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Selling abroad seems a click away: a translation module, a currency switcher, and the store speaks to all of Europe. In practice, a hastily translated store loses the trust it wanted to win, and a currency shown without thinking about prices, VAT and returns creates more work than sales.
This guide is for teams that want to open their store to other languages and currencies without redoing everything. It suggests an order: the market, the language, the currency, then the rules.
Why language matters for selling
CSA Research surveyed 8,709 online shoppers in 29 countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas. Its results show what is at stake:
What online shoppers expect in their own language
The survey dates from 2020, and the share varies by country (Germany leads among shoppers who only buy from sites in their own language). But the direction is clear: language is part of the offer, not the decoration.
Choosing the first market on numbers
The reflex is to open the big languages all at once. The better question is: where do you already see signs of demand, and where can you deliver and serve without losing money?
- Existing signals: visits and orders from a country, searches that already show your pages abroad in Search Console. Our article on international SEO and new markets details how to read them.
- Delivery and returns: the real cost and lead time to the country, and the cost of a parcel coming back.
- Customer service: who answers questions in the language, and how quickly.
- The rules: VAT, labelling, compliance specific to the products you sell.
From the field
On an online plush toy store that we are putting back on its feet, this calculation closed two sales zones, the United States and Canada: €190 of revenue a year, against four combined compliance costs. Opening a market is a decision, and so is closing one.
Language: translate first what makes people buy
Not everything is translated at once. The order that limits risk:
- The pages that commit you.
Delivery, returns, terms of sale, payment: a mistake there becomes a dispute.
- The best-selling product pages.
A few dozen products often make most of the revenue; they deserve a careful review.
- Order emails.
Confirmation, shipping, returns: buyers must understand what is happening to them.
- The rest of the catalogue
In batches, with a glossary that fixes brand and product terms.
Machine translation saves considerable time, provided it is reviewed where it commits you: our article on AI website translation and review says where to place the review. A translation memory then avoids paying twice for the same sentence, as our article on translation memory explains. On Palmora Property, the real estate portal we run in six languages, switching translation provider divided the cost by 60, and 95% of segments come out of the cache after the first pass, without calling the AI again.
Site structure matters as much as text: one address per language, correct hreflang tags, and internal links that stay in the reader’s language.
Watch out
A link without a language prefix sends the reader back to square one
On the plush toy store mentioned above, 712 internal links written without the language prefix sent every Spanish reader to the French pages. The client learned it the hard way: the translation was done, the navigation undid it. Errors of this kind are listed in our article on hreflang and multilingual SEO.
Translated product pages reuse the same base of fields as the originals, and the product page that converts says what buyers must find there, in every language.
Currency: show the price the buyer will pay
A price in local currency spares buyers the conversion, and the surprise of a different amount on their statement. Platforms largely do this on their own. Shopify’s help on currency conversion states that prices are converted automatically at the current market exchange rate, that you can set your own rates, round prices per market, and that buyers pay and get refunded in their currency.
Automatic conversion
Nothing to maintain by hand
Prices that move with the exchange rate
Awkward amounts without a rounding rule
Prices set per market
Round, stable prices, designed for the market
A price list to keep up to date product by product
A margin to recalculate when the exchange rate moves
Currency also affects other channels: a Google Shopping feed must state the same price as the product page, currency included, as our guide to preparing your store for Google Shopping reminds us.
The rules: VAT before the first order
Selling to consumers in other EU countries changes the VAT due. The European Commission’s portal on the VAT One Stop Shop sets the threshold:
excluding VAT of intra-EU distance sales, over the current and previous year, beyond which the buyer’s country’s VAT applies
country of registration with the One Stop Shop, to declare VAT for the other countries
a year: the One Stop Shop return is quarterly
Definition
One Stop Shop (OSS)
The EU scheme that lets a business declare and pay, from its own country, the VAT due in other EU countries on distance sales to consumers.
Check these rules with your accountant before opening a market, not after: they decide the price shown including tax.
What follows the opening
A new market brings new returns, and they cost more from abroad: our article on product returns adds them up. Stock must stay accurate when orders come from everywhere, as described in our article on inventory sync, and reviews in the buyer’s language become extra proof, see our article on customer reviews. A marketplace present in several countries can serve as a test before translating the whole store: that is one of the trade-offs in selling on Amazon alongside your store.
Track each market separately, with the five numbers to track every week, and send cart reminders in the buyer’s language, following our rules for abandoned cart reminders. If advertising accompanies the opening, a Google Shopping campaign is set country by country. On the tools side, a translation or currency app is weighed like any other, with our method for Shopify apps, and the platform itself decides what is built in: we compare them in Shopify or Medusa.
If you are preparing to open a market, our ecommerce service starts with the numbers: existing demand, delivery, returns and translation cost.
Frequently asked questions
Which language should you add to your store first?
The language of the market where you already see signs of demand (visits, orders, searches) and where you can deliver and serve without losing money. English is not always the right first choice: a neighbouring country where your delivery costs stay reasonable can pay off faster. Decide on your numbers, not on the size of the market.
Should you translate the whole catalogue at once?
No. Start with the pages that commit you (delivery, returns, terms of sale), then the product pages that make most of your sales, with a review. The rest can follow in batches, with controlled machine translation and a glossary. A badly translated product page does more harm than one not yet translated.
Should prices be shown in the buyer’s currency?
It is recommended: buyers see the amount they will pay, without calculation or surprise. Platforms convert automatically at the market rate, or let you set prices per market. Choose a rounding rule, and check that the margin holds after conversion and payment fees.
When does the buyer’s country’s VAT apply?
In the European Union, beyond €10,000 excluding VAT of distance sales to consumers in other EU countries, over the current and previous year. The One Stop Shop then lets you declare that VAT from your own country, every quarter. Have your situation checked by your accountant before opening a market.
Sources
- Shopify Help, currency conversion (new tab)help.shopify.com
- European Commission, VAT One Stop Shop (OSS) (new tab)vat-one-stop-shop.ec.europa.eu
Jim · founder of Brain Plus AI
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