The Shopify Store Launch Checklist: 27 Things to Do Before You Go Live

Launch day is exciting, which is exactly when small details get skipped. We've watched stores go live with broken checkout steps, missing meta descriptions, and product pages with no alt text, all fixable in minutes if caught beforehand.

The categories worth walking through before you flip the switch: SEO fundamentals (titles, meta descriptions, alt text, a submitted sitemap), checkout flow (test every payment method and shipping rate on a real device, not just the admin preview), and legal pages (privacy policy, terms, a real shipping and returns policy).

Also worth double-checking: mobile page speed, abandoned cart email flows actually turned on, tracking pixels firing correctly (Meta, Google Ads, Google Analytics), and a 404 page that points customers somewhere useful instead of a dead end.

It's a long list, but most of it is a few minutes' work per item. The cost of skipping it is measured in lost sales during the exact window when a new store gets the most attention it will ever get for free.