Shopify Store Launch Checklist: 20 Things to Check Before Going Live

Before you launch a Shopify store, confirm five things: customers can pay, orders reach you, shipping and tax are right, the store works on a phone, and search engines can find it. Everything else is polish. If any of those five is broken, you will find out from an annoyed customer instead of from your own test.

This checklist has 20 checks, grouped so you can work through them in one or two sittings. Print it, tick it off, and do the whole thing again after any big change to your theme or apps.

Products and content

1. Read every product page as a customer would. Check titles, descriptions, sizes, materials and care instructions. Look for placeholder text left over from the theme demo. It is more common than you would think.

2. Check images on every product. Use consistent dimensions, a clear main photo and at least one image showing scale or detail. Compress files so pages load quickly, and add short, descriptive alt text.

3. Confirm prices, compare-at prices and variants. Open each variant and make sure the price, SKU and stock count are correct. A single wrong variant price is how stores end up selling at a loss.

4. Set up collections and navigation. Every product should be reachable in two or three clicks. Test the menu on a phone, where long menus often break.

5. Write the pages shoppers look for before buying. At minimum: About, Contact, Shipping, Returns and FAQ. Shoppers who are unsure about delivery or returns often leave instead of asking.

Payments, checkout and orders

6. Make a real test order. Use Shopify's test mode or the Bogus Gateway where available, then place a small genuine order with your own card and refund it. Test mode alone does not prove your live payment provider is connected correctly.

7. Test every payment method you offer. Cards, UPI, wallets and cash on delivery behave differently. Each one should be tried from start to finish, on both desktop and mobile.

8. Check the order notification emails. Both the email that goes to you and the confirmation that goes to the customer. Look at the sender name, the wording, the logo and the links inside.

9. Review the checkout page. Remove fields you do not need, make sure the order summary is clear, and check that discount codes apply properly. Test it on mobile too, since long forms are where many shoppers give up.

10. Confirm how orders reach your team. Who sees a new order, who packs it, and how does tracking get back to the customer? Run one order through the whole path before real orders arrive.

Shipping, tax and policies

11. Verify shipping zones and rates. Place test orders to a few different addresses: your own city, another state or country, and a remote postcode. Check that free-shipping thresholds work and that rates are not accidentally zero.

12. Check tax settings. Tax rules depend on where you sell and register. Confirm with your accountant how prices should display and how GST or other taxes should be collected, then check that checkout matches.

13. Publish legal policies. Privacy policy, terms of service, refund policy and shipping policy should all be live and linked from the footer. Shopify provides templates, but they need to be edited to match what you actually do.

14. Add your business details. Your registered name, address and contact details should be accurate in Shopify settings and visible to customers.

Design and mobile experience

15. Test on real phones. Most store visitors arrive on mobile. Use an actual iPhone and an actual Android phone if you can, not only a browser's resize tool. Tap every button, open every menu and complete a purchase.

16. Check speed. Run your homepage and a product page through a free speed testing tool. Large uncompressed images, heavy sliders and too many apps are the usual causes of a slow store. Our post on Shopify vs custom e-commerce explains how app sprawl affects performance.

17. Review the favicon, fonts and colors. Small brand details such as the browser tab icon and consistent type show customers that the store is run by a real business. If your brand assets are not settled yet, sort them out first. Our brand guidelines checklist covers what to define.

Search, tracking and marketing

18. Set page titles and meta descriptions. Edit them for the homepage, main collections and best-selling products. Each should describe the page clearly in plain words and include the term a shopper would search for.

19. Install analytics and test it. Connect Google Analytics and any ad pixels you use, then place a test order and confirm the purchase event is recorded. Many stores launch with tracking that quietly fails, and the data from the first weeks is lost.

20. Remove the storefront password and submit your sitemap. Shopify generates a sitemap automatically. Add it to Google Search Console once the store is public, and double-check that you did not leave the password page on or block search engines in settings.

A simple order for launch week

If a 20-point list feels long, work in this order:

1. Payments, test orders and emails (checks 6 to 10)
2. Shipping, tax and policies (11 to 14)
3. Mobile and speed (15 to 17)
4. Content and products (1 to 5)
5. Search and tracking (18 to 20)

Money and trust come first. Polish and marketing setup can follow in the first days after launch, as long as the store is safe to buy from.

Common mistakes we see

• Launching with the theme's demo images or sample copy still in place
• Forgetting to test a discount code with free shipping at the same time
• Installing many apps "just in case" and never removing the unused ones
• Leaving out a clear returns policy, then answering the same question by email all week
• Never testing the store on a slow mobile connection

None of these takes long to fix before launch. All of them are annoying to fix after customers have noticed.

After you go live

Launch day is the start of the work. Place another test order a day later, watch your first real orders closely, and keep a short list of things shoppers ask you. Those questions usually tell you what to add to product pages and FAQs. A regular routine of updates and checks also helps, and a maintenance and support plan can cover that if your team is small. If you are still deciding how much to budget for the build itself, our guide to website cost in India gives typical market ranges by type.

Next step

If you would like a second pair of eyes on your store before launch, or you are still planning the build, get in touch and tell us about your products. We can review your setup and suggest what to fix first. You can also read about our e-commerce development service to see how we approach online stores.