How Can Shopify Plus Stores Track Multi-Currency Sales?

Just like regular brick-and-motar stores, international expansion is one of the best ways to grow your eCommerce business. Offering cross-border sales has a number of unique benefits, such as:

• Multi-store growth
• Tapping into new audiences
• Higher potential success for products that may perform better in other markets

Since the invention of the shipping container, the world has rapidly globalized, and with the invention of online shopping, eCommerce is following suit. A growing number of shoppers are choosing to make their purchases online, causing retailers to shift their focus to digital stores. At the same time, the cost of transnational shipping is decreasing rapidly, leading many online retailers to consider the prospect of growing and scaling their businesses overseas.

This past summer, at the third annual #ShopifyUnite conference in Toronto, Shopify announced its plans to launch a multi-currency payment feature to its platform. The new feature is designed to meet the needs of customers and merchants demanding international eCommerce transactions.

But beyond the obvious benefits, is the ability to sell in multiple currencies really useful?

Why do brands sell in multiple currencies?

Of course, it is possible to sell to global customers without having a multi-currency feature. But offering customers the ability to pay in their native currency has a host of hidden benefits.

1) Less customer confusion

According to World Pay, 13 percent of customers abandon their online shopping carts because prices are shown in a foreign currency. Showing customers your prices in their native currency ensures that there's no confusion over costs and exchange rates. It also eases customers' fears of being charged additional fees by credit card provides liker Visa and Mastercard. Optimizing the checkout process is the key to converting sales, and a transparent currency option builts trust with your customers and encourages them to commit to making purchases.

2) More customer confidence

You can use the Shopify Plus multi-currency payment feature to perfect your pricing, regardless of currency. It's been proven that buyers prefer to see numbers such as $18.99 rather than random figures like $18.36, for example. By using these pricing standards, your store will look more professional and consistent, no matter where the customer is located.

The multi-currency feature also allows you to make refunds in foreign currencies without using a third-party app. Since Shopify converts the refunds automatically, the process is very straightforward.

What does the multi-currency feature in Shopify look like?

Currently, the multi-currency option is exclusive to Shopify Plus. In other words, Shopify merchants that want to use this feature need to upgrade to Shopify's premium product. To activate the faeture within your Shopify dashbord, just go into the Payment Providers section in Settings.

From here, you can track and monitor all your currencies, and choose how each will be rounded up. For example, you can set your currencies to round to the nearest whole number or up to $0.99 or $0.95.

The new Shopify Plus feature also uses the location of your customer's IP address to detect each one's point of service. By adding the feature to your Shopify store, you can give your customers the option of using their local currency for a better shopping experience.

Which currencies are accepted?

Shopify Payments currently supports nine regional currencies:

• British Pound (GBP)
• Euro (EUR)
• United States Dollar (USD)
• Canadian Dollar (CAD)
• Australian Dollar (AUD)
• Hong Kong Dollar (HKD)
• New Zealand Dollar (NZD)
• Japanese Yen (JPY)
• Singapore Dollar (SGD)

How does Shopify's multi-currency feature affect my data in Google Analytics?

If you're using Shopify Plus and not already using Google Analytics (GA) as your primary eCommerce tracking tool, we highly recommend you do!

Shopify has coined a few terms that are important to understand when using tracking in multiple currencies:

Shop currency: this is the currency in which merchants set original product prices. It’s also the currency used for tracking and reporting within GA.

Presentment currency: this is the currency each customer sees on your storefront, cart, and checkout screens.

During checkout, prices are first sent in presentment currency. Google Analytics then converts these into the shop currency at real time exchange rates. With orders and refunds, all figures are sent to Google Analytics in the shop currency.

Now, let’s take a look at how to set your store up for proper multi-currency reporting.

For a single store selling in multiple currencies

Astrid & Miyu is a popular UK-based contemporary jewelry brand. On the top bar of their Shopify Plus storefront, they have an clear icon where users can switch between presentment currencies for a better shopping experience:

At Littledata, we regularly work with these types of stores. If you already use our advanced analytics app, our enhanced Shopify tracking automatically handles multi-currency eCommerce at every stage of the shopping journey.

We recommend you use only a single web property and single view in Google Analytics. With the app, Littledata offers audit checks that ensure the currency you have set up for this view matches your Shopify store currency.

For multiple stores with different default currencies (GA standard)

If your business runs multiple stores on Shopify Plus, we recommend you also set up a single web property, but with different Google Analytics views for each country's store.

To do this, you can create one "all countries" view in the same currency as your company’s default reporting, and then apply individual filters to include traffic from only that country. If that sounds a bit confusing, check out our step-by-step guide for setting up the filters:

• Go to the "Admin" section in Google Analytics and click "Filters" under the "View" settings
• Click "Add Filter"
• Set up a filter to include traffic only from this store’s hostname
• Click "Save"

Each country view in Google Analytics will have the same currency and timezone set as your Shopify store, so you can compare like-for-like orders.

If you use the Littledata app, you can create different accounts for each country store and audit and benchmark your stores’ performances separately.

More money, more...solutions

If you’re looking to expand to new markets and offer your products globally, the multi-currency feature in Shopify Plus is the way to go.

Showing customers the final price of the product in their local currency will help increase your conversions by eliminating the hassle of manual currency conversions and transaction fees.

Shopify Plus’ round-up feature also gives your product pages a view that shoppers are used to seeing, which boosts trust and increases consumer confidence in your business.

If you're looking to set up100% accurate multi-currency tracking and marketing attribution in Google Analytics, our team at Littledata is here to help.

With enterprise plan options designed for Shopify Plus — including full support, custom setup, and reporting — Littledata offers a quicker path to scale, both within and beyond your home country borders.

About the author

Nico is the Marketing Manager at Littledata, a smart analytics app that automatically fixes tracking for eCommerce businesses. To ensure 100% accurate reporting — including marketing attribution — Littledata has smart connections for popular tools such as Google Analytics, Shopify, Shopify Plus, Segment, ReCharge, Facebook Ads, Google Ads and more!