Going live checklist

Before you remove your store’s password and open to customers, work through this checklist. It covers the most common issues merchants discover after launch — better to catch them now.

Store essentials

Remove password protection — Go to Online Store → Preferences and uncheck Restrict access to visitors with the password.
Connect your custom domain — Go to Online Store → Domains and set your primary domain. Shopify will handle the SSL certificate automatically.
Set your store name and contact email — Go to Settings → Store details and confirm your store name, email, and address are correct. These appear in order confirmation emails.

Payments and checkout

Activate a payment provider — Go to Settings → Payments and enable Shopify Payments or your preferred gateway. Test mode should be turned off before going live.
Place a test order — Use Shopify’s Bogus Gateway (Settings → Payments → Manage → Use test mode) to complete a test checkout from start to finish. Check that the confirmation email arrives correctly.
Set up taxes — Go to Settings → Taxes and duties and confirm your tax settings match your location and business type.

Shipping

Configure shipping rates — Go to Settings → Shipping and delivery and add at least one shipping zone and rate. Without this, customers will see an error at checkout.
Set up a returns policy — Go to Settings → Policies and add your return, privacy, and shipping policy. Shopify auto-generates templates you can edit.

Theme and content

Replace all placeholder content — Check every homepage section for dummy text or stock images and replace them with your real content.
Test navigation menus — Click through every link in your main menu, footer, and any mega menus to confirm they go to the right pages.
Test on mobile — Open your store on a phone and check the homepage, a collection page, a product page, and the cart. Most Shopify traffic is mobile.
Check product pages — Confirm that Add to Cart works, variant selectors display correctly, and product images load at full quality.
Test site search — Run a few searches to make sure results are returning relevant products.
Set your favicon — Go to Online Store → Themes → Customize → Theme settings → Favicon and upload your brand icon if you haven’t already.

Analytics and marketing

Connect Google Analytics or GA4 — Go to Online Store → Preferences and add your Google Analytics tracking ID.
Submit your sitemap to Google — Your sitemap is at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. Submit it in Google Search Console to help your store get indexed.

Getting help

If something isn’t working as expected, open a support ticket at fuelthemes.net/contact. For refund and licensing information, see Refunds.