The Ultimate Checklist Before Launching Your Shopify Store

Launching an online store is really cool! But even cool ventures come with setbacks that can make or break your success. Shopify, one of the biggest e-commerce platforms, powers over 5.54 million active stores worldwide in January 2025 with a share of the global e-commerce market of 10.32%, as well as a share of 30% of the US market.

While it's relatively easy to use, a successful Shopify store won't happen by accident, so choosing a training program & an initial plan that works best for your skill level and what you expect will be at least some of the planning needed to have a good outcome with your business.

In this blog, you'll find a checklist that designers and e-commerce owners find helpful in addressing common issues, in order to set you up for success. We strive to give you solutions that are relevant and practical, and we will help guide you through every step that needs to be taken before you can have a successful launch of your Shopify store.

Why Shopify? Understanding the Platform’s Appeal

Let's get into the checklist before we mention some reasons why Shopify has been the platform of choice for online merchants. In 2023, Shopify had over 2 million merchants operating in 175 countries that had a gross merchandise volume (GMV) of $235.9 billion, which was a 20% growth over 2022. y-step guide to help you set

Shopify is a scalable platform with seamless integrations and has an app store with over 13,000 apps available to suit all types of businesses. However, only 5-10% of Shopify stores become successful with their store, so a plan is necessary for setup. Generally, merchants encounter problems with inadequate mobile optimization, insufficient marketing, or not completing the store configuration. This checklist aims to assist you with the above, so you can become a successful merchant.

Step by Step Shopify Store Setup Checklist

We value your time, so we’ve created a step by step Shopify store setup guide that makes your store fully functional, user-friendly, and conversion-ready. Each step addresses common pain points with actionable solutions to ensure a smooth launch.

1. Define Your Business Plan and Goals

Why does it matter? A business plan is the starting point for your store’s success. The absence of clear goals leads to the waste of resources on poor tactics! Shopify states that the merchants that take advantage of their analytics tools see more results because they can leverage their data.

Checklist Actions:

Identify Your Niche: Determine where in the market you want to play. Clothing is the most popular category, with over 500,000 Shopify stores selling some form of clothing.

• SMART Goals: Define your Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound goals (i.e., $5,000 per month in revenue in 6 months).
• Brand Research on your Audience: Understand your target customers’ demographics, needs, and preferences. Shopify analytics show that 81% of purchases are made on mobile, so make sure the design is mobile-friendly!
• Competitive Research: Research your competitors’ pricing strategies, products, and marketing strategies (using Semrush, SimilarWeb, etc.) to estimate traffic and how to fine-tune your approach.

Common Problem: Many new store owners skip this step and lack a definitive plan, leading to ambiguous strategies and therefore a poor performance. A defined plan allows you to focus on the key high-impact tasks.

2. Sign Up and Choose the Right Shopify Plan

Why it matters: Picking the right Shopify subscription is important because you'll know you have the functionality you need without breaking the bank. Shopify made $1.84B in subscription revenue in 2022, so it's safe to say the pricing tier options are popular!

Checklist Actions:

• Create a Shopify account: Get a free trial on their website to see what features they have available.
• Decide between the regular Shopify plan options: Shopify has plans that go from Basic ($39/month) to Shopify Plus (starts at $2,500/month for enterprise stores). You just have to compare that to your budget and also make sure you're getting the functionality you require, for example advanced analytics or multi-language / multi-market functionalities.
• Evaluate and see if you should go for Shopify Plus: For those high-volume businesses, remember that more than 45,087 businesses run on Shopify Plus, and they receive advanced functionality like 1,000 domains and subdomains!

Common Problem: New merchants want the cheapest way into Shopify as possible, and they usually go to the lowest plan available just to save as much $$$ as possible, but they leave out some of the main functionality such as professional (advanced) reports that aren't available on Basic, etc. This is one of a few reasons to figure out exactly what you need so you're not upgrading your plan, etc.

3. Select and Customize Your Store Theme

Why It Matters: Store Design influences user experience and has an impact on conversion rate. The average Shopify conversion rate is 1.4%, whereas the top performing stores are 3.3%+ with optimized design.

Checklist Actions:

• Choose a Theme: Shopify has 160+ customizable themes in their Theme Store. Dawn is the most popular theme and is used by 23.4% of stores. Make sure to select a mobile-friendly theme, as 79% of Shopify traffic is mobile devices.
• Use the AI Store Setup Tool by Shopify: Admissions your business description to develop a custom theme. For example, if you enter a "vintage clothing store" it will develop a customized home page in less than twenty seconds.
• Design Customization: You can customize the color, font, and layout to match your brand. Staying consistent with your branding helps build trust.
• Test Responsiveness: Preview on mobile and desktop to check navigation.

Common Problem: Non-responsive themes and bad designs result in high cart abandonments, especially on mobile. Of the people who added to cart on mobile, 86% abandoned the cart. Ensure you test on all devices!

4. Add Products and Optimize Listings

Why This is Important - Your product listing impacts sales, and a poorly optimized listing can lose customers. Shopify stores with better product descriptions and high-resolution images gain a 94% conversion rate when shopping through 3D commerce.

Checklist Actions:

• Add Products - You will add products in the Admin Panel in Shopify. This is where you add the title, description, price and the inventory specs.
• Optimize Descriptions - Take advantage of the AI tools in Shopify Magic, to write quality product descriptions, that are optimized for SEO.
• Images - You need at least multiple high-resolution images for every product. Explore 3D or video content, too.
• Organize Collections - Organize products into collections (for example: Men's Apparel, Accessories) to help customers navigate your store.
• Manage Inventory - Set-up manage inventory to avoid overselling.

Common Problem: Customers are confused and conversion is diminished due to a non-existent/poor description. Ensure descriptions are defined, clear, concise and visually appealing, and include clear benefits.

5. Configure Payment and Shipping Settings

Why It Matters: A smooth checkout process is key because 70% of shopping cart abandons happen because of shipping costs or complicated checkouts. Shopify Payments streamlines the transaction process for 1.85 million merchants.

Checklist Actions:

• Set Up Shopify Payments: This payment method is available in 23 countries and will integrate with your Shopify store perfectly and there aren't any third-party fees.
• Add Payment Gateways: Allow your customers to use different payment options, such as PayPal, as they have a massive share of payment processing (45.39%).
• Adjust Your Shipping Rates: Use Shopify Shipping to save up to 88% on shipping costs. The more free or flat-rate shipping you offer, the more conversion you'll see.
• Test Your Checkout: Perform a test purchase and make sure it flows appropriately. Shop Pay checkouts convert 72% more than other payment methods.

Common Problem: Unexpected shipping costs are the number one reason for abandoned carts. Make sure to include the shipping fees at the front of your checkout process.

6. Set Up Essential Pages

Why It Matters: Policy pages gather trust and make sure you're following the legal requirements. Not having them will deter your customers or even land you in legal trouble.

Checklist Actions:

• Make Policy Pages: Refund, Shipping and Privacy Policy pages. Shopify has templates for you to do this easily.
• Add An About Page: Let your customers see what your brand is all about.
• Make A Contact Page: Show your email or phone number, 59% of Shopify stores show an email and 34% show their phone number.
• Use Trust Badges, Add security badges above the fold, above the competition and increase trust

Common Problem: Not having policy pages will destroy trust and create disputes. Know for sure all Policy Pages are clear and not buried.

7. Optimize for SEO and Analytics

Why This is Important: SEO supplies buyers with organic traffic and Analytics provides insight into what you need to do to get better. On average, other Shopify stores that have their SEO dialed in outperform competitors by as much as 36% in terms of conversions.

Checklist Actions:

• Setup SEO: Fashionable product title, product description, and URLs should be written to include keywords that are relevant to your business like, "Shopify store setup."
• Install Tracking Pixels: You need to add Facebook Pixel and Google Tag Manager to your site for retargeting and analytics.
• Enable Shopify Analytics: Access your Shopify sales reports, traffic, logos and conversions. Your Analytics dashboard will provide insight to your key metrics including net sales by channel.
• Use Third Party Tools: integrate apps like Google Analytics or Ecommerce Booster that help you manage deeper analytics and reporting.

Common Problem: Many store owners disregard SEO and that means limiting the visibility of their Shopify site's products. The biggest thing you can do is to regularly update your keywords that are relevant to your business and monitor performance analytics to get your product the visibility you want to be competitive.

8. Integrate Marketing Tools

Why It Matters: Marketing brings traffic and Makes Sales. Neither Social Media or Ads provide more value than Email marketing who has a 4.29% conversion rate which is the highest for Shopify stores.

Checklist Actions:

• Implement Email Marketing – Sign up to Shopify Email that will power 4.2 billion emails in a year starting with 2,500 email for free every month!
• Tap into Social Media - Connect your store to Instagram (57.6% of UK Shopify stores use Instagram) and Facebook for ads and additional content.
• Use Popular Apps – Use apps that have a proven product such as Judge.me Product Reviews (382,019 downloads) to enhance credibility.
• Setup Campaigns – Generate promotions using scare and countdown timers to increase urgency.

Common Problem: Ineffective marketing such as a dependence on paid ads (Ineffective by 15 -20%), are more of cost than value which diminishes the ROI (value). Lean more on email and organic social strategies.

9. Test Your Store Thoroughly

Knowledge is Power! Technical failures can annoy customers and decrease sales. When your store is busy it processes 967,000 requests a second so you need to ensure it is fit-for-purpose before going live.

Checklist Actions:

• Test Navigation: Make sure menu and page links work on all devices.
• Check Load Speed: Use Shopify’s Web Performance report to ensure you are meeting Google's Core Web Vitals.
• Check Interface: Test the complete purchase experience including payment and confirmation email process.
• Backup your Data: Export product data to CSV, or use a backup app as Shopify does not provide backups automatically.

Common Problem: Bugs that have not been discovered and slow load times can turn customers away. Be highly engaged in testing before going live!

10. Launch and Monitor Performance

Why It Matters: Optimizing your e-commerce business after launch matters just as much. Shopify merchants sold $9.3 billion during Black Friday-Cyber Monday in 2023, demonstrating the power of a well-executed launch.

Checklist Actions:

• Announce your launch: Promote your store using email communication and promotional social media channels.
• Check your analytics: Monitor sessions, conversions, and cart abandonment using Shopify's analytics dashboard.
• Solicit feedback: Use apps like Shopify Inbox to message customers and build relationships while using customer responses and feedback to improve your business.
• Iterate: Use the data to determine why your store performed well or poorly at launch. Proactive live chat can increase your average revenue by 13%.

Common Problem: Not checking performance after launch to monitor important data, thus missing out on improvement opportunities. Your business' performance isn't static, so make regular visits to your analytics dashboard to improve further and dial in your approach.

Additional Tips for Shopify Store Success

• Get Help from Shopify Experts: More than 780 experts can help you with a service like designing your storefront or marketing your products.
• Use Shopify Magic: AI tools will make it super easy to do things like product descriptions, or even customer service.
• Make it Mobile Optimized: With 30.4% of traffic coming from mobile, you should also think about making the mobile experience as seamless as possible.
• Plan for Scalability: Sure, you’re small now, but as your online store grows, you’re going to want to think about adding apps for inventory management, for example, or even Shopify Plus if you need more advanced functionality.

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

• Cart Abandonment: There are so many factors that can cause cart abandonment, but two things you can fix are, high shipping costs and a long checkout process. Definitely consider offering free shipping, or at least make it easy for your customer to buy something.
• Low Conversion Rates: Create better product listings as well as product trust signals such as reviews or badges.
• Poor SEO: Regularly refresh keywords and apps like PageFly can help you optimize landing pages for search traffic.
• Neglecting Analytics: Shopify has a sweet dashboard, use it to see how you're performing, and figure out the best decisions from the data.

Conclusion

Starting a Shopify store is a great feeling, and it is also a little complicated. You get to start building a thriving online business with a platform that has 4.6 million daily active users and we all know Shopify also has an enormous global economic impact of $444 billion dollars.

However, many entrepreneurs fall into these common traps with their online business as a result of these issues that we have addressed. You can find these traps in our checklist like poor mobile optimization, abandoned carts, unsuccessful marketing efforts and more. All of these processes from determining your business plan to metrics tracking and performance after launching a Shopify store not only reduces errors and bumps in the road but gives you the tools to really optimize your store's success.

From cost-effective solutions to proper testing and utilizing all the tools Shopify has, don't hesitate to put in that little extra time to put strategies in place that ensures not only a successful launch but a successful store in a competitive e-commerce space.