Blog / Our approach to international expansion
Our approach to international expansion
January 21, 2026
International expansion can be an amazing opportunity, but only when it is given the substantial time, effort, and focus it requires. In this article, we explore the architectural and operational challenges of scaling a Shopify brand into new territories. A lot of what we discuss here sits outside of standard SEO and PPC execution, but these are the patterns we’ve learned from years of scaling brands, and hopefully, it provides a useful perspective.
First, here's a bit of context. Shopify has grown into a multi-billion platform because it replaced a lot of dev work with things that can be configured by internal teams. There are plenty of £5 million plus brands that do not have a full-time developer on the team; for a WooCommerce or Magento store, that is incredibly uncommon.
On the other hand, it has made complicated technical challenges much easier to achieve, like international expansion. The problem is that it hasn't solved the operational challenges at the same time. Over the years, we've seen that treating internationalisation as a minor task can often affect current performance.
Finding the right signals
Before investing in a new territory, it is vital to look for signals that the market is actually ready for your brand. Without existing sales data, internationalisation is essentially a roll of the dice. We have to be honest: we don't know for certain that it will work; it is an experiment that will take time to refine.
One of the best signals is existing performance on third-party marketplaces. If you are already selling on marketplaces in a specific region and sales are going really well, this is a strong indicator that opening a dedicated store in that market is a good idea. Without that kind of validation, you should treat the expansion as an experiment rather than a guaranteed win.
Protecting your momentum
It is also worth acknowledging a fundamental truth: resources, time, budget, and mental load are finite. In any engineered marketing roadmap, these assets are your most valuable commodities.
When you decide to move into a new territory, you aren't just adding a market; you are splitting your focus. Every new initiative has a trade-off. Unless you are significantly increasing the resources available to the team, your existing capacity is effectively being diluted. If your team is currently 100% focused on winning in the UK, diverting even 20% of that energy to a new region creates a speed penalty on your original goals. To give a new market the attention it needs to thrive, you inevitably pull focus away from the core engine currently driving your revenue.
Technical and architectural considerations
Now that we have covered the impact on momentum, let's look at the technical considerations and structural decisions required to support a new region.
Understanding local context
The biggest mistake we see is assuming that what works in one market will perfectly mirror in another.
• The barrier of brand equity: When entering a new market where your brand equity is low, you typically have to be more competitive on price and shipping.
• Fulfilment challenges: Being competitive on price and shipping can be difficult if you do not have local fulfilment set up.
• Buying behaviour varies: Local trust signals, shipping expectations, and regional search trends differ significantly, even in English-speaking markets.
• Shipping and logistics: If shipping costs or delivery times vary across regions - such as Ireland versus the UK - your PPC bidding strategies and campaign structures must be adjusted to protect your margins.
Building trust through localisation
One of the most fundamental drivers of performance for both SEO and PPC is localised content. While it might be tempting to rely entirely on AI for this, we are increasingly focused on trust and authenticity. AI-translated content, especially when combined with a lack of established brand equity in a new market, often results in low sales. You have to work significantly harder to build trust when entering a new territory, and in most cases, AI-generated content simply doesn't cut it.
Depth of content is also becoming more important for AI surfaces. Providing the level of detail and expertise required to satisfy both users and AI is a particular challenge when trying to scale that quality across multiple territories at once. Success requires content that reflects local nuances and specific buying behaviour.
Strategic architecture and url structure
Choosing how to house your international content is the first major hurdle. While we often recommend a subfolder structure (e.g., .co.uk/en-us) via Shopify Markets to consolidate and preserve domain authority, it is not a universal rule.
Depending on your brand’s size, goals, and specific market nuances, a different approach - such as expansion stores on local ccTLDs - might be necessary. Choosing the wrong path here can lead to long-term technical debt that is difficult to untangle.
Managing redirects
While Shopify offers IP-based location redirects, we strongly advise against ticking that box. Automated redirects are problematic for two reasons:
• Search engines: Googlebot often crawls from a US-based IP. If you force an IP-redirect, you may inadvertently block search engines from ever seeing your non-US regional content.
• User experience: Users generally dislike being forced to a specific version of a site.
The best-practice approach is to implement a clear, manual country switcher or a non-intrusive pop-up banner that detects the user's location and suggests the correct store, but ultimately leaves the choice to the user.
The hreflang challenge
Success in a new region requires a bird’s eye view of all your content, site structure, and taxonomy to see how they relate across multiple markets. Without this perspective, you risk pages cannibalising each other - for instance, seeing US pages appearing in UK search results or vice versa.
Out of the box, it might look like this is handled automatically by Shopify, but in the real world, we find it requires a lot of customisation. This is because product catalogues are complex and you need granular control. Proper deployment often requires manual mapping to ensure search engines understand the relationship between regional pages, particularly if your catalogue structure varies between territories.
Improper configuration also often leads to duplicate English content versions on the site. This creates a massive problem for search engines trying to distinguish which version of the page is the "source of truth" for a specific region.
Product data architecture
The complexity of internationalisation often starts with how products are structured in the back end. It is rarely as simple as translating a title.
• The data is more than just price: You need a deep look at how products are presented for each region. This includes using different units of measurement, adapting to regional terminology, and ensuring compliance with local legislation and standards for specific items.
• Location-based inventory limitations: A major technical hurdle is that the standard Shopify API does not natively support looking up location-specific inventory on the front end. It typically only provides a total count, meaning you cannot easily showcase stock available specifically in a regional warehouse.
• Multi-market data maps: You require a data map where currency and regional inventory are handled at the source-of-truth level.
• Schema beyond ai: Accurate schema deployment is foundational for your Merchant Center feeds. Errors or mismatches in regional schema can lead to disapproved items and broken shopping ads across different territories.
Financial and operational complexity
Beyond the product data, the back-office and reporting structures must be rebuilt to handle multiple territories within a single storefront.
• Tax and duties: There is a significant gap between toggling a market "on" and the reality of running it profitably. Calculating taxes and duties correctly requires substantial strategy; while apps can automate the maths, you cannot outsource the underlying financial strategy without risking your margins.
• Analytics complexity: Moving to Shopify Markets makes data tracking much more complex because what was previously split into different geographical stores is now combined into one. Without configuring specific data pipelines and destinations for each market, your ability to report on regional performance accurately will be compromised.
• Entity structure: If your business requires separate bank accounts or distinct legal entities for different markets, the technical integration becomes significantly more demanding.
• Localised checkout and support: Success requires more than just currency settings; it requires region-specific checkout tweaks and localised customer support to meet specific market expectations.
Final thoughts
International expansion is an amazing opportunity, but our commitment to transparency means we have to be honest about the challenges involved. If a project is properly scoped and resourced, it can transform a brand’s trajectory.
However, it should be treated as a major undertaking that requires its own architectural foundation. By separating expansion from your daily operations, you protect the core business while building a new one that actually has the foundations to scale.
