The Shopify Pre-Launch Checklist: Everything to Test Before You Go Live

You’ve picked a theme, loaded your products, connected a payment provider, and the launch date is circled on the calendar. This is exactly the point where most Shopify launches go wrong, not because the store looks bad, but because nobody methodically tested the parts customers actually touch: checkout, tax, shipping rates, and the legal pages that protect the business.

A broken banner is embarrassing. A broken checkout, an incorrect GST calculation, or a shipping zone that quietly excludes half of Australia costs real money and real customers, often before anyone notices.

This is a working pre-launch checklist, grouped the way you’d actually work through it in the Shopify admin. Go through each section in order, tick things off as you go, and don’t flip the password page off until every box is checked.

Store Settings and Domain

Start here because a mistake in this layer affects everything downstream.

Domain connected and SSL active. Confirm your primary domain is set under Settings > Domains, that the redirect from www to non-www (or vice versa) is working in one direction only, and that the padlock shows a valid SSL certificate. Shopify issues this automatically, but propagation can take a few hours, don’t leave it to launch morning.
Store name, contact email and address correct. Found under Settings > General and Settings > Store details, this feeds your invoices, packing slips and some legal pages, so errors here ripple outward.
Currency and market settings confirmed. Under Settings > Markets, check your primary market is Australia with AUD as the store currency, and that any secondary markets you’ve enabled have sensible currency, language and pricing rules rather than defaulting oddly.
Password page ready to disable. Under Online Store > Preferences, this is where the “coming soon” password protection lives. Test that removing it doesn’t break anything else you’ve configured (some apps behave differently once the store is public).
404 page and broken links checked. Click through your main navigation, footer links and any banner CTAs. A surprising number of stores launch with a hero banner linking to a placeholder collection.
Favicon uploaded. Small, easy to forget, and immediately obvious to anyone with ten browser tabs open.

Payments and Checkout

This is the section that costs you money if it’s wrong, so test it properly rather than assuming it works because the toggle is green.

Payment providers activated and correctly ordered. Under Settings > Payments, confirm Shopify Payments (or your chosen gateway) is active, and that alternative methods like Shop Pay Installments, Afterpay or Zip are configured if you’re offering them.
Place a real test transaction. Shopify Payments has a test mode using Shopify’s official bogus gateway credit card numbers, letting you run a full order through checkout, capture and refund without moving real money. If you’re on a third-party gateway, use its sandbox mode instead. Test at least one full-price order and one discounted order.
Abandoned checkout emails firing correctly. Under Settings > Checkout, confirm abandoned checkout emails are enabled and that the branding in them matches your store.
Express checkout buttons display correctly. Shop Pay, PayPal and Google Pay buttons can behave inconsistently depending on theme and browser, check them on both desktop and mobile.
Currency conversion tested if selling internationally. If you’ve enabled multi-currency, run a test order in a secondary currency and confirm the rounding and conversion look correct at checkout, not just on the product page.
Custom checkout branding reviewed (Shopify Plus only). Standard Shopify lets you customise checkout logo, colours and fields to a limited degree under Settings > Checkout. Shopify Plus stores with Checkout Extensibility can go much further, custom checkout UI extensions, post-purchase upsells and B2B-specific checkout flows. If you’re not on Plus, don’t spend hours trying to replicate Plus-only checkout customisation; it isn’t available at the standard tier.

Tax and GST

Getting this wrong doesn’t just create an accounting headache, it can mean charging customers incorrectly or under-reporting GST liability.

GST registration status set correctly. Under Settings > Taxes and duties > Australia, confirm you’ve entered your ABN (if registered) and that GST is calculated at the correct rate on the products that require it.
Prices displayed as GST-inclusive. Australian consumer law expects displayed prices to include GST for goods sold to consumers. Check this under the tax settings and spot-check a handful of product pages and the cart.
Tax-exempt products flagged if relevant. Some categories (certain food items, some health products) may need individual product-level tax overrides, don’t assume the storefront default is right for every SKU.
International tax obligations checked if applicable. If you’re planning to sell into other markets, GST/VAT rules differ by country and Shopify’s Markets tax settings need to be configured per region rather than left on the Australian default.
Test order tax line reviewed. Run a test transaction and actually look at the tax breakdown on the order confirmation and admin order page, don’t just trust the settings screen.

If GST setup feels like unfamiliar territory, it’s worth working through it properly before launch rather than fixing it retroactively on live orders, see our Shopify GST setup guide for the detail.

Shipping and Fulfilment

Shipping zones cover your real delivery area. Under Settings > Shipping and delivery, check that every Australian state and territory is included in your default zone, it’s common to build a zone during development and forget WA, NT or Tasmania.
Rates tested against real cart weights and values. Add products to a test cart and check the calculated shipping cost against what you’d actually charge, flat-rate assumptions can break badly once real product weights are involved.
Free shipping thresholds working as intended. If you’re running a free-shipping-over-$X promotion, confirm it triggers at the correct cart value, including and excluding tax where relevant.
Local pickup or local delivery configured if offered. These are separate toggles under shipping settings and are easy to leave half-configured.
Carrier-calculated rates tested if used. If you’ve connected Australia Post or a courier integration for live rates, run a test checkout to confirm rates return correctly rather than falling back to an error or a default rate.
Fulfilment notifications reviewed. Check that order and shipping confirmation emails under Settings > Notifications have correct branding and accurate expected delivery language.

Legal and Policy Pages

Refund, privacy, terms of service and shipping policies published. Shopify can auto-generate starting templates under Settings > Policies, but these need to be reviewed and edited to reflect your actual business practices, not left as generic boilerplate.
Policy links visible in the footer. Confirm they’re actually linked from the storefront, not just saved in the backend.
Australian Consumer Law obligations reflected. Your refund policy needs to be consistent with ACL guarantees, you cannot state “no refunds” as a blanket policy for goods that are faulty or not as described.
Contact details easy to find. A visible contact page or footer email/phone number is both a trust signal and, in many cases, a legal expectation.

Tracking and Analytics (GA4 and Pixels)

Nothing sinks a launch week’s marketing spend faster than discovering afterwards that conversion tracking wasn’t firing.

GA4 connected and events verified. Shopify’s native Google & YouTube channel integration, or a manual GA4 setup via Settings > Customer events, should be checked using GA4’s DebugView or Realtime report, actually place a test order and watch the purchase event arrive.
Meta Pixel and other ad pixels configured through Customer Events. Shopify routes most third-party pixels through the Customer events manager (under Settings) using its consent-aware, sandboxed pixel system rather than raw theme code injection. Confirm PageView, AddToCart and Purchase events are all firing.
Consent banner behaviour checked. If you’re using Shopify’s built-in cookie consent tools or an app, test that declining consent actually suppresses the relevant pixels rather than firing them anyway.
UTM parameters tested on planned launch campaigns. If you’re driving paid or email traffic on launch day, click your own links and confirm GA4 attributes the session correctly.

Content and SEO Basics

Title tags and meta descriptions written for key pages. At minimum: homepage, top collections, and your best-selling products, don’t launch on Shopify’s default auto-generated titles for everything.
Image alt text added to product images. Helps both accessibility and image search visibility.
Sitemap accessible. Shopify generates sitemap.xml automatically, confirm it loads and submit it in Google Search Console once you’re live.
Robots settings not accidentally blocking indexing. Under Online Store > Preferences, double-check the store isn’t still set to discourage search engines from indexing it (a common leftover from development).
Structured data rendering correctly. Most modern Shopify themes include product schema markup automatically, spot-check a product page with Google’s Rich Results Test.

For a deeper pass on this once you’re live, our Shopify SEO checklist covers ongoing optimisation beyond the launch basics.

Performance and Mobile Testing

Page speed checked on mobile, not just desktop. Most Australian Shopify traffic is mobile, test with Google PageSpeed Insights or Shopify’s own theme speed report, and pay attention to the mobile score specifically.
Image sizes optimised. Oversized product images uploaded straight from a camera or supplier are one of the most common causes of slow Shopify stores.
Apps audited for load impact. Every installed app can add scripts to your storefront. Remove anything installed for testing that isn’t going live, and check for apps duplicating functionality (two review apps, two upsell apps).
Cross-browser and cross-device check. Run through the homepage, a collection page, a product page and checkout on at least Chrome, Safari and one Android browser, on both mobile and desktop.
Forms tested. Contact forms, newsletter signups and any custom forms should be submitted as a real test to confirm they reach the right inbox or app.

When to Bring in a Specialist

Most of this checklist is genuinely doable by a careful founder or marketing manager working through it methodically. Where it gets harder is when the store has custom theme code, multiple integrated apps, B2B pricing, or international markets layered on top, that’s when a setting changed for one purpose quietly breaks another. If you’d rather have a second, experienced set of eyes go through configuration, tax setup and checkout logic before you flip the switch, that’s exactly the kind of pre-launch QA covered under our Shopify store setup service.

Post-Launch Monitoring

Launch day isn’t the finish line, the first 48 hours matter almost as much as the checklist itself.

Watch your first real orders closely. Check that payment capture, tax lines and shipping costs on genuine orders match what you tested.
Monitor GA4 and Search Console daily for the first week. Confirm traffic and events are behaving as expected, and that Google is crawling and indexing the live site.
Keep an eye on app error notifications and 404s. Real customer behaviour surfaces edge cases test orders never do.
Re-check shipping and tax settings after any theme or app update. These are the settings most likely to silently break during ongoing store changes.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long before launch should I start working through this checklist?
Ideally one to two weeks before your planned go-live date, so there’s time to fix anything that fails, particularly payment gateway approval, GST configuration and DNS propagation for a new domain, all of which can take longer than expected.

Do I need to test on Shopify Payments’ sandbox mode even if I’m confident it’s set up correctly?
Yes. Settings screens looking correct and a real transaction actually processing, taxing and confirming correctly are two different things. A test order is the only way to be sure the whole chain works end to end.

What’s the single most common thing Australian merchants miss before launch?
Shipping zones that don’t cover every state and territory, and GST-inclusive pricing not being displayed correctly. Both are quick to check but easy to overlook when you’re focused on design and product content.

Is this checklist different for a Shopify Plus store?
The fundamentals are the same, but Shopify Plus adds extra layers worth checking too, Checkout Extensibility customisations, B2B-specific pricing and payment terms, and any Flow automations, all of which need their own testing pass before go-live.

Should I keep the password page on while I finish testing?
Yes, leave Online Store > Preferences password protection on until every section of this checklist is complete. It’s much easier to fix issues privately than after customers have already hit a broken checkout.

Ready to Launch With Confidence?

If you’d rather have an experienced Shopify team run this checklist alongside you, or catch the issues a first-time launch commonly misses, book a call with Nexly and we’ll walk through where your store stands before you go live.