The importance of using localized payments and selling in multiple currencies

Online shopping has become extremely popular over the last several years, and as a result of this popularity, hundreds of thousands of online stores have popped up to take advantage of the growing market. If you own an online store and are looking to expand your business into new markets, then supporting various currencies can help boost your revenue significantly.

The average consumer expects to be able to shop online using their local currency effortlessly. However, that does not mean you should restrict yourself to just your local currency. Unfortunately, there are quite a few technical and technological hurdles that you need to jump over to be able to start selling in multiple currencies.

Shopify is one popular company that is enabling business owners and entrepreneurs to create a multi-currency e-commerce platform that provides customers with robust, multi-currency purchasing capabilities.

In this article, we’re going to discuss why it is so important that you provide your customers not only with localized payments but payments in multiple currencies, as well.

Knowing When To Use Multiple Currencies In Your Online Store

There are a number of reasons why you should be offering your clients multiple currency payment options, but there are also a few reasons why you shouldn’t. There are different factors, including the size of your business and how you want your business to grow, whether locally or internationally.

Your Business Has Grown, and You Are Now Attracting International Customers

Many online stores start out local, selling products to customers in their region with the local currency used in that area. Growing a business, especially an online one, can be challenging, but once the growth starts, it can be difficult to contain, as your customers begin doing some of your networking and marketing for you.

There will come a point where you will need to expand your horizons, and you will start attracting customers from regions that are not local to you. These new customers will not be very satisfied if they are forced to buy your products in a currency that is not familiar to them, and you’ll need to accommodate this new demand.

You Are Satisfied With Being a Local Online Business and Are Not Interested In Selling Internationally

If this is the case, then there will be no reason for you to offer a multi-currency payment gateway. Local businesses can become extremely successful, and if you’re offering a product or service to customers in your region who keep coming back for more, you’ll be able to sustain yourself and your business indefinitely without the need to enable multi-currency payments.

Additionally, if you built your online store using Shopify and decide later on down the line that you do want to expand your business beyond your local region, then enabling Shopify multi-currency payments is a piece of cake. They even have a tutorial on their website that you can follow to learn how to do just that.

Why Use Multi-Currency Payments Anyway?

There are plenty of reasons to create a multi-currency e-commerce platform. When a consumer clicks on your website and discovers that they can only make payments for your products in an unfamiliar, foreign currency, where they will need to work out exchange rate conversions, they can become discouraged from buying your product at all. This can result in a lost customer who will probably never come back.

No Customer Conversion Costs

We all know how frustrating it is to visit a website in the hopes of buying a specific product, only to find that the business does not sell in our currency. This means that we often end up paying more for a product than we anticipated, thanks to conversions and exchange rates, leaving us feeling dejected and frustrated.

You can prevent your customers from having to experience this by enabling multi-currency support. At the very least, you can offer an international money converter on your website to help customers work out what they’ll be paying in their currency.

Bank Transfer Payments

There is more to multi-currency e-commerce support than just allowing your customers to pay with a number of accepted currencies. You are also able to boost your sales and revenue by letting your customers pay with alternative payment methods. For instance, many customers from Europe prefer to make their payments using bank transfers in real time with their online bank accounts.

Consistent Pricing Display

It is crucial to have your prices displayed in a consistent manner if you wish to permanently win the trust of your customers. Being able to pay with a localized currency makes sure that your customers are seeing the prices for your products in a simple, rounded number that they are most likely used to.

Building a Shopify Store

If you’re a prospective business owner who wants to start an online store with Shopify, the process could not be any easier. Shopify actually offers a free 14-day trial to let you test the waters and check out all of their features for yourself.

Signing Up

To start your Shopify store, you will need to sign up and make an account. The name of your store must be unique. Otherwise, Shopify will prompt you to pick a different name. Once you’ve gotten past this screen, you will be asked to provide some more personal details, like your name, contact number, address, and country.

Then, you will need to provide the details of the product that you are selling. If you don’t have a product yet and just want to test Shopify out, you can select the “I’m just playing around” option in the dropdown box. Click “I’m done” when you’re finished.

Setting Everything Up

After you have completed the sign-up process, you will be directed to the admin page for your store. This is where you are able to make all of your customizations, upload your products, and set up shipping and payment options.

Choosing a Layout/Theme

The great thing about Shopify is that it comes with its very own Theme Store. The themes in this store all come fully supported by their creators, so you know that your store will be in good hands. All of the themes come with an extensive list of modifications that you can make without needing to do any coding at all.

Premium themes allow you to make even more modifications, though you don’t need to pay for one of these to make your online storefront look great – the free ones do that perfectly. If you are looking to make much more drastic changes to your chosen theme, then you can do a few things using CSS and HTML.

Adding Products To Your Store

On the left side of your Shopify admin page, you will see a tab called Products. Click it, and you’ll find another button called Add a product near the middle of the page. On this screen, you should try to add as many details about your products as you can. Try to add descriptions that will help with SEO, like the name, URL, and description of your product.

Once you have uploaded your images, you can arrange them to match your theme – don’t worry about uploading them in order. The images you choose to add to your website can make or break a sale, so try to make them as high-quality as you can, and also include as much uniqueness as possible.

How To Add Shopify Multi-Currency To Your Store

It’s now time to cover what most people probably came to this article for – enabling multi-currency support to your Shopify store. You should note that you can only use the multi-currency support feature on your store if you are using Shopify Payment.

1.   Edit Shopify Payments To Use Multiple Currencies

To start, you will want to edit the settings for your Shopify Payments to add the currencies that you want your store to accept. To do this, navigate to Payment Providers from the Settings tab of your Shopify admin page.

In this section, click Manage. Navigate to the Currencies section, and choose the currencies that you want your store to allow from the list of accepted currencies. Make sure that you press the Save button.

Additionally, you can enable the optional rounding rules, which will help make your converted prices appear more consistent. You can also customize these rules to change exactly how the rounded prices appear in the new currency, like if you wanted all of your prices to end in $0.50, for instance.

2.   Enable a Currency Selector

Most of the themes available in the Theme Store do not include a selector for currencies by default, so you will have to create one for yourself.

3.   See the Converted Prices and Test Customer Experience

Be sure to visit your store as if you were a client so that you can see exactly what your customers see when they visit your website. Ensure that the prices being displayed are exactly how you want them to be displayed, and make any changes you feel are appropriate until your store is exactly the way you want it.

Which Currencies Does Shopify Support?

Your Shopify store will make use of one of two currencies, namely store currency and payout currency.

The store currency is the currency of your reports and your Shopify admin. This is the currency that you will use when you are determining the prices for the products you sell. Even though you can only receive payouts in your local currency, the currency of your store can be any currency that is listed in the currency selector, which is found in the settings tab of your store.

Your payout currency, as the name implies, is the currency that Shopify will use when it makes payments into your bank account. The choice of your payout currency will depend on the location that your store is in. The bank that your payouts will be deposited to must be in the same country as your store. If your store is located in Australia, but you want to be paid in USD, then you will have to use a USD bank account that is Australian-based.

Be sure to visit the Shopify website to view a list of their supported currencies.

Achieving E-Commerce Success

Since there are now more than a million online stores that use Shopify, e-commerce has become the most effective way to get your product out there and achieve sales. Here are a few things you can do to help boost your e-commerce sales.

Sell a Variety Of Products

Sure, selling hand-crafted earrings or commissioned paintings can take you far, but sometimes, in order to expand your store’s potential and increase your sales, you are going to need to expand the range of products you sell. Don’t try to sell everything – Amazon already has that covered. Just try to keep an eye on what your competitors are offering, and see if you can beat them and give your customers what they want.

Use Social Media Marketing

We are living in the age of social media, and basically everyone has an Instagram, Facebook, and/or Twitter account. Taking advantage of these platforms allows for free marketing, and Instagram and Facebook even have their own paid promotion options to allow you to market to a wider audience.

Make Your Store Mobile-Friendly

You may know that 44% of all online sales traffic in the US was done using mobile devices, and about 80% of all adults in the US accessed the internet using their phones. As a store owner, this provides you with the perfect opportunity to capitalize and expand. If your Shopify store is easy to access for mobile and desktop users, you’ll be opening yourself up to a much greater customer base, and this improves your sales and revenue drastically.

Shopify even has an article on their website that will help you make your store more accessible to mobile shoppers. It’s definitely worth reading.