International Enhancements for Multi-Storefront

From international brands with branches in multiple countries and regions to domestic businesses expanding to offer sophisticated cross-border shopping, shipping, and fulfillment, merchants selling in different regions need to be able to customize their settings on a per storefront basis. This means providing shoppers with local units of measurement, payments, currencies, shipping options, tax calculations, and localized content.

When creating a storefront, you can select a default shopper-facing language, and then assign localized store profile information and SEO settings. With the new Localization settings found in the left navigation, you can assign:

• Default country
• Default language
• Physical dimensions — set measurement units such as weight, length, thousands token, decimal token, decimal places, and factoring dimension
• Date and timezone — set the storefront's local timezone and date format

While adding or editing products, you can select a storefront and customize the following product content fields to use the selected storefront’s default language:

• Name
• Description
• Categories
• Variant options
• Modifier options
• Search keywords
• Warranty information
• Availability
• Pre-order message
• Page title
• Meta description
• Product URL
• Custom fields

These customizations will only apply to the product as it appears on the selected storefront. All other fields will use the global values you have set for the product.

Stores must meet the following criteria:

• The store must be on an Enterprise pricing plan.
• The store must meet the requirements and limitations for Multi-Storefront.
• Stores using B2B Edition must request product override functionality.

Note that store provisioning of International Enhancements for Multi-Storefront may take up to 24 hours after the MSF eligibility checklist is passed.

Follow the steps below to create a new storefronts.

1. Go to Channel Manager, and click + Add New.

2. Under Storefronts, click the Create button next to BigCommerce.

3. Fill in your storefront name, and select the base language for shopper-facing content. Click Create when ready.

4. Proceed with setting up your storefront by reviewing the following areas:

• Theme — View the Theme Marketplace and select a new theme, or launch Page Builder with your current theme.
• Categories — Create channel-specific categories for your products.
• Products — Assign products to channel-specific categories and manage availability.
• Web pages — Create content pages unique to the storefront.
• Emails — Determine which store emails to send for each storefront and customize email templates.
• Domain — Assign and manage the storefront's domain, and add a third-party SSL certificate.
• Settings and launch — Configure key storefront settings, such as contact information, search settings, and customer privacy, and make the storefront available to shoppers.

See Configuring a New Native Storefront for more information on storefront settings and navigation.

The new Localization settings are found in the left navigation when viewing a storefront. From here, you can set the default country and language, physical dimension format for products, and date and timezone for the storefront.

When configuring your storefront for a multi-region experience, ensure that the Use global checkbox is empty for each of these settings. If the related checkbox is enabled, the setting will use “global” storefront settings, which are configured outside of Channel Manager. For example, the locale settings in the storefront (default country and language) would use the locale settings found in the Store Profile.

Locale

The locale settings determine your storefront's country and customer-facing language. It is similar to the locale setting found in the Store Profile.

• Default country — the country your storefront is run from; determines which payment and shipping providers will be available for use with your store
• Default language — the language used on the storefront; includes system messages (such as out of stock messages), checkout payment error messages, and transactional and abandoned cart emails. Themes, apps, and other integrations can use this setting to localize shopper-facing content.
• Enable automatic translation based on shopper's browser language — Language is selected according to shopper's browser settings. This overrides your selection in the Default language dropdown.

Physical Dimension

The physical dimension settings found in the Localization settings are similar to the setting with the same name, found under Store Settings. These settings allow you to specify the measurement units your storefront uses for product weight and volume, choose the display style for decimals, and assign a factoring dimension for calculating shipping costs. Click Show format settings to expand the fields.

If you are not familiar with the standard format for the default country assigned to the storefront, click Set standard formats for [default country] to automatically assign these values.

Keep in mind that the length and weight entered for a product will be autocorrected to the format set here; there is no need to edit your products' dimensions to manually convert them. This is an intended feature for comprehensive multi-region support.

• Weight Measurements — determines the weight measurement used when calculating the weight of physical products in your storefront. Available options are Pounds, Ounces, Kilograms, Grams, and Tonnes.
• Length Measurements — determines the length measurement used when calculating the dimensions of physical products in your storefront. Available options are Inches or Centimeters.
• Decimal Token — determines the token or character to use as the decimal separator for your product’s dimensions.
• Thousands Token — determines the token or character to use as the thousands separator for your product’s dimensions.
• Decimal Places — determines the number of decimal places to show when displaying dimensions in your store.
• Factoring Dimension — determines the dimension that will be added up per product when calculating shipping quotes. If Product Depth is selected, then shipping quotes would be based on these dimensions:
  • Width = maximum width out of all products in the order
  • Height = maximum height out of all products in the order
  • Depth = the sum of all depths of the products in the order when added together

Date and Timezone

The date and timezone settings found in the Localization settings are similar to the setting with the same name, found under Store Settings. The date and timezone settings allow you to control the internal time tracking used in your store's dashboard. This helps you keep a record of when orders come in and how dates are displayed. This is also how the store tracks when to end a discount or coupon offer if they had a time limit. Click Show format settings to expand the fields.

If you are not familiar with the standard format for the default country assigned to the storefront, click Set standard formats for [default country] to automatically assigned these values.

• Store local timezone — the timezone where the storefront is located. Determines times used when applying timestamps to orders and store logs.
• Enable daylight savings time correction? — If checked, this setting adds an additional hour to your timezone. This is a manual setting and should be enabled only when observing Daylight Savings Time. Disable this setting when you are no longer observing Daylight Savings Time.
• Date Format — the format used when displaying dates on your storefront
• Extended date and time format — the format used when displaying dates in the control panel

Once you have configured your storefront settings for localization, the next step is customizing your products to appeal to the targeted audience for your localized storefront. Whether this is translating your product details into a new language, or tailoring the product description to attract shoppers of a certain brand, the ability to override global product content allows you to fine-tune products on an individual storefront level.

To edit a product, go to Products › View and locate the product you would like to edit, then click the product’s name or select Edit from the Action menu.

Click on the channel dropdown to select the desired storefront. By default, Global (all channels) will be selected.

After selecting a storefront, the page will update to only show the product fields available for display customization on a storefront level. These include:

• Basic information — edit the product name
• Description — edit the product description
• Categories — use the storefront’s category tree to select localized categories or create new categories to assign the product
• Variant options — edit the display name of any applied variant options and values
• Modifier options — edit the display name of any applied modifier options and values
• Storefront details — select whether the product should be featured on this storefront, and edit the product’s search keywords, warranty information, and availability
• Purchasability — edit the pre-order message
• SEO — edit the page title, meta description, and product URL
• Custom fields — edit field names, values, and visibility

There will be a green dot icon to indicate that a field is not using its global settings, along with a notification at the top with the number of channel specific fields currently in use.

To revert a storefront-specific field back to its global setting, click on the action menu (…) and select Inherit global value.

You cannot apply or remove options on the storefront level. If you want to offer an exclusive version of a product on a storefront, featuring a unique set of options, we recommend making a duplicate of the product with the desired options, then assigning the product only to that storefront.

With international enhancements, can I assign payment providers, payment methods and accounts specific to the storefront?

Not currently, but we expect to support unique payment configurations for each storefront in a later release. Other anticipated features include:

• assigning tax zones with tax rules per storefront
• support for creating and managing gift certificates for each storefront

Can I create discounts and coupons for a localized storefront?

Yes, you can create automatic and coupon promotions per storefront by using Automatic and Coupon Promotions (Standard Editor).

Can I create localized widgets per storefront?

Yes, you can add widgets via Page Builder that are unique to a storefront. For additional storefronts, we recommend replacing banners and the home page carousel with widgets, as they only work on a default BigCommerce storefront. See Adding Widgets for more information.

Can order statuses be localized per storefront?

Yes, the default order statuses will be automatically translated per storefront, based on the language selected as a default language per given storefront. If you have customized your order statuses, they will not be automatically translated.

Can return reasons and actions be localized per storefront?

Yes, the default values for return reasons and actions will be automatically translated per storefront, based on the default language selected per given storefront If you have customized your reasons and actions, they will not be automatically translated. See Processing Returns for more information.

If my store is using B2B Edition, can I create a localized storefront Buyer Portal experience?

By default, you can localize storefront-specific text in the Buyer Portal by using Translation settings. Additionally, product overrides can be extended to your B2B Edition account upon request, allowing you to display localized product information in the following front-end and back-end areas of B2B Edition:

• Front End (Buyer Portal)
  • User-specific and Company-wide order details
  • Draft quotes created by buyers
  • Purchasable quotes submitted by sales representatives
  • Shopping Lists
  • Product results in the Quick Order tab
• Back End (B2B Edition Control Panel)
  • New and existing quotes
  • Company order details
  • Line items in invoice details

To request support for product overrides in your B2B Edition account, contact our Sales team.

Can I offer different shipping methods per storefront?

Static shipping quotes, excluding free shipping, and real-time shipping quotes can be toggled on or off per storefront, giving you the ability to provide distinct shipping methods tailored to a geographical region or customer segment.