Most Shopify launch checklists assume you're a developer. They talk about canonical tags, JSON-LD, and robots.txt. If that's not your world, you need a different checklist — one that tells you what to actually look at as the business owner before you go live.
This checklist is split into five areas. Go through each one the day before launch. If something isn't right, your developer has time to fix it before customers arrive.
1. Buy something
The single most important pre-launch check is placing a real test order. Not a draft order, not a simulated payment — a real transaction with your credit card that you then immediately refund.
Go through the full customer journey: find a product, select options if there are any, add to cart, go to checkout, enter real payment details, complete the order. Then go to your Shopify admin and issue a refund.
Things that commonly break in this flow that only a real order catches:
- Shipping rates not configured correctly (customer sees £0 shipping when it should be £4.99)
- Discount codes not working as expected
- Order confirmation email not sending or going to spam
- Payment gateway throwing an error on real cards that didn't show in test mode
- Cart not clearing after purchase
If you're selling internationally, place a test order from the target country too. Use a VPN if needed to simulate the location.
2. Check every page on your phone
Open your store on your actual phone — not Chrome's mobile preview on desktop, your real phone. Browse as a customer would: tap through the navigation, open product pages, scroll the homepage, try to add something to cart.
Common mobile issues that look fine on desktop:
- Text too small to read without zooming
- Buttons too close together to tap accurately
- Images loading slowly or breaking layout
- Navigation menu not opening or hard to close
- Product option selectors (size, colour) not working properly
- Checkout feeling cramped or inputs hard to fill in
Also check on a different phone if possible — what works on your iPhone may have issues on Android.
3. Check your product content
Go through every product that will be live at launch and verify:
- Product title and description are correct and complete
- All images are loading and showing the right product
- All variants (size, colour, etc.) are set up correctly with accurate stock levels
- Pricing is correct — compare to your price list, not your memory
- Sold-out variants are marked correctly (not showing as available)
- SKUs are correct if you use them for fulfilment
- Shipping weight is filled in if you're using calculated shipping
If you have a large catalogue, focus on your top 20 products and do a spot check on the rest. Prioritise anything featured on the homepage or in your launch campaign.
4. Verify your emails
Shopify sends automated emails for order confirmation, shipping confirmation, and customer account creation. Check that all of them are:
- Sending from your domain (not shopify.com)
- Reaching your inbox rather than spam
- Correctly branded with your logo and colours
- Containing accurate information (the right store name, correct contact details)
- Including tracking links if you're using a shipping integration
Trigger each email by placing that test order and completing the relevant step (place order for confirmation, mark as shipped for shipping confirmation).
5. Check your settings and legal pages
Before you go live, verify these admin settings are correct:
Store information: your store name, contact email, and business address are all accurate in Shopify admin → Settings → Store details.
Legal pages: a privacy policy, terms of service, and refund policy should exist and be linked in your footer. Shopify can generate templates — they're not perfect but they're better than nothing. If you're selling to EU customers, a GDPR-compliant cookie policy is also required.
Taxes: tax is set up correctly for your region. For UK merchants: UK VAT rates applied to taxable products. For EU merchants: EU VAT settings configured. Check with your accountant if you're unsure — getting this wrong creates accounting problems later.
Shipping: every zone you intend to ship to has at least one shipping rate. A customer in a country with no shipping rate configured will see no shipping option at checkout and be unable to complete an order.
Your domain is connected: the store is loading from your real domain, not mystore.myshopify.com. SSL certificate is active (padlock visible in the browser address bar).
Password protection is off: your store isn't still in "coming soon" mode. Obvious, but it happens.
The day-of-launch sequence
- Complete the full checklist above
- Tell your developer any issues you've found — they should be fixable in a few hours
- Confirm with your developer that the DNS switch has happened and your domain is live
- Place your real test order immediately after launch to confirm everything is working on the live domain
- Monitor Shopify admin for the first hour — watch for any orders coming in with issues
Most launch problems are minor and fixable quickly. The ones that matter — broken checkout, wrong pricing, emails going to spam — are all caught by this checklist before a real customer experiences them.
For a developer-level technical checklist covering performance, SEO, and schema, see the Shopify QA checklist.
