Last Updated on January 11, 2021 by LAUNCHTIP
The Complete Shopify Store Launch Checklist for before, during and after opening your store.
It is an amazing moment to officially open your Shopify store. Your items are only a few clicks away from being live. But between agreeing to sell on Shopify and really opening your store, there are some steps that must be taken. Using our helpful Shopify Store Launch Checklist to ensure that setting up your store is easy and stress-free and make sure you meet your first sales targets and keep your customers happy. We have you protected from preparatory work and technological set-up to optimize your sales.
Store Launch Checklist
Section 1: Do the Homework
You’ll have to do homework before opening your Shopify store, including writing a marketing strategy, product collection, and photography.
- Understand the potential clients and have a marketing strategy
If your store is too generic or has too many competitions, it may be impossible for you to generate sales. One of the single most significant moves you should take is to make sure you have a targeted customer and a strategy to achieve them.
- Hunt your product carefully
Although there’s no limitation on how many items you may add to Shopify, and the optimal number can vary among each store, beginning with a narrower line up is wise (particularly for new store owners). In the start, keeping it easier means that you will do some promotional campaigns, see what applies to your clients, and if you control stock, it can bring the launching expenses lower.
- Get great photos of your product line
First impressions all seem to be, particularly as it relates to online purchases, so high-quality photos are a must, and the money invested is totally worthwhile. If your field of expertise doesn’t have photography, find a suitable freelancer who would style and shoot your photographs. You would also want to ensure that your photos are optimized.
Section 2: Setting up your store
Among the most critical steps in opening your Shopify Store is choosing a theme that should highlight your products and items best.
- Pick a Shopify theme
The best thing about Shopify is there are several themes to choose from. The most challenging task is considering which one is best for your product line.
- Insert your products
To make it easy for users to find them, bring those amazing images to play for you, but don’t forget to incorporate keyword-rich product descriptions, details, and website URLs.
- Setting up your custom domain
The default URL when you build your online retailer is “www.your-store-name.myshopify.com.” You’ll need to use a personalized website address to boost your brand, customize for SEO, and look professional.
- Optimize your website with groups of items, sections, and searches
Make it simple for consumers to see the sorts of items you sell, get complete descriptions of specific products, and return to the homepage of your store.
- Shipment and financial settings
Make sure to include your shipment settings, payment methods, selling currency, and tax information.
- Store policies
What’s your returning policy? What are the reasons and time period? Do you offer store credits or full refunds for that? What would you do if the product is affected during shipping? Write everything out before launching the store.
- Review your store in every aspect before launching
Go through your store to review the spellings of your brand names and item descriptions once you’ve had time to review, press all your links, and double-check your configurations once more.
- Make your store live
Make your store live and be your own very 1stcustomer. For all your thoughtful preparation, you must be willing to publish and focus on promoting your shop. Make a small order with an email address separate from the one you are using for your shop. This will let you see how it all works, not only as of the vendor on your side but also as the buyer so that you can guarantee that the first true buyers have a fantastic experience.
Section 3: Optimizing Your Store
The Shopify store launch checklist can be measured by personalizing your email templates and establishing reviews that can help you improve the sales method.
- Setup store’s e-mail template
Shopify helps your brand and configure many email alerts, like e-receipts, delivery status, and delivery notifications, that would go to your buyers. You must consider a “welcome” series for new customers like coupons or other discounts that they may like.
- Setting up Shopify store analytics
Once more traffic is driven to your Shopify store, you will need to see the analytics regularly to understand:
- Where traffic is coming from so you may customize your marketing plan
- Returning buyers vs new buyers to help you determine if your current marketing strategy is working
- The conversion rate for the products, which items are selling, which need more promotion, and which must be dropped
Shopify’s app store does have a number of apps that get through your store analytics easily.
- Don’t miss sales because of lower inventory
Inventory can be a major challenge for the Shopify store owners in the beginning. If you are managing your stock, there is quite possible that you would end up with too few things and too many of other. A simple way to handle stock shortages without wasting money is to spend some moments setting up BackInStock and notifying consumers when there is an item they want.
- Make goals and keep investing your time in achieving them
It takes to experiment, focus and time to scale a Shopify store. You can start looking at things with the best Shopify tools once you’ve reached the basics on this list, go deeper into the SEO of your store, or create seasonal or holiday-specific business strategies.
Getting overwhelmed and building an unrealistic to-do list for yourself is convenient. Keep your eye on analytics, choose a few priority products to focus on, implement your marketing strategy, and see how they impact your business.
