What you will learn
- Products and content checks
- Payments, shipping, and tax checks
- Pages and policy checks
- Checkout and email checks
- The final test order
1. Check products and content
Confirm every product has a title, description, photos, price, and stock status, and that no draft or placeholder product is visible. Check collection pages for empty categories, the homepage for broken images or placeholder text, and the menu for dead links. Read the homepage as a first-time visitor: within seconds, it should be clear what you sell and where to start.
2. Check payments, shipping, and taxes
Confirm at least one payment method is live and tested, shipping zones cover every region you intend to serve with rates that cover costs, and tax settings behave correctly in test orders for each region. These three areas cause the most launch-day failures, and each takes minutes to verify but hours to fix once customers are already checking out.
3. Check pages and policies
Confirm the about, contact, shipping, returns, and privacy pages exist, are linked from the footer, and describe your actual process. Confirm the contact method works, whether email or form, by sending yourself a message. Policies that promise something you do not do are worse than missing policies, because customers will rely on them.
4. Check checkout and emails
Place test orders as a guest and as a logged-in customer, on desktop and mobile, and review every email the customer receives: order confirmation, shipping update, and any account emails. Check that totals, taxes, and shipping appear correctly, that discount codes work, and that a failed payment shows a clear message with a way to retry.
5. Remove the password and announce
Only when every check passes, remove the store password, connect or verify your custom domain, and check the live store once more from a device you have not used for testing. Then announce the store to your audience, and monitor orders and messages closely for the first days. Launch is the start of running the store, not the end of building it.
Example: a launch-day failure the checklist prevents. A store owner skips the test order and launches to an email list. The first customers discover that shipping rates were never set for their region, so they cannot check out at all, and the owner spends launch day fixing settings instead of welcoming buyers. Had the checklist been followed, a single test order with that region's address would have caught the gap in minutes, before any customer saw it.
After launch: the first-week checklist
Launch day is only the first check; the first week needs its own list. Each day, review new orders for errors, check customer messages and answer them promptly, and scan for failed checkouts or error pages. Note every issue, however small, and fix the ones that affect buying first. A store that responds fast in its first week builds a reputation for reliability that later marketing cannot buy.
At the end of the first week, hold a short review: which products sold, which pages were visited most, what questions customers asked, and what broke. Turn the answers into a short task list for week two, ordered by impact on sales. This habit, a weekly review and a short ordered task list, is what turns a launched store into a growing one, because it replaces guesswork with evidence from your own customers.
Frequently asked questions
What is the single most important launch check?
A complete test order, as a customer, on mobile, including payment and the confirmation email. It exercises products, payments, shipping, taxes, and emails in one pass.
Should I launch with a password first?
Yes, while building and testing. Remove the password only when the checklist passes, so early visitors never meet an unfinished store.
Do I need a custom domain before launch?
It is strongly recommended, since it is what customers will remember and share. You can launch on the free Shopify address, but switching later means updating every link you have shared.
What should I monitor right after launch?
Orders, failed checkouts, customer messages, and error pages. The first days reveal the gaps testing missed, and fast fixes protect your launch audience.
Is launch the end of store setup?
No. Pricing, shipping, content, and apps all improve from real orders and customer feedback. Launch means the store is ready to learn from customers, not that it is finished.