The start of an eCommerce business may be humble, but when it grabs a fair share of the market, it will expand and not be limited to a country or region. To serve their global customers better, eCommerce businesses will have to set up multi-websites.
As one of the most advanced eCommerce platforms that empower thousands of retailers & brands, Magento allows the creation of new websites, stores, and store views. For each website for each targeted region, store owners would expect it to show to the right visitors of that region.
And Magento 2 Auto Website Switcher is the technology to fulfill that demand.
In this article, we will walk you through everything you need to know about Magento 2 Website Switcher feature. Let’s get started!
When Do You Need Magento 2 Website Switcher?
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Setting up multiple web stores is only half a journey. The real challenge is directing users to a store relevant to them.
For example, you are managing two stores on a single website, one aiming to target USA users and one targeting Canada users.
First of all, it will be challenging to know the users’ location. Secondly, it will be hard to redirect the users to the store that is dedicated to their location.
Hence, you will need the Magento 2 Website Switcher features as the solution to instantly recognize the visitor’s location by checking their IP addresses and automatically directing them to the store that is assigned to their region.
Magento 2 Website Switcher becomes more and more critical as you are growing your business all over the world.
Please continue reading to find out all of its benefits.
The Benefits Of Magento 2 Website Switcher
There are four significant benefits of using Magento 2 Website Switcher:
Take your customers to the right store
Sometimes, your customers can get lost in your multi-regional store as they don’t know which store suits them the most. With the help of an auto website switcher tool, you can suggest the most suitable store for the users based on their IP address.
Increase exposure of multiple stores
Magento 2 GeoIP store switcher can also display a drop-down menu to enable users to swap stores manually.
For example, if your visitors land on the default store and don’t find it irrelevant to them, they will leave it without checking if there is a multi-website option. However, with a store-switching drop-down option, they can discover the right store for them.
Sometimes, customers will want to roam around neighborhood stores to shop for products not available in their region.
Promote a niche in a specific territory
Store-switching functionality can help you set up a specific store for each continent, each country, or even each city. This empowers you to target the users of a specific set of products or services for each territory.
For example, you can sell Lunar New Year’s decorations only in stores in the Asia region, where they celebrate Lunar New Year.
Sell in local currencies
It’s not a surprise that customers don’t want to buy products priced in a global currency.
For example, if a visitor in French is browsing an online store that shows product prices in USD, will they relate to that? Or will they need time to calculate the price in EUR – their local currency?
That’s why your multi-regional eCommerce website should have a function to switch currency so customers can see a more localized version of your store.
It will make them feel more familiar and comfortable to purchase from you.
Initiate private sales
Although the multi-store feature is meant to let your customers roam around your website, you can restrict their access to some stores. That means you can set up a private store for a selected community and stop the rest of the customers from accessing those products.
Arranging private sales is a really effective strategy because some people are obsessed with being the first one who own a new product. Private sales allow you to award special or VIP customer groups by offering special offers for them. This way, you can build a long-lasting relationship with your loyal customers.
>>> READ MORE: The Difference Between Magento Website vs Store vs Store View
The Default Magento 2 Website Switcher’s Limitation
As you can see, Magento 2 Website Switcher is such a beneficial feature.
Sadly, default Magento 2 doesn’t support this amazing feature.
When visitors enter a default Magento 2 store, they would have to look for the store view button to manually change to the relevant store view.
The problem is, that some visitors may not be familiar with the default store language. Thus they couldn’t switch the store view. That’s why the bounce rate is usually high for international Magento 2 websites.
Hence, it’s definitely a must to install a third-party extension to take advantage of the Auto Website Switcher feature in Magento.
And hereby we present to you:
Best Solution For Auto Magento 2 Website Switcher
Magento 2 GeoIP Store Switcher by BSS is the absolute best solution for auto store switching in your Magento 2 store!
Price: $119
BSS Commerce is named a Bronze Solution Partner of Adobe for all its work dedicated to the Magento online business community. And Magento 2 GeoIP Store Switcher is another outstanding extension of them.
At the price of only $119, what this extension brings to you and your Magento store is absolutely the best.
Check out the highlighted features in the content below.
#1. Redirect users to the relevant store view based on IP address
First of all, this Magento 2 Store Switcher allows you to redirect users to the relevant store view. This module identifies users’ countries by checking their IP address and then redirects them to the most proper store view for their purchase aims.
In the backend, the admin can assign which store view a region customer will be redirected to. And this tool will do the rest.
#2. Automatically switch currency per store view
Besides redirecting them to the fitting store view, Magento 2 GeoIP Store Switcher also changes the display currency accordingly. Once the customer is brought to a relevant store view, the display currency corresponding to that store view is shown along with product prices under the currency rate calculation.
To achieve this function on the frontend, the admin needs to make some configurations on the backend such as currency settings and complete the currency code & country code.
So, customers from the USA will be redirected to the USA store where prices are in USD. Similarly, customers from China will be redirected to the Chinese store where prices are in CNY.
#3. Show a confirmation popup of store view switch
In addition to auto-redirecting visitors to their store views, our Magento 2 Website Switcher displays a popup to ask customers about switching.
It is very useful in some special cases when customers still desire to explore the default store views.
Furthermore, this popup plays a role as a bridge between Magento 2 websites and purchasers to individualize the shopping experience in terms of regions or countries.
In reality, there are a lot of big eCommerce websites using the confirmation popup before redirecting customers to their appropriate store views.
#4. Allow/forbid users to switch store view
This is a worth-to-try feature if you want to limit the publicity of different pricing for each store view. Besides auto-redirecting customers to their suitable store views, customers can switch to other ones as they want. In case the manual switch is disabled, the customer can browse within their assigned store view only.
You can easily set up this feature at our backend demo and come back to our frontend demo to check out!
#5. Set store view redirect exception for specific IPs and URLs
The redirect restriction feature is useful to set an exception for the Magento 2 Store Switcher rule as your wish. For example, you have a support team working in France, but the France user is redirected to its store view only and can not switch the store. Then, the IP redirect restriction can get your team office out of the switching and access another store view normally.
The same goes for URL redirect restriction. The URLs you set will be displayed in the default view and not be redirected.
#6. Limit search engine crawlers from redirecting to guarantee SEO power
During the process of crawling your site, the search engine bots may judge the similar content of the store views as a duplicate content issue. Hence, the restrict user agent feature was made to get rid of this problem.
We have already provided a list of all the common search engines. Once you select one or multiple search engines from this list, the crawlers will not be redirected during the indexing.
As a result, SEO power is still guaranteed on your page.
#7. GeoIP block by IPs and countries
The GeoIP block feature was developed to upgrade the functionality of the Magento 2 Store Switcher. You can choose to completely block access to your site from specific IP addresses or countries. This is exceptionally helpful in preventing spamming and fraud orders.
#8. Save cookie for a period of time
This is one of the most necessary features of the Magento 2 GeoIP Store Switcher extension to keep redirecting customers during a period of time when they come back to the Magento 2 store. The store owners can choose how long the cookie is saved on their websites so that customers will be automatically redirected again for the next visit.
#9. Help the admin to test the module easily
The Magento 2 Geolocation extension not only benefits customers but also enables store owners or the administrator to check how the extension works. By entering the URL and IP for testers, they can know how functions are working on their websites in terms of customer sides.
It is quite convenient for Magento 2 stores when they are put on customers’ shoes to view their own website. In case there are any issues or problems, they will resolve them as quickly as possible.
>>> Let’s improve site performance for global purchasers with Set up Magento 2 Multi-Language Store
Conclusion
So we have walked you through everything you need to know about Magento 2 Website Switcher features. Using this module, you can improve user experience, reduce bounce rate, and avoid spamming for multi-store views.
BSS Commerce is one of the leading Magento extension providers and Magento 2 development services in the world. With experienced and certified Magento developers, we commit to bringing high-quality products and services to optimize your business effectively. Furthermore, we offer FREE Installation – FREE 1-year Support and FREE Lifetime Update for every Magento extension.
CONTACT NOW to let us know your problems. We are willing to support you every time.
