meetings can often lead to bad advice, so I now turn those calls into projects faster. For example: A client may call me to ask about a problem that I haven’t faced. If I’m not cautious, I may divulge too much information and say the wrong thing or quote the wrong price.

It’s hard to go back on your word once you said something on a call. So now, I increasingly say: "Great, let's open a new project so we can review it and tell you the best proposal to solve it".

Hope you enjoyed this first issue. I would appreciate it if you could reply to this email and let me know your thoughts and honest feedback :)

Speak in 2 weeks,

Roberto Aresena