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Shopify is currently one of the best e-commerce platforms and an excellent tool for building and scaling your business. Among many other perks and features, it offers valuable add-ons, inventory management, 24/7 support, and an unlimited number of products you can place on your e-commerce page. However, it may be challenging to get your e-commerce business to prosper on Shopify right away.
To ensure you have everything it takes to launch a well-groomed e-store, it's necessary to properly organize the workflow and know exactly what you need to do. That's why merchants compile checklists or pre-launch plans that define the key milestones and tasks to complete before introducing the store to customers.
Why are such lists essential, and what should you include in a Shopify launch checklist to smoothly release your e-commerce platform and minimize any risks? In this post, we'll share the ultimate to-do list you can use anytime and keep track of your project's progress. Read on to find out more!
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Discipline and self-organization define a successful business owner and influence the overall workflow. Without proper prioritizing and planning, the Shopify store launch process will get too complicated and confusing.
At first glance, compiling a Shopify store launch checklist may not seem like the top-priority task. However, missing out on particular steps may lead to significant losses and the launch of a poorly-polished e-commerce platform.
What are the reasons to prepare a checklist before launching your online shop? Let's look at some of the most decisive ones.
A Shopify checklist is a perfect way to structurize your workflow and adequately delegate tasks, which is vital for a store launch. This way, you'll know you haven't missed any steps, quality checks, or design improvements. Once you know what exactly you need to do and test, you'll get a better image of what your future platform has to look like.
Moreover, you can use a pre-launch checklist for future projects and update it as your business grows and develops.
Making a pre-launch checklist may be time-consuming. But in return, you'll get a detailed guide on preparing your Shopify store and ensuring a smooth, successful release. Also, this list will help you avoid mistakes and minimize the risk of missing out on any crucial tasks. You'll remember to run all the quality checks, ensure all the visuals look fine, and all the products are correctly categorized.
Once you've worked well on your Shopify store checklist, you won't get confused by the number of tasks and milestones. You'll know every milestone and related process perfectly well, so you won't spend extra time trying to organize the workflow or come up with new action plans. Although you may spend a while compiling a to-do list, you'll save more time in the future.
A well-groomed Shopify launch checklist should be simple yet detailed. You should describe each aspect of your future store and highlight the critical tasks together with the expected results.
To help you out, our team created a universal checklist for facilitating your Shopify store launch. We gathered the key essential points you should check to ensure a smooth release. They may look quite different from what you used to see in articles, but they'll surely help you quickly grow your income.
Below, you can find the key sections of our ultimate checklist and what benefits they ensure.
The Checkout section is what customers see before making a purchase. You'll need to check if this section doesn't look confusing and contains all the elements for a smooth, fast transaction.
See if you have all the payment methods and a full price breakdown on the page. You will also need to make sure shipping and tax settings are correct. Check if a customer sees a correct shipping country and whether all the taxes are automatically calculated.
As a merchant, you need to check this store section to ensure it's convenient and pleasant for customers to browse products and enjoy the best offers. In addition, you should verify that all the products are in relevant categories, are displayed on the store page, and that the prices and product descriptions match the items you sell. Thus, the website will look professional and reliable.
The Cart page shows all the products customers selected for further purchase. This section should include a price, a short description, and a Checkout button. Moreover, it's necessary to add the opportunity to adjust the quantity of a particular product or remove it from the list. This will ensure convenient shopping and order management for every customer.
This is one of the essential pages in the e-store. Before the launch, make sure that customers can fully manage their flow there. For instance, they can easily register or log into their accounts, change passwords, look through order details, and see the payment history.
This is the page where customers can provide valuable feedback and point out any issues. Here, you should add several means of communication so people can quickly reach out to you. This can be an email, a phone number, or a contact form. To help your customers without putting them in contact with your team, you can also add the FAQ section with general information about your store.
As for the products, you need to make sure they have a comprehensive description, correct price, and accurate tax information. You should also check if they belong to the correct category and contain relevant images.
Moreover, it'll be helpful to integrate the "Add to Cart" button with the quantity adjusting tool. If you want to add more custom solutions, there should also be a bundle creator together with the default product combos you've prepared for customers. This will help users get to know the product better before, make a bigger order immediately, and simply enjoy convenient online shopping.
To make your Shopify store look more reliable and trustworthy, you should make sure to add special elements to your store. The best thing to do so is to provide up-to-date contact information, Terms and Conditions, a Legal page, and trust marks or badges from review platforms like Clutch, Goodfirms, TrustPilot, etc.
Finally, you can also display testimonials and, if you have any major clients, their logos. Adding and checking all these elements will help you build a strong brand and get a reputation as a trusted merchant.
This is a crucial element of any Shopify store as it helps customers quickly and conveniently manage their orders. You should ensure your page has the necessary tabs and pages for a convenient checkout or payment method selection, order information and invoicing, connecting relevant apps or services, and so on.
Make sure they show the local currency and relevant country shipping details and that customers can quickly adjust their orders and credentials before processing a transaction. By checking these aspects, you'll ensure a seamless checkout and delivery processing.
Apart from the above-mentioned aspects, there are some other you’d also like to pay attention to. Let's take a quick look at them.
Adding a custom domain to your Shopify page will help you build a strong brand and gain the trust of potential customers. To do so, you can simply buy one via Shopify to save time and effort. The system will show you the available options, and this way, you'll help people recognize your brand even faster.
Adding a custom Shopify theme will make your store page memorable and stand out among your competitors and other merchants. Add some branding elements like logos, corporate colors, and fonts to your page theme. This way, you'll build up a particular association and raise brand awareness for your marketplace.
You don't necessarily need to add the same features as your competitors. Think of what tools your customers would enjoy while surfing your Shopify store. This may be a "Send as a gift" option or the ability to process bulk orders. Knowing the key pains of your potential customers will help you improve your store and bring added value to them. Check if your page contains specific customizable features, and this will ensure extra income in the near future.
Sometimes, merchants provide a paid shipping feature and don't specify the rates — which, depending on location, can be quite different. This may not be the most convenient thing for customers. Thus, adding a shipping rate breakdown is what you should think of at the point of checking the payment section. This will make your page more informative and less misleading. Otherwise, people might get the wrong impression that you deliver goods for free.
Running SEO (search engine optimization) research, adding organic, relevant keywords to your page, and using dedicated analytics tools will help you rank higher in Google or other search engines. This, in return, will bring you more page views, impressions, and, eventually, higher conversion rates and more income.
Every image you upload on Shopify needs to be well-optimized so that it doesn't slow down the whole website. Long page load time may result in fewer page views, higher bounce rate, and, finally, lower conversion rates. Fix the issues with images on your store page and upload them with proper sizing and tags.
Content is the first thing your potential customers will see on your Shopify store. Instead of just showing your product stock and prices, think of filling your page with valuable, informative content about your business, what products or services you offer, client reviews, and even blog articles. This way, people will get to know your company better, get an excellent first impression, and become more interested in learning more about you.
Think of topics and pages you could add based on your target audience and potential needs you could fulfill by adding this content. This could be review articles, informative blog posts, photo galleries, valuable tips, and so on. Don't forget to add contact and FAQ pages to help customers quickly solve their questions and issues.
Compiling a Shopify pre-launch checklist is essential for both beginner and professional merchants who want to launch or migrate their e-commerce stores to Shopify. It's necessary to consider every aspect of your future marketplace: from setting up every page to implementing the payment and checkout systems.
Having a special task checklist will not just help you organize your business processes better. You will be able to prioritize, build a standardized workflow, and eventually launch your store with few issues and risks. This, in return, will bring you extra income and make you a reliable, professional vendor.
As an expert Shopify development company, we constantly search for new ways to optimize every process and offer viable solutions for a smooth, painless launch of your e-commerce platform. If you feel like you need assistance with organizing your workflow and setting up proper milestones, feel free to contact us, and we'll help you achieve your goals!
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Elena, part of MakeBeCool since 2021, brings 4 years of e-commerce and IT project management expertise. A performance-driven professional, she managed multiple site developments for international projects. Outside the tech world, Elena sharpens her skills through reading and courses, enjoying travel, loud music in the car, and cherished moments with family and friends.
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