Thank you for trying our Advanced Localization App! In this small guide, we'll be going over the essentials on how to get the Localization app working on your Shopify store today!
What does this app do?
You will be able to restrict some of your products to specific regions, countries, or even block some countries altogether. This is very helpful for those who have multiple warehouses, or products which they can't ship to specific countries. Doing this will not only save you time from answering customer concerns, but save your customers time as well, showing them only the products that are available to them.
I've added the app, how do I enable it?
Now we get into the fundamentals of how to enable and setup Advanced Store Localization for your store. When go into your store customization, you'll want to click on the Apps setting, and there, you will find the Localization app, as shown below.
Once you've clicked the app, you'll be brought to the main UI of the app itself. Here, things are categorized based on how you want to set up the store, which you can sort based on categories, products, warehouses, and much more. Let's just start with enabling the app for now, and we can get into the more complex features later on in this guide.
On the left, you'll see three white clickable dropdown menu's. General, Product Filtering, and Localization. For now, click on General, and System/App Status below that. You should be met with the screen shown below.
To enable the app, you just need to click "Disabled", which will toggle it to active. This will make the app immediately run on your Shopify store, but since we haven't set up any filtering options, it won't have any effect just yet. Please note that if you change your template at all, you'll need to disable and re-enable the app so it can function properly. All your settings in the filtering fields below will stay saved.
Below this, you'll notice an option to toggle jQuery. This can be ignored if your theme already has jQuery. The default Dawn theme for example, doesn't have jQuery, so you'll need to toggle this. If you're unsure, there's there's simple way of checking.
(If you don't need this, skip below to theme configuration).
Visit your main store page as the consumer sees it. Then, right click and select inspect element. After that, you can click the consoles tab, and it will define if your theme has jQuery enabled or not. If you see the error message similar to the one above, make sure to enable jQuery.
Theme Configuration:
Now that we've toggled the app, you'll need to start configuring your theme.
At this point, if you need any help on any of the pages, you can click Help Me indicated by the yellow arrow to file a support ticket to us. We'll be able to help with any issues you may encounter, or if you need a little help setting things up. There is also a video guide we have here that will take you through the process of selectors (but if you need more extensive help, there's a more thorough text guide below.
Below that, indicated by the blue arrow, will be where you can send visitors from a banned country or one not supported by your filtering to a specified page. This is useful in cases of someone being linked a product that they won't be able to purchase. Select a page you want all those visitors to be sent to. By default, it will be set to your store's homepage.
Below that option will be to enable or disable flickering. This can be an issue if you have custom CSS for your site, and the product will be visible to the consumer before filtering. In most themes, this shouldn't be an issue, but if you encounter that problem, try enabling this option.
Now, for the product list settings. This is an essential part of the app to function. What you're doing is highlighting the products you sell as a block, and it'll know to replace that block depending on the region that the shop is viewed in. So when, for example, people in the UK view your shop, only the people in that region will see the items listed for that region. The CSS selector differs depending on your theme, so you'll have to manually find the wrapper. A short general guide I'll list below. If you're unable to find your ID or class, we will be able to help.
To find your CSS selector, right click on your Product page, and click inspect element as shown above. You'll want to click as close to the product block as possible so it hones in on the wrapper you're looking for. A block of text should open up on the side of the screen. You'll want to hover over the lines of code until you see the block you want localized, so in this case, your product.
As shown above, highlighting the proper place will allow the product to be highlighted. Here, you'll either need to find the ID or the CLASS. In most cases, you'll want to use the class for the CSS selectors. The ID is more useful in very conditional situations. For the product wrapper however, we will be finding the ID. Click the down arrow beside the CSS that highlights the product and keep highlighting code. As long as the block is highlighted, continue to follow down until you find the class. It will look like this below:
This will change depending on your theme, but for us, we'll find that the ID for this Shopify homepage is "main-collection-product-grid", anything after the space is not needed. Now that we've found the product list ID, you'll want to add it to your product list CSS selector. This will differ depending on your theme and shop, so the line will differ depending on that.
For the product item block, you'll be doing the same thing, but let's find the class instead of the ID. This will hone in on the product items more reliably.
At this point, I'd also like to mention that you can use ctrl+F to find things in the element source to find things quicker, as long as you know what you're looking for.
Once you find the class product wrapper for the items, in this case it's "grid__item", you'll want to add that to the product list settings in the localization app.
When adding these lines to the app, you'll want to include a period (.) before the selector if it's a class, and a hashtag (#) before the selector if it's an ID. Make sure to add these if you want it to function properly, and be cautious for any spaces added.
You can also follow those same steps with the collection page to find the wrapper and the block. There's also optional settings you can set up. Starting on the far left, if there's any classes you'd like to hide, you can include that here. You can also choose to make it so products are still available but the "Add to cart" button is removed (middle), and remove the default option of redirecting to your selected page when a product is viewed in another region. These are optional settings, but may be useful if you're going for a specific appeal with your Shopify store.
Now, let's move on to the Display List Settings which gets into more specified settings, and grids that display your products. This may take a bulk of your time setting up as this is the foundation for the app. If you follow the same steps that we took above, but instead of using it for your entire collection or product pages (ie. Your featured products, and all the blocks it lists in this menu), you should be able to get everything set up easily.
While the UI may look a bit different, it's very similar to the product list settings we worked on. If there's a class you'd like to remove, you can do it here.
With that, we can end off Theme Configuration. While it may seem a bit overwhelming at first, if you can add in the first one, you can easily do the rest as well.
Define Regions:
Now, heading into our next setting, this is where we can start organizing which regions will belong to which products. As with all other settings, make sure to toggle it on so it can function.
First, we'll need to create the regions in which your store will be localized at. If you don't define a zone, it will be set to Zone One by default.
To start creating your custom zone, just click "Add Custom Zone", this will create a new dropdown menu just beside the Zone One (International) menu. Here, you can type in the region you want to assign in Zone One, and drag it into the new custom zone you just created. So, if you wanted to localize your store for America and Canada separately, you'll make two zones in addition to the international zone that is already there. You'll be able to name the zones, and drag the regions you want your shopify products to be exclusive to, into their respective zones. This way, the app will be able to identify which products are available to which zones, and you'll be able to configure that later.
As shown for a simple example above, this is how your regions would work. You can group up your zones however you want your products be advertised and shown. If you don't define a region, however, it will default to the settings you've applied to Zone 1.
An additional feature we have here is the ability to block a region as well, as shown below:
If you don't want some regions to be able to view your products, maybe because they would be unavailable for the buyers, you can put all regions into a zone, and define that zone as blocked. Regions aren't only exclusive to countries, but you can also make it for specific states, provinces, and so on. This will help a lot, especially if you're an independent seller with not many options for shipping.
Once you've selected a zone to block, you can decide where to redirect them. A good default suggestion is to redirect to Google, for example.
Remember to save the configuration once you're done setting up your zones.
Operation Mode:
This setting is where we will start getting into how you want which region overrides to work. Here there are 3 main settings you can choose from. If you only have one domain, or one shop, you should select geo location.
- Geo location - This is where individuals who visit your shop will get the products shown based on the IP that they view the shop from. It will apply the rules to that region based exclusively on that. So if your customer's IP is from Canada, your customer will see all settings defined for that region.
- Domain defined - This is only if you have multiple domains. Such as your shop has a .com, .ca, .uk, for example. This will make it so it will prioritize the domain over the IP.
- Geo-locate first - This is a hybrid of both. While people can visit your store in a specified domain, when clicking a product, they will be sent to the other domain product page suited to them based on their IP.
If you do decide to use domain based operations, make sure to enable the multi-domain feature or it won't work properly!
Below that, you'll see an option to enable region overriding. This will stop forcing region switches based on the domain. This is disabled by default, but can be enabled to speed up filtering of your products. If you only have one domain, you won't need to worry about this feature.
Subscription Plans:
And with that, we reach the end of our Getting Started guide! The remaining options within Product Filtering and Localization you can setup to your individual products and regions to get your store set up the perfect way you want it to be!
With our 7 day free trial, you'll be able to see how well this app functions and how much of a change it can really bring to any Shopify store, big or small!
When your store begins to reach the visitors quota, you'll get an email letting you know that you've almost reached your limit. Make sure to upgrade to a larger plan or the app will stop working - keeping in mind, any visitors from blocked regions won't count towards your visitor count. You can view your quota at any time in the Subscription tab within the app or on the main dashboard itself.
We hope you find this app well suited for your store, and if you need any assistance getting things setup, make sure to contact us!