You’ve created the best products in your industry. Your brand design is on point. You’ve set up social channels for your business. Now you’re ready to launch your online store!
Not so fast. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of introducing your business to the world and miss some critical steps.
Even if your brand and website look polished, there are several ecommerce checklist items that will ensure a smooth launch. Are your product pages search engine optimized? Have you created a marketing plan to promote your brand? Does your website have critical pages like an FAQ and contact information?
As you start your business, take stock of those easily forgotten tasks that can make the difference between a bad customer experience and a great one. This ultimate ecommerce checklist contains all of the to-dos you’ll need to complete before your store goes live.
Ecommerce store launch checklist
- Choose an ecommerce platform
- Create a custom domain name
- Organize your back office
- Get any required business licenses
- Secure funding
- Confirm your billing information
- Choose your tax and shipping rates and settings
- Decide on your fulfillment process
- Develop your website’s essential pages
- Conduct a content audit
- Brush up on ecommerce SEO
- Optimize all images on your website
- Audit your automated emails
- Test your checkout experience
- Add your customer contact options
- Establish sales channels
- Install helpful apps and integrations
- Set up analytics and tracking
- Build a prelaunch marketing plan
1. Choose an ecommerce platform
You can’t run a successful online business without an ecommerce platform. It’s what lets you display products, accept payments, and manage orders. Picking the right one from the start saves you time and money, since switching platforms later means rebuilding your entire store.
To pick the right one, consider:
- Your monthly budget
- How much technical work you want to handle
- What features you need (like inventory tracking or shipping labels)
- If you need specific payment methods
- How many products you’ll sell
- If you want to customize your store’s design
Shopify is an excellent option because the store builder is simple. You just drag and drop elements where you want them—no coding or design savviness needed. Shopify handles details like web hosting, security updates, and payment processing. Plus, your store can integrate with apps for almost any feature you might need, all available from the Shopify App Store.
Before committing to an ecommerce platform, test the free trials of your top choices before committing. Make sure you can easily manage products and process orders with the platform you choose.
2. Create a custom domain name
Custom domains can give your site a brand recognition boost, which means it’ll be easier for customers to remember your URL and find you online.
To get started, conduct a domain name search to see if your business name is available. If it is, and the name isn’t already trademarked by another business in your industry, you can purchase your custom domain name directly through Shopify.
If your first pick for domain name isn’t available, you still have options. Sometimes it will be challenging to get your desired domain, especially if your brand is a common word. Here’s where you can flex your creative muscle. Pepper, for example, chose wearpepper.com as its URL.
Experiment with top-level domains (TLD), too. A TLD comes at the end of a URL—common examples are .com, .edu, .net, etc. Common TLDs for ecommerce websites include .store and .shop, but you can get creative here too.
3. Organize your back office
Running an online store involves managing money, products, and paperwork. When you ensure your processes are in order before you go live, you can help eliminate shipping delays, inventory issues, and customer service debt.
Start with basic bookkeeping by setting up a separate business bank account and choosing accounting software like QuickBooks or Xero. Integrating that software with your online store helps you track money coming in and going out, which will make filing taxes much easier.
For inventory management, you need a way to track what’s in stock and when to order more. Shopify’s inventory management system automatically handles the basic tracking. When someone buys a product, Shopify updates the inventory count immediately. If an item runs out, it can automatically mark it as “Sold Out” in your store.
💡 Tip: Document your processes for things like handling orders and customer service. Start simple. For example, write down exactly what you do when an order comes in: check the order details, pull the product from storage, package it, create the shipping label, and mark it as shipped.
You can improve these systems as you learn what your business really needs. The goal is to have organized systems from day one so you can focus on growing your store instead of fixing problems.
4. Get any required business licenses
Before you start selling, you need the right paperwork in place, including licensing and insurance.
Most regions require at least a business license. You might also need certain permits, depending on what you’re selling (e.g., food, cosmetics, alcohol). Research these prelaunch ecommerce requirements early—they can take time to get approved. Also, check if you need specific ecommerce insurance for your type of business.
Search your local government website for legal requirements in these areas. For example, if you’re selling across different states or countries, you’ll need to understand tax requirements for each region. Most ecommerce platforms help with tax calculations, but you’re responsible for having the right permits.
5. Secure funding
You’ll likely need money for inventory, marketing, and basic setup costs. While you can start small, having enough funding helps you grow faster and take advantage of opportunities like bulk inventory discounts.
Shopify Capital makes this simpler than traditional funding options. It looks at your store’s performance instead of your personal credit score, and there’s no impact on your credit. If approved, you can get funded in as quick as two business days with offers up to $2 million.
The repayment process is straightforward. You pay back a percentage of your daily sales automatically. This means you pay less when sales are slower and more when business is good.
6. Confirm your billing information
Before you go live, let’s make it official! If you’ve completed your free trial, choose the right plan on your ecommerce platform and set up your store’s billing information. That will ensure your store fees are paid on time and there are no issues or interruptions to your online store’s functionality.
7. Choose your tax and shipping rates and settings
Check that your shipping rates are appropriate for the products you’re selling in the locations where you’re selling them. Otherwise, you could eat into your profits, covering the difference between your posted shipping rates and the actual cost of shipping.
It’s important to nail down your tax settings, too. Depending on where your business and customers are located, you might need to charge sales tax and remit it to the government at tax time. If you sell in multiple regions, an accountant can help you get set up.
8. Decide on your fulfillment process
Fulfillment refers to how you get products to customers.
You have a few fulfillment options:
- In-house: Where you store inventory, pack orders, and ship them.
- Dropshipping: Where you partner with suppliers who ship products directly to customers.
- Third-party logistics (3PL) providers: Where a partner handles storage, packing, and shipping for you.
3PL partners can often deliver orders faster than you could alone. For example, the Shopify Fulfillment Network partners with Flexport to offer two-to-three-day delivery across the United States. This option works well when you’re growing and want to focus on other aspects of your business instead of packing boxes.
You can switch methods as your business grows. Many successful stores start with in-house fulfillment and transition to a 3PL as they scale up.
9. Develop your website’s essential pages
Store trust relies on critical pages on your website that signal to the customer that you run a legitimate business. These are pages customers have come to expect, and they contain information that helps your audience learn about you as a founder, understand your policies, and get in touch.
Based on research, these are the pages most recommended for online stores to include in their sitemap:
- Homepage
- Contact page
- About page
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page
- Shipping and returns policy page
- Terms and conditions and privacy policy pages
Don’t forget about other pages like collection and category pages and product detail pages. Double check any promotion landing pages, your checkout page, and your shopping cart. Every customer touchpoint deserves your scrutiny, since every piece of the picture impacts your brand perception and customer experience.
💡 Tip: Employ the principles of psychological design to reduce cognitive load. For example, place elements of the site in places that customers expect to see them, like contact info in the footer and drop-down navigation in one of the top corners.
Homepage
A homepage is usually the most important page on any ecommerce site. Potential customers will often land here first, or navigate to it second. Consider the homepage the site of the “first date” with your customer. It’s a chance to make a great first impression and establish the feel of your brand.
It’s also a jumping off point to the rest of the website. Clear navigation to help users browse your store and a strong CTA are important here. Prominently link to your category pages, product pages, and promotions from your homepage.
Personal Fav’s homepage has clear calls to action, catchy visuals that represent the brand’s vibe, and an easy path to navigate the rest of the site.
Contact page
A Contact page signals to customers that a store is authentic, that they can access the store owner for help, and that there are real people behind the brand. On this page, include ways to reach you, such as a phone number, email, social media links, and retail address (if applicable), along with how long customers should expect to wait when they reach out.
💡 Tip: You can also offer live chat or an AI chatbot via a small icon usually found in the bottom right corner of every page on your website. This is a quick way for customers to reach you without having to navigate to your Contact page.
About page
Your About page is where potential customers navigate to learn more about your brand, your mission, and the people behind your products. There are a few ways you can approach this page as a store owner, appealing to the main reasons customers visit it:
- Tell a story. Shoppers often are trying to make sure a business will be around for the long term. An About page is a chance to show your store is real, with actual humans at the helm. Tell your story and introduce customers to the background of your brand: your staff, your processes, and your local area.
- Connect on common values. Many shoppers are interested in a business’s mission and purpose and whether the business shares any of their values. Sharing your brand’s purpose, principles, mission, and your “why” can win you new customers who support similar causes.
Leath features photos of the business owners, giving customers confidence that there are real people behind the brand. They also use the power of brand storytelling to draw visitors in.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page
Before you launch, you might not be able to anticipate all the questions you’ll get from customers. As such, this is a page you will evolve over time, based on customer service interactions. To craft an effective FAQ page, look at competitors to see which questions they answer on their websites, or try an AI tool to generate FAQs.
Customers often have questions about shipping, return policies, sizing, warranties, and product care. Starface has a searchable FAQ page where you can browse topics and see related questions and answers.
Shipping and returns policy page
This is an important page to help customers understand exactly what to expect during the shipping and returns processes. Outline exactly what they will pay, how long your fulfillment and delivery times are, who is responsible for duties and taxes, and what steps customers need to take to generate a refund.
Terms and conditions and privacy policy pages
Terms and conditions pages and privacy policy pages contain legal information to protect both your business and the customer’s rights. They outline the expectations of both the brand and the customer.
Lucky Lad shows that these pages don’t have to be creative, but they should have clearly presented information that’s easy to navigate.
💡 Tip: Use Shopify’s free tools to generate a privacy policy and a terms of service page.
10. Conduct a content audit
Editing is a critical part of any writing exercise. Read back every word on your site or—even better—get a second set of eyes to double check your work. Check product descriptions, homepage copy, button copy, and footer information for accuracy, spelling, and grammar.
When it comes to your copy, consistency is one of the most important things to remember. Adopt an editorial style guide, whether it’s MLA or AP, as well as your own brand voice guidelines. Incremental changes to your message can help increase conversion or average order value.
On the technical side, look for broken links and 404 errors in particular, as well as any image-rendering and mobile responsiveness issues. Check out your site on different browsers and mobile devices so you can understand if a bug is universal or specific to a browser or device.
This example from Wild deodorant shows that you can have fun with your 404 pages.
💡 Tip: Hire Shopify Experts to help you set up your Shopify store and test it for issues. These vetted professionals can offer technical feedback in areas where you’re not savvy yourself.
11. Brush up on ecommerce SEO
If you start an online business, make sure your website shows up in search results when customers look for terms related to your product. While social networks increasingly become go-tos for product discovery, Google still accounts for 40% of search. Search engine optimization (SEO) tactics can help you generate consistent, high-quality, and, best of all, free traffic. It all starts with keyword research.
Here’s how to use ecommerce SEO tactics to help your online store rank in search engines:
- Conduct keyword research. Discover popular and trending search terms related to your products.
- Try keyword optimization. Use keywords and related terms in product descriptions, category descriptions, page headlines, page copy, URLs, meta titles, alt text, and asset file names.
- Use schema markup.Use specific code, like schema markup, to help search engines better find your content and serve enhanced results in Google (e.g., rich snippets).
- Design a sitemap. Build a sitemap that provides information about your website’s content to Google. This will help Google more easily crawl your site and categorize your pages.
- Optimize site speed. Choose the best hosting company, invest in a content delivery network (CDN), and compress images so your website loads faster. All of those steps can improve customer experience on your website.
- Harness the power of content marketing. Create blog articles that rank for target keywords, educate readers, and get high-value backlinks from other websites. Offering value to customers in search results can lead to higher conversions over time.
12. Optimize all images on your website
Images that load too slowly can affect user experience and performance in search engines—and slower load times can even lead to lower conversion rates. Be sure all images (including product images and lifestyle images) are optimized for the web to achieve faster load times and improve customer satisfaction.
Shopify handles the technical complexity of keeping your images loading quickly because speed matters for online stores. Here’s what else you can do to improve load speed and optimize your images for web:
- Use descriptive file names. Optimizing file names helps with the SEO ranking of your site and product pages. Use keywords that are relevant to the photos and your business.
- Optimize your alt text. Alt text is used for accessibility and SEO. This should be descriptive text containing keywords wherever relevant.
- Reduce the size of your images. Big beautiful images make an impact on a homepage, but be sure that the file size (in pixels) is reduced as much as possible without sacrificing resolution quality.
- Save images as JPEG or PNG. For most online images, a good rule of thumb is to use JPEG images for photography and PNG images for graphics and icons.
- A/B test your images. You’ll want to know what’s working and what’s not—and, more importantly, why. Run some A/B image tests to see which types of images work best in different situations (i.e., contextual lifestyle images versus products on a white background).
💡 Tip: Use a free tool like Shopify’s Simple Image Resizer to reduce the size of your images before upload.
13. Audit your automated emails
Every ecommerce business owner should consider adding email to their marketing plan when starting an online store. Email is also a useful tool to communicate important information to customers throughout their purchase journey.
For your business, there are several automated emails you’ll want to customize before launch. Edit your email templates and create sequences that nurture your subscriber list and ultimately drive sales.
Use Shopify Email as part of your overall marketing strategy and to automate your customer communications. Set up an email marketing app like Shopify Email or a third-party app from the Shopify App Store and consider the following automated emails to add to your flow:
- Welcome series introducing your brand, products, and new customer promotions
- Order confirmations (receipts)
- Abandoned cart notifications (win them back with a discount code)
- Order confirmation emails
- Promotion emails to re-engage loyal customers
- Campaign and holiday shopping-specific emails
14. Test your checkout experience
Before you officially open for business, be sure prospective customers can actually complete a purchase on your online store. According to Statista, the average global online shopping cart abandonment rate across ecommerce websites is 70%. To combat abandonment, identify and fix errors and remove friction at checkout before you launch.
When testing your checkout process, ensure that:
- Shipping rates are surfaced on the checkout page, giving customers all the options for shipping times and level of service for their region
- Discount codes can be applied in the cart (test each code to make sure it works)
- A customer can edit their cart’s content (delete products, change quantities)
- Familiar payment methods, such as credit cards, PayPal, Google Pay, and Shop Pay are available
- There is an option for order status tracking
- The Contact page can easily be accessed for follow-up questions or order amendments
- An automated email notification is triggered upon purchase
- A language selector, currency switcher, and international shipping policy are all available and working (if you ship outside your country or region)
💡 Tip: With Shopify Payments, you can place a test order on your site with a live payment gateway to make sure everything works. Make sure you test your checkout on mobile, too.
15. Add your customer contact options
While it’s critical to build a standalone Contact page on your ecommerce website, it’s good practice to include your business’ address, phone number, email, and even live chat on most pages. Many businesses add this information to a static footer on every page.
16. Establish sales channels
Consumers now expect an omnichannel experience from brands, as more turn to unconventional search sources like YouTube and TikTok to discover and buy products. Even the retail channel is making a serious comeback—half of Gen Z consumers favor in-store shopping, despite being online-native.
Choose the social media and marketplace sales channels that will work best for your brand, then add the available integrations to your store. Do market research to understand where your customers are hanging out and the channels they most often shop.
Some online sales channels you can add to your ecommerce site include:
These channels connect with Shopify so you can easily keep track of orders, inventory, and customers across platforms.
17. Install helpful apps and integrations
The Shopify App Store has plenty of apps that can extend your site’s functionality. Start small and choose only those essential to doing business efficiently—you can always layer on more apps as your business needs grow.
New businesses should focus on ecommerce tools to help with marketing, customer support, and conversions. Also look for apps that are specific to your type of business. For example, advanced size chart apps are great for apparel businesses. Plus, quiz apps can improve customer experience and reduce returns for brands with complicated or broad product offerings by helping customers make the right selection.
💡 Tip: On a budget? There are plenty of free Shopify apps that can help streamline operations for your ecommerce business—everything from marketing to shipping.
18. Set up analytics and tracking
It’s important to have ecommerce analytics set up from day one. This data will give you valuable insight into your visitors and customers. Analytics tools can help you track how users are navigating your site, where they’re coming from, and where they experience friction. These insights can help you make improvements to your site as you grow your business.
Shopify Analytics are baked into the ecommerce platform, allowing you to get data right in your dashboard. You can also rely on tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console, or look at more niche solutions. You can use a combination of tools to analyze specific aspects of your business, but be sure to track basic ecommerce metrics first.
💡 Tip: The Shopify App Store is packed with apps that integrate seamlessly with your store. Browse the analytics apps to find one that’s best for you.
19. Build a prelaunch marketing plan
You’ll launch your site to crickets unless people know about it. The best way to spread the word is with a prelaunch marketing strategy. These are the actions you might take to build an audience or drum up anticipation for your launch. While marketing is an ongoing task for your ecommerce business, the prelaunch strategy is an especially critical one.
Some ideas for your prelaunch marketing plan include:
- Creating a prelaunch landing page to capture emails
- Posting social media content before and after launch to keep customers excited and informed
- Lining up PR opportunities
- Hosting a prelaunch event, virtual or IRL
- Setting up pre-orders
- Inviting early subscribers to an early access promo with password access to the site
Why an ecommerce website launch checklist is important
You have a ton on your mind in the months and days leading up to launch day. Ecommerce success relies on a smooth experience for your customers and a set of systems that dictate how you run your business. So how can an ecommerce launch checklist help?
It offers peace of mind for you and your staff
With so many moving parts, it’s easy to miss simple but critical steps leading up to your launch. The act of checking items off a list gives you the assurance that you haven’t forgotten anything. You don’t need to worry about what ifs when you’ve already checked, audited, and stress tested every stage of the customer experience in your ecommerce store.
It ensures a smooth launch day
When you need something to go well, an ecommerce checklist can help reduce ambiguity and streamline the work that needs to get done. Taking care of the housekeeping items ahead of launch means you won’t be scrambling and distracted by them when you’re trying to celebrate. Focus launch day on customer connections and making every order experience count.
It sets the tone for customer experience
Customers will quickly abandon your business if their first experience is less than stellar. On the other hand, a great experience can lead to loyal customers and word-of-mouth referrals. If you’ve checked every box on the checklist, the likelihood of disappointment is low. That said, things can still go wrong. If so, you have plenty of time to make it right because you’re not fussing with SEO or setting shipping rates.
Make sure your ecommerce store checks all the boxes
Now that you’ve crossed out every task on your ecommerce checklist, it’s time to launch your ecommerce website and brand to the masses. Put your marketing plan into action and start building brand recognition.
The best part is that nothing is set in stone. As you collect feedback and data, you can tweak shipping settings or web design. You can invest more in ecommerce SEO and less in marketing campaigns that aren’t performing. Add essential apps, improve your checkout page, and fortify your customer support—all in service of landing more happy customers and more sales.
Feature illustration by Eugenia Mello. Additional research by Adam Rogers.
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Ecommerce checklist FAQ
What are the steps to create an ecommerce website?
When you choose an ecommerce platform like Shopify, you can create an ecommerce website in just a few steps. First, sign up for the free trial, purchase a custom domain name, and customize the look and feel of your ecommerce website. An ecommerce launch checklist can help ensure you don’t miss any steps. Your ecommerce website checklist contains items like setting shipping details and updating payment options.
What are the functional requirements for a website?
Basic functional requirements for an ecommerce website include accessibility, mobile-responsiveness, a working checkout flow, site terms and conditions, and a privacy policy. The website builder you choose should have, at minimum, this functionality. Nice-to-haves for your ecommerce business website include personalization, customer login, interactive elements, chatbot support, and more.
How many products should an ecommerce business launch with?
You only need one product to launch your ecommerce store. Many online brands start with one product and add complementary items to their product collection at a later date. If you offer multiple products on your ecommerce site, be sure you use navigation, collections, and category pages to help customers find the right products.
