Ryan Mitchell
Managing Director
The Shopify Store Launch Checklist
(Source: eTatvaSoft)
If you’ve signed up for Shopify, set up your business social media accounts and chosen a designer, it’s an exciting but busy time. Amongst the chaos, you don't want to forget crucial processes when setting up your Shopify store. Here’s a checklist to refer to before the launch of your eCommerce Shopify store.
Why is a Launch Checklist so Important?
Even when your store looks great and all your products are loaded in and ready to go, it’s easy to forget something. It’s easy to miss a simple but crucial step in a successful Shopify store launch. When you need something to go well, a checklist can keep you on track and reduce errors.
What to Know Before You Start Your Shopify Store
Before you set up your Shopify store, it’s important to understand your business goals. Ask yourself basic questions about your business.
- Do you want to sell your product or service both online and in-person?
- Do you want to sell through social media channels?
- What do you want to achieve with your eCommerce business?
Asking these questions can help you focus your efforts and speed up the setup process.
The Shopify Store Launch List
- Choose your sales channels
- Incorporate your brand image
- Review your checkout and payment settings
- Improve communications
- Install analytics tools
- Create a marketing plan
- Optimise your site images
1. Choose your sales channels
73% of consumers use multiple channels when purchasing with a brand. Find out the sales channels that will work best for your business, and add them to your Shopify store. This will allow you to sell through different platforms while managing orders through the Shopify interface.
Sales channels you can add to your Shopify store include:
- Google Shopping
- Messanger
- Amazon
While there are more channels to add to the list, these are just an example. All sales channels connect with the core of your business – you can track orders, products and customers across multiple platforms.
2. Incorporate your brand image
A few ways to incorporate your overall brand image with Shopify include creating a custom website domain, using your brand’s colours and fonts, and adding your brand logo.
A custom domain increases your brand’s recognition and makes it easy for customers to remember the URL. If your business name is available and not already trademarked by another business in your industry, you can buy your custom domain name through a domain registrar via Shopify.
Your Shopify business should reflect your brand – remember to carry your colours, font and logo across your entire network, including your Shopify website, social media profiles, and alike.
3. Review your checkout and payment settings
Before officially launching your store and driving traffic to it, you want to ensure people can actually make a purchase. The average online shopping cart abandonment rate is almost 70%. Be sure to fix any errors and remove frustration at checkout to avoid losing more sales.
Test your checkout process, including making sure:
- Shipping rates are shown during checkout
- The shipping policy is clear
- Discount codes are valid
- Shoppers can edit their carts
- Familiar payment methods are available
- Contact information is evident
- Email notifications are sent to confirm purchases
4. Improve communications
Touchpoints are a crucial component of nurturing and maintaining relationships. Emailing is a powerful tool for Shopify businesses. With Shopify, there are various automated emails that you can customise before launch. Edit your email templates and create sequences to nurture your email list and drive sales.
You can set up an email marketing app like Shopify Email or Klaviyo. Klaviyo is an excellent way to track customer behaviour and data and use it to help your Shopify become more successful. Email sequences could include a welcome, e-receipts, abandoned cart notifications, order confirmation, shipping notifications and post-purchase reviews.
5. Install analytics tools
Analytics is one the most important parts of your Shopify store – it provides you with data that will give you valuable insight into your customers’ behaviour. Naturally, your Shopify store will already have a set of analytics reporting built-in, but you should consider installing a third-party tool. Google Analytics is a well-known tool, but there are various tools and add-ons available.
If you want your Shopify store to be successful, analytics are essential. Analytics tools cover all the basics, including your return customer rate, average order value, and online store conversion rate.
6. Create a marketing plan
When you launch your site, you want people to know about it. The best way to ensure your Shopify store gains awareness is with a marketing plan. Document your marketing plan beforehand, so when your store goes live, all you have to do is follow the steps of your prepared marketing plan outline.
Shopify is well-known for being a cost-effective option, so if you’re a smaller eCommerce retailer with a smaller budget, you’ll probably be looking at affordable advertising techniques. A good option is to include your eCommerce link on your existing platforms – think social media profiles and posts.
7. Optimise your site images
Slow-loading images can cause negative effects on your user experience and search engine performance. Slow page load times can result in lower conversion rates. Shopify handles the technical side of keeping images fast because speed matters for online store. You can improve load speed and optimise your images by:
- Naming your images descriptively
- Optimising your alt attributes
- Reducing the size of your images but keep the quality
- Choosing the correct file type
- Testing images
Launch Your Shopify Store
When you've checked off everything on the list, you'll know you're heading in the right direction. We've taken a look at the essential launch items, and now it's time to start selling.
We're a digital agency based in Queenstown and can help you with your Shopify launch checklist. Contact us today.