Shopify Launch Checklist: What to Check Before Go-Live

A post on r/ShopifySEO this year was titled "I cost a client $10K in lost revenue because I didn't check one thing before launch". The details differ from store to store, but launch mistakes on Shopify are usually the same few: a payment method nobody tested, a shipping zone with no rate, old URLs that now return 404, or tracking that went live a week late. None of them are hard to fix. They're easy to miss when everyone is looking at the design.

This is the list we run before taking the password off a store. It's written for Indian stores, but most of it applies anywhere.

Payments

• Place a real order with every payment method you offer: UPI, cards, netbanking, wallets and COD. Pay real money and refund it afterwards. Test mode won't show you that a gateway account is still waiting on activation for live payments.
• Check that each order shows as paid in Shopify and in the gateway dashboard, and that the amounts match.
• Refund one order from Shopify and confirm the money reaches the customer.

Our payment gateway guide compares the options.

Tax and invoices

• Add your GSTIN, and decide whether prices include tax. Most Indian D2C stores show prices including GST.
• Make sure every product has the right HSN code and GST rate in whatever produces your invoices.
• Generate an invoice for a test order and show it to your CA before launch, not at the end of the quarter.

Shipping

• Go through checkout with addresses in several states and a few small-town pincodes. If an address falls outside every shipping zone, checkout shows no rates and the buyer can't continue.
• Check that COD is offered only where your courier actually collects cash.
• Make sure the delivery time on product pages matches what the courier delivers.

Emails and policies

• Send yourself every customer email: order confirmation, shipping update, cancellation and refund. Check the sender address is on your domain, the logo shows and the links work.
• Fill in the refund, privacy, shipping and terms policies under Settings > Policies, and link them in the footer. Payment gateways in India often look for these before activating an account.

Domain and redirects

• Connect the domain, set it as primary, and check that both the www and non-www versions land on it over HTTPS.
• If the store replaces an old site, map every old URL that gets traffic or has links to its new address, and import the redirects before launch. Shopify only redirects URLs that are broken, so a redirect from a path that still loads a page does nothing. Our WooCommerce to Shopify guide explains the mapping.
• Submit the sitemap in Google Search Console. Shopify generates it at /sitemap.xml.

Tracking

• Set up Google and Meta tracking before launch, not after. The first weeks of data are what you'll compare everything else to.
• Place a test order and check the purchase shows up once in GA4 and in Meta Events Manager. Duplicate purchases are common when a theme snippet and an app both send the event.
• If you take COD, decide now what counts as a purchase in your ad accounts. Our post on COD purchase events explains why it matters.

Speed and mobile

• Open the store on a mid-range Android phone on mobile data, not office Wi-Fi.
• Uninstall every app you tried during the build and don't use. Some leave scripts behind, and our app audit post shows how to find them.
• Check that chat widgets and sticky bars don't cover the cart or checkout buttons on a small screen.

The last hour

• Turn off the password page under Online Store > Preferences.
• Place one more real order from a phone, from the homepage to the thank-you page.
• Make sure someone watches orders and the support inbox for the first 48 hours.

If you want a second pair of eyes, our audit covers all of this and ranks whatever is left by what it costs you. For stores that change often, an automated checkout test repeats the order check after every release.