If you're about to launch a Shopify store, here's the direct answer: go through checkout on your phone, test every link and policy page, connect your analytics and search console, confirm your domain and billing are live, and place one real test order before you hit publish. The eighteen steps below cover exactly that, in the order I actually check them.
I've launched Shopify stores since 2015, and the mistakes that cost sales are almost never the big, dramatic ones. It's the small details: a policy page that's still a placeholder, a discount code that doesn't work, a website that hasn't been tested on an actual phone. None of it looks urgent until a customer hits it mid-purchase and leaves.
Your store is usually a customer's first real impression of your brand, and first impressions don't get a second attempt. This is the checklist I run through on every project before a store goes live: eighteen things, roughly in the order I'd check them myself.
1. Proofread and test every link
Go through each page slowly. Click every button, every link, every form. Look for typos, placeholder text ("Lorem ipsum" has a way of surviving until launch day), and sections that were never quite finished. This one takes longer than people expect, and it's worth doing properly; I still catch something on almost every project, however many times the client has already checked it themselves.
2. Use your site on your phone
Scroll every page, go through checkout, and pay attention to whether anything feels cramped or fiddly to tap. Most of your traffic will arrive on mobile, so this is the version that matters most, not the one you've been staring at on your laptop for weeks.
3. Add your social media links
Connect Instagram, Pinterest, and whatever else is active. If your theme supports an Instagram feed, it's a small addition that makes the store feel current and lived-in rather than freshly built and empty.
4. Customise your checkout page
Add your logo and brand colours through the Shopify checkout customiser. It's a small thing, but checkout is where trust matters; it's the last moment before someone hands over their card details, and a checkout that still looks like default Shopify can plant doubt.
5. Customise your email notifications
Shopify's default order and shipping emails work fine technically, but they read as generic. Add your logo and adjust the tone of the language to sound like your brand. These are some of the most-opened emails you'll ever send; worth five minutes of attention.
6. Set up abandoned cart emails
Use Shopify Messaging or whatever platform you're already on to follow up automatically when someone leaves without buying. This is close to free revenue once it's set up; I've rarely seen a store where this recovers nothing.
7. Connect your email marketing tool properly
Check that your signup forms and popups are feeding into your email platform, not just displaying nicely. If you're offering a signup discount, test the entire flow yourself: sign up, receive the code, apply it at checkout. I've seen discount codes that looked perfect in the admin and simply didn't work at checkout, and nobody noticed until a customer complained.
8. Add your essential store policies
Every store needs: Privacy Policy, Terms & Conditions, Shipping Information, and Returns & Refunds. These aren't just legal box-ticking; a customer who can't quickly find your returns policy is a customer who hesitates, and hesitation at this stage usually means a lost sale rather than a delayed one.
9. Add a cookie consent app
Especially if you're based in or selling to the EU, where this isn't optional. Beyond compliance, it's a small, visible signal that you take customers' data seriously, which matters more than it used to.
10. Install and test your reviews app
Reviews are one of the strongest trust signals a product page can have; genuine social proof does more persuasive work than almost anything you could write about your own product. Set it to automatically request reviews after purchase, and actually test that the request email arrives and the review submission works before you're relying on it.
11. Remove unused apps
Every app you're not actively using is still loading scripts in the background, and that adds up to real, measurable slowness. Do an honest audit - including that app you installed once to test something and forgot about - and uninstall anything that isn't earning its place.
12. Connect Google Analytics
Add GA4 or your preferred analytics platform so you can see who's visiting, what's converting, and where your traffic is actually coming from. You can't improve what you're not measuring, and this is the baseline for everything you'll want to know later.
13. Connect Google Search Console
Submit your sitemap and start monitoring how your site performs in search. This is a genuinely essential step for SEO, and it's one people skip because it doesn't have a visible payoff on day one; the payoff shows up months later, which is exactly why it needs setting up now rather than "eventually."
14. Add your sales channels
If it's relevant to your business, connect Instagram Shop, Facebook Shop, Pinterest, or Google Shopping. Not every store needs every channel; pick the ones where your actual customers spend time, rather than connecting all of them out of habit.
15. Connect your domain properly
Make sure your real business domain is live and pointed correctly; not your-store.myshopify.com, which undermines trust the moment someone notices it in the address bar. Test it yourself, on a device that isn't logged into your Shopify admin, so you're seeing what a customer actually sees.
16. Check your tax and shipping settings
Double-check tax rules and shipping zones are configured correctly. This is one of those things that's tedious to verify and genuinely costly to get wrong; either you're undercharging tax you're legally required to collect, or a customer in a zone you forgot about can't complete checkout at all.
17. Add your billing information
If you're still on a free trial, make sure Shopify has your billing details before you go live. It's a small administrative task, but a store that goes offline on launch day because of a missed billing step is a genuinely avoidable way to start.
18. Test the full checkout experience, start to finish
Place a real test order. Check the payment methods actually process, shipping options display and calculate correctly, confirmation emails arrive and look right, and the whole flow works cleanly on mobile. This is the step I'd never skip, even under deadline pressure; everything else on this list is preparation for this one moment, and it's the one a customer will actually experience.
