Reviewed by Mayer Hyman, Payments Specialist | Reviewed for accuracy July 2026
Key Takeaways
- Small and medium-sized businesses make up the vast majority of US exporters (97.2%, SBA Office of Advocacy), so going global with an ecommerce platform is not just a large-enterprise strategy.
- Magento’s four-level store setup (Global, Website, Store, Store View) lets merchants configure pricing, tax, currency, and catalog structure independently for each market they enter.
- Localized payment methods matter: a meaningful share of cart abandonment traces back to missing or untrusted payment options at checkout (Baymard Institute).
- Scaling internationally works best step by step, testing language, pricing, and shipping in one new market before expanding further.
eCommerce Merchants Have Global Power in Their Hands
Platforms like Magento now let merchants manage suppliers, international warehouses and inventories, store locations, accounting, and shipping providers from a mobile app, work that used to require physically traveling the globe. That shift is what makes going global a realistic option for merchants of any size, not just large enterprises.
From monitoring stock inventory to managing site administrator access, Magento users can do it all from one admin interface in a single app. Ready to break into international markets? Here’s what Magento can do for you.
How Magento Helps Merchants Go Global
Selling outside the United States isn’t just for Amazon, Alibaba, and eBay. Small businesses make up 97.2% of all US exporters, roughly 270,000 companies accounting for a third of known US export value (SBA Office of Advocacy, 2026). These businesses need marketable products, but they also need reliable technology to build ecommerce websites that deliver a quality experience to customers wherever they are.
The ecommerce boom has created a saturated market for hosting providers, but Magento, now Adobe Commerce, remains one of the leaders in website-building technology and is used by retail names such as Coca-Cola, Nike, and Samsung.
Entering new markets can be intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. It’s best to scale one step at a time, testing strategies and adjusting as you go.
Deciding to do business in a new geographic or product area requires research on your target market, so you know what products and services to offer, how to shape the customer experience, and what you need to comply with local legal and regulatory frameworks. Then you need a web builder flexible enough to customize your sites for each local market.
The Europe-based IT consulting agency Inviqa lays out how Magento’s flexibility is built on four levels of store setup. Different configurations apply at one or more of these levels to create customized websites for customers in multiple countries or for multiple-brand websites.
For more on Magento, read “17 Things Merchants Need to Know Before They Commit to Magento as Their eCommerce Platform”
Magento’s Four-Level Store Setup for Customization and Scaling
Magento’s four levels for store setup are Global, Website, Store, and Store View. Here’s how each level works.
1. The Global Level
Some settings for an ecommerce website stay the same regardless of how many additional websites you add to serve different regions. For example, your inventory might be common across all stores, or you might set a global price that converts to local currency on a local website. These features are set at the global level.
2. The Website Level
One or more stores and websites can be hosted on a single Magento installation. Having multiple stores helps if any of the following apply:
- You want to set different prices across stores.
- Stores have varying tax requirements.
- Stores have different base currencies.
- You want to offer different payment options among stores.
- You want to offer different shipping options.
- You want to separate customer accounts by country.
Say you have a broad product base spanning different brands. To separate your customer data by brand, it makes sense to have a separate website for each so users create an account per website. That way your data is easier to collect and analyze.
3. The Store Level
Your product catalog, or root category, is configured at the store level, and multiple stores under the same website can have different catalog structures with different product categories.
A clothing retailer might have a root category for men’s clothing and a separate one for women’s clothing, each with its own website. The stores don’t need to look the same and can be branded differently, but all can be managed from the main admin interface, including control over site functions and data access.
4. The Store View Level
The store view level is where merchants set website content to serve the local market. Currency, orders, language, and payment gateways are all managed here.
The table below shows which features are configured at each of the four levels.
|
Feature |
Global |
Website |
Store |
Store View |
|
Stock |
X |
|
|
|
|
Root category |
|
|
X |
|
|
Product settings |
|
X |
|
|
|
Prices |
|
X |
|
|
|
Tax class |
|
X |
|
|
|
Base currency |
|
X |
|
|
|
Display currency |
|
|
|
X |
|
Category settings |
|
X |
|
X |
|
System config |
|
X |
|
X |
|
Orders |
|
|
|
X |
|
Customers |
|
X |
|
|
Source: Inviqa
For ecommerce merchants who go global, Magento offers critical features that facilitate scaling.
Scaling and the Shopping Experience
Magento lets merchants localize the customer experience for each market: secure payment portals, local shipping and returns options, and region-specific site customization.
Customer Login
If you have multiple websites, you can manage customers at the global or website level with separate logins. If customers must log into a separate website per brand or region, the resulting data is easier to analyze and apply to strategy.
Managed at the global level, customers use one username and password across all your websites. But if you run multiple brands, it usually makes more sense to manage logins at the website level, where selected products stay in a customer’s cart if they leave and return to that specific site.
Payments, Currency, and Shipping
Magento allows merchants to accept different payment and shipping methods for different local markets.
Payment method mismatch is a significant driver of cart abandonment. Roughly 1 in 10 shoppers abandon a cart because their preferred payment method isn’t available, and nearly 1 in 5 abandon over concerns about submitting card data (Baymard Institute). Global customers expect to pay in their local currency and with familiar local methods; when they can’t, merchants lose sales they otherwise would have kept.
Different countries favor different payment gateways and methods than those common in the United States. Magento supports check and pay-on-delivery options, uncommon domestically but still relevant in other markets.
At the website level, you can set different prices by location, and shoppers can select the currency displayed as they browse.
Magento also lets you receive payments in multiple currencies while being paid in your home currency. If you set your base currency to US dollars, you’ll always receive that amount regardless of what currency the customer sees on your site. This helps merchants with local warehouses or offices in more than one country, since payment can be taken in whichever currency you use to do business there.
Magento Shipping provides courier integrations for rates, tracking, and complex shipping rules across markets.
Product Catalog and Attributes
Magento allows custom attributes for products at the global, website, or store view level. If you sell clothes, sizing varies by country, a US size 4 is roughly a UK size 8, so merchants can add a “Size” attribute that shows shoppers the corresponding local size.
Multilingual Sites
Magento allows you to configure websites so visitors can choose which language they use to browse your site.
Scaling and Logistics
Multiple inventories and warehouses: you may have inventory across multiple locations. Magento’s platform supports managing multiple inventories from a single installation.
Scaling and Branding
Merchants can build new websites for new brands on their original installation, or build on existing brands with new products.
Themes: merchants can change themes for each site at the store view level, selecting a parent theme and customizing local stores at the website or store view levels.
Scaling and Marketing
Understanding local markets and consumers is key to scaling. Websites can be customized to offer different promotions and product mixes that appeal to local consumers.
Promotions: promotions can be applied to one or more websites. Before entering a new market, it’s critical to understand local consumer culture: payment and delivery preferences, the right product terminology in the local language, and how your products are actually used in that culture. Armed with that knowledge, campaigns and promotions can target local pop culture, events, and holidays.
Product visibility and terminology: Magento lets you control product (SKU) visibility at the website level, so you can adjust product sets per market while managing everything from one installation. This matters when product names and terminology differ by country, for example, UK shoppers commonly search “fancy dress” for what US shoppers call a “costume,” and matching local terminology directly affects whether products get found at all.
Scaling and Administration
The flexibility Magento provides for website building means merchants gather more organized data, making it easier to analyze for future strategy.
Accounting and analytics: data from Magento and Google Analytics lets merchants analyze customer behavior across territories, informing marketing, functionality, shipping, and payments strategy in each market.
Compliance and security: different countries and regions favor different payment gateways, and redirecting to an unfamiliar external site for payment can make consumers feel their payment is insecure. It matters which gateways you use in each international market and whether they’re compliant for fraud protection. Magento is PCI DSS compliant, reducing some of the compliance burden for merchants operating across borders.
Related: “How WooCommerce and Magento Are Tackling Fraud Protection”
Final Tips for Going Global with Magento
Before entering a new market and building a website for it, it’s critical to understand local consumer culture so the right features are configured for payment and delivery preferences, local language, and product information.
Here are some overall tips for scaling with Magento:
- Understand your local markets: payment preferences, delivery preferences, language, terminology, legal requirements, security compliance, and tax laws.
- Start small and test the market, for example by offering products in a new language while still shipping from your home base.
- Understand the tax implications of shipping goods abroad and decide how you’ll handle returns and payments.
- Consider how mature the internet infrastructure is in target countries. How fast will your site load there? Test it: customers abandon carts fast when pages load slowly.
Even with the right platform features in place, an experienced technical team will help ensure your global operations launch and continue running smoothly.
Establish global reach from the palm of your hand. Cartis Payments works with Elavon’s in-house payment gateways to support omni-commerce payment solutions with no redirects and support for over 100 currencies from a single merchant account. Contact us to find out how payment gateways integrate with your Magento site.
FAQ
Do small businesses really need a multi-market ecommerce setup?
Often, yes. Small and medium-sized businesses make up 97.2% of all US exporters (SBA Office of Advocacy, 2026), so international selling isn’t reserved for large enterprises, but it does require a platform flexible enough to handle local pricing, tax, and payment differences.
What’s the biggest technical hurdle in going global with Magento?
Usually payments and currency, not language. Magento’s four-level store setup lets you localize pricing, currency display, and payment methods per market while still consolidating orders, customers, and reporting centrally.
How much does payment localization actually affect sales?
Meaningfully. Roughly 1 in 10 shoppers abandon a cart when their preferred payment method is missing, and nearly 1 in 5 abandon over payment-data trust concerns (Baymard Institute), so matching local payment expectations is not a cosmetic detail.
