Localizing your e-commerce store more often than not has tremendous benefits for both SEO and conversion. 

SEO and localization 

Domestic search engines are far more likely show results in their native language than English language, so if you run a webshop in Finland it is far more likely you will be displayed prominently if you translated your page to Finnish.

Although it sometimes might feel like being international is more in line with your brand, localization for the SEO benefits should not be overlooked.

CRO and localization 

The older your target age group, the more important it is for you to localize your page. Offering the ability to transact in ones own language conveys a sense that the customer will have recourse in case there was some problem with the purchase, but one should also not overlook that many customers still in this day and age prefer to support local businesses.Studies have shown that the conversion rate is significantly higher when the store is in the customers language. 

Websites in the customers own langugage have much higher conversion rates.

Translating your Shopify store to Finnish

Per default Shopify is always in English, but it is rather easy to translate it to Finnish. You just need to login in to your Shopify admin, choose your store and choose edit language in the actions dropdown. 

In you store's theme page you can choose to translate the theme.

On the next page, in the upper left corner you an choose to change the language to Finnish.

Once you changed the language you will see the English translations and the corresponding Finnish translation.

The amount of translations will depend on the theme you are using.

Although it might feel a bit overwhelming, Sopify comes with rather good translations to Finnish so many of the translations are already done for you and you do not need to fill in everything yourself. 

You think you are ready? 

Once you done all the translations in the admin you need to review it in the frontend to make sure the Finnish translations are correct. 

Because some of the context might be missing in admin, the translations might not make sense once displayed in the context they are used in the frontend. 

Localization and pricing 

Although localizing your store to Finnish will already give you a huge boost in your conversion rate and SEO, there are still huge shortcomings. 

In cases where you run a Shopify store with multiple currencies you need to choose a base currency. If you base currency is not EURO as used in Finland you might run in to issues with your prices being automatically converted from your base currency.

The problem with automatic conversion is that you might end up with odd pricing such as 18.73€, instead of 18.95€ as is normally used. 

Automatic conversion of prices from base currency to foreign currency often leads to less than ideal prices.

Another down side with merely relying on Shopify is that Shopify does not come with Klarna Checkout which is a must if you wish to successfully sell in Finland.

Read our other post on how to implement both Klarna Checkout in Finland and manually set prices for products in our other post here. 

If you think you need help on localizing your store, or are interested in implementing Klarna Checkout on shopify in Finland drop us a line bellow.