Checklist to Launch Your New Shopify Website

Launching a new website is an exciting time for any business! But it can also be a very stressful time, right? Whether you are building your very first website, switching over from another platform, or just giving your current Shopify site a much needed glow-up – there are A LOT of steps that go into a website launch and you’re probably feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all. So let’s break all of this website launch panic down into easy-to-digest pieces, shall we? Take a deep breath in… breathe out… and let’s dive in! ↓

What to Do Before Launching Your New Shopify Site

01 / Get clear on your website vision + strategy.

A website without a strategy behind it is going to feel like a jumbled mess. And jumbled messes don’t often generate sales. So before you start setting up your Shopify store, you need to take some time to plan out what your unique goals are for the site, how you need to engage with your target customer and what possible ways you could make your website stand out amongst competitors. Here are some things that you’ll want to think about and address through your website strategy:

What is the most important things that YOU want people to do when they visit your website?
Similarly, what are the things that you think YOUR TARGET CUSTOMER wants to do when they visit your website?
What are some strengths + weaknesses of your competitors’ websites?
How can you make your website more engaging and memorable for customers?

Want more help with your website strategy? Download our free Streamlined Shopify Launch Guide to view our full website direction questionnaire that we use with our own clients!

02 / Create a cohesive brand identity + voice.

Your business’ branding influences so much about your website. From the logos and submarks to colors, fonts, and overall aesthetic. These brand elements are what’s going to be used throughout your website to create a consistent and memorable experience for your customer. If you don’t have strong branding in place, your website probably isn’t going to feel very strong either. So make sure you do the branding work first. Otherwise, you’re probably going to have to redesign your website in a year or so. And nobody has time for that! And if you don’t know where to start when it comes to designing your brand identity, check out our services.

In addition to branding, copywriting and your brand voice can really make or break a website! And it’s much easier to set up a website when you already have the copy for each page written out. (Because you’ll already know what you want to say, all that’s left to do is to find the right sections to display that copy.) So we recommend either working with a copywriter or DIYing your copy before you start building your website. If you want to DIY your copy, but would like a little guidance to get you started, you can also search for templates that are made to help entrepreneurs DIY their copy!

03 / Set Up Your Shopify Store

Now we get to the tedious part – actually setting up your new website in Shopify! There are a lot of tasks to check off in this phase, so we’ll outline the biggest ones for you here.

Purchase your website domain.
Set up your Shopify account + choose a plan. (Most of our clients choose the Shopify Basic Plan.)
Choose your Shopify theme from the theme store.
Start adding products.
Set up all of the pages that you need (homepage, about, products, collections, FAQ, blog, contact, etc.)
Set up any extra features that you might want to include on the site like a newsletter opt-in, product bundling, search filters, social media feeds, etc.
Make sure that all of your business info, payment methods, shipping settings and taxes are set up correctly.
Make sure your page titles, descriptions and images are all optimized for SEO.
Test your website to make sure things look good on every screen size (mobile, tablet and desktop).
Test your checkout to make sure purchases, refunds, cancellations, etc are all working.

Again, this is a very brief list of what all you need to do. If you want a more in-depth guide to walk you through each of these steps and proved expert tips on how to set your website up well, download our free handbook! In it, we break down things like how to choose the right Shopify theme, what sections to include on your home and product pages to boost sales, and links to lots of tutorials so you can confidently set everything up without any stress!

04 / Build some hype around your launch!

Now that your website is almost ready to go, the last thing we recommend doing is try to get people excited about the launch through some promotion! It’ll make you as the founder a little more energized after putting in so much work, but it will also hopefully generate some more sales and engagement once you go live. Here are some ideas to get people talking and eager for your launch:

Do a countdown on social media
Host a giveaway
Do a flash sale
Offer a special gift for the first customers to buy

Launching a new website can be stressful, but we hope that this blog post and our free handbook will help you feel more prepared and organized!

And if you don’t really feel like DIYing your Shopify website (or just don’t have the time), we would love to take that off your plate! At Wayfarer, we specialize in building beautiful and engaging Shopify websites. You can check out our portfolio and learn more about our design services to see if we’re the right fit for you.