Launching a Shopify store without a checklist is how stores go live with broken checkouts, missing legal pages, and embarrassing typos on the homepage. This checklist covers 47 items across nine categories. Work through every section before you flip the store live.
1. Store Setup
- Connect your custom domain and verify DNS propagation is complete
- Install and configure your chosen theme, remove all placeholder demo content
- Upload your logo, favicon, and brand colour palette to theme settings
- Create all standard pages: About, Contact, FAQ, and any brand story pages
- Configure your store's timezone, currency, and language settings
- Set up your navigation menus: header, footer, and any collection menus
2. Products
- Write unique product descriptions for every listing (do not use manufacturer copy)
- Upload high-resolution product images compressed to under 100KB each
- Set accurate pricing, compare-at prices, and cost-per-item for margin tracking
- Create all product variants (size, colour, material) with correct SKUs
- Set inventory tracking to on and enter accurate opening stock levels
- Assign products to relevant collections and add appropriate tags
3. Payments and Checkout
- Activate Shopify Payments or your chosen payment gateway and complete verification
- Enable accelerated checkouts: Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay
- Configure tax settings correctly for every region you sell in
- Set your checkout to require an email address for order follow-up
- Enable multi-currency if you are selling internationally
- Run a full test transaction using a real card and then refund it
4. Shipping
- Create shipping profiles for each product type or fulfilment location
- Set shipping rates for every region you plan to ship to
- Configure free shipping thresholds if part of your pricing strategy
- Connect your carrier account (Royal Mail, DPD, UPS, etc.) if using calculated rates
- Write clear delivery expectation copy and add it to your product pages and FAQ
5. SEO Basics
- Write a unique meta title and meta description for your homepage
- Write unique meta titles and descriptions for every product page
- Add descriptive alt text to every product image
- Submit your sitemap (yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml) to Google Search Console
- Verify your domain in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
- Check that all page URLs are clean, lowercase, and use hyphens not underscores
6. Legal Pages
- Publish a Privacy Policy that covers data collection, cookies, and third-party sharing
- Publish Terms of Service covering purchase terms, liability, and jurisdiction
- Publish a Returns and Refunds Policy with clear timelines and conditions
- Add a Cookie Consent banner if selling to EU or UK customers (GDPR compliance)
- Link all legal pages in your footer and during checkout
7. Marketing Setup
- Connect Klaviyo (or your chosen email platform) and create your welcome email flow
- Set up your abandoned cart recovery email sequence (minimum two emails)
- Install the Meta Pixel and verify it is firing on product views, add to cart, and purchase events
- Connect Google Analytics 4 and verify ecommerce tracking is active
- Create a Google Merchant Centre account and submit your product feed
- Set up your social media profiles and link them from the store footer
8. Pre-Launch Testing
- Complete a full purchase as a customer on desktop: add to cart, checkout, pay, confirm order email received
- Complete the same purchase flow on a real mobile device
- Test every link in your header and footer navigation
- Run your homepage through Google PageSpeed Insights and resolve any critical issues
- Test your contact form and verify submissions arrive in your inbox
- Check that all product images load correctly and show the right variants
9. Launch Day
- Remove the storefront password and verify the store is publicly accessible
- Send your launch announcement to your email list
- Post the launch announcement across all active social media channels
- Monitor your analytics dashboard every hour for the first four hours
- Have your customer support channel open and actively monitored
- Review your first five orders manually to confirm fulfilment workflows are running correctly
Need Help Launching?
If you are preparing to launch a new Shopify store and want a specialist team to handle the setup, optimisation, and first 30 days of operations, ScaleWise VA offers a dedicated store launch service.
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and let us walk through your launch plan together.