When you launch a new Shopify store, it can be tough to keep your head above the water. You’re not just launching a Shopify store but also an entire web presence that needs to be re-designed, tested, and prepared. However, when you’ve arranged everything for your Shopify store, and you’re just waiting to go live, you should prepare your store first. But, what is the best way in preparing your Shopify store for launch? That’s the topic of our discussion today.
How To Prepare Your Shopify Store For Launch
After finalizing your Shopify store, you should take some steps to make sure that your store is now ready to launch. If you don’t prepare your store like that, there is a chance that your shop won’t be available online or the customers won’t be able to purchase from your store. Without further due, let’s see how you can prepare your Shopify store before going live.
Step 1: Placing A Test Order
In your final preparation, you should check the whole order-related functionalities by giving a test order in your store. When placing your test order on the Shopify store, you’ll be able to check multiple parts of the shopping system and see whether they are working or not. These parts are:
- Inventory: This part is crucial for any business or store. Because, if your store doesn’t show correct inventory availability, you can miss orders from your customers. So, managing inventory is very important and must show the correct number of products in terms of availability. You can ensure these things in this part.
- Processing Orders: As a Shopify store owner, you need to be aware of every order for your products. In that case, you need to monitor everything related to the order processing system. Whether a customer is ordering or you are fulfilling that order, everything can be checked in this part. So, you’ll be able to understand whether everything is right here.
- Checkout Process: Since every customer will order from your store after going to the checkout option, you can find the related issues here. This part starts from selecting a product and putting it into the cart to the final checkout from the cart before payment.
- Shipping And Delivery: A customer eagerly waits for the desired product ever since he or she has placed an order. So, the shipping and delivery parts must show the right location of the products and the estimated time of delivery. Besides, you can set your own preference for shipping, which should also work fine in this part.
- Tax: Though this is not directly linked to Shopify and taxes should be registered based on your registration to your government, you must follow the tax-related settings of your Shopify store. If it’s not maintained properly, you may fall in loss after paying the real taxes to the government.
Gladly, you don’t need any charge to test your Shopify orders. Besides, there is no limit in placing test orders for checking the Shopify store functions. That’s why it’s always great to place a test order every time you change your payment settings. Not to mention, you can place a test order in 3 ways. These are shown below.
- Bogus Gateway
Luckily, this is a built-in method of Shopify to test orders when launching your store. If you use this method, you don’t need to arrange any excess payment or transaction setups. To create a transaction for a test payment using this method, you need to select ‘Bogus Gateway’ as the payment provider from the payment settings. After that, order a product that is worth more than $1 and use ‘Bogus gateway’ for payment completion.
- Real Transaction
If you want to use a real payment provider to test the order, you can follow this technique. In this method, you don’t have to do anything extra. Simply, order using a real payment provider and then immediately cancel it. Finally, refund the order to complete the test. If there is no issue in the entire process, your Shopify store is now ready to be live.
- Shopify Payments
When you are moving in this way, there is a specific test option available for the test orders. To use Shopify payments for a test order, follow the below steps:
- In the first place, you need to enable the test mode from the Shopify admin panel. To do this, go to the ‘Payment’ option from the settings. Then, edit ‘Shopify Payments’ and select ‘Use test mode’ to save the test order mode.
- Second, simulate a successful transaction from your online store. Though this simulation process won’t show any reports or payout menu, you can normally order by adding the product to your cart. To complete your checkout of the product, follow the Shopify official website credentials when filling in your payment details.
- After checking successful transactions, simulate the failed transactions to check if the store is showing the proper error and doesn’t have any bugs. To check different error messages, you’ll find some specific card numbers on the official Shopify website as failed transactions. Finally, after testing everything, don’t forget to turn off the test mode from the payment settings.
Step 2: Remove the Store Password
Now, you’re in the last stage of launching your Shopify store. In this stage, you need to remove your online store password to go live. Unfortunately, if you are using a free trial, you won’t be able to remove your store password or go live. Otherwise, when you have a subscription, it is possible to manually create a password and a custom message for your customer. If you want to remove the automatically created password of your Shopify store, there are two ways to do this.
- From The Themes Page
This is the easiest method of removing your online store password from Shopify. First, go to the Shopify admin panel and select ‘Online Store’. After that, click on ‘Themes’, and you’ll see a banner saying that your store is password protected. Now, press the ‘Remove password’ option to clear your store password. If you don’t see any banners, your online store is not password protected.
- From The Preferences Page
To remove your online store password using this method, you need to go to the Shopify admin panel first. Then, select ‘Online Store’ to get the preferences section. After clicking on ‘Preferences’, you’ll see a ‘Password protection’ section. In this section, you need to uncheck an option called ‘Restrict access to visitors with the password’. Finally, save the settings to finish removing the password, and your Shopify store is now live for the consumers!
What To Do After Preparing A Shopify Store For Launch?
After preparing for launch, your store will be live for the customers to buy products. As you’ve just launched your store, it’s time to get ready for the next steps of your business.
- The first thing that you should do after launching your Shopify store is adding more products and stock them. It’s essential that you have a good amount of inventory because it will help you generate sales and increase profits over time. If you don’t have enough products, you won’t be able to increase sales and will be stocked out very soon.
- Secondly, you should start creating a product catalog. From this catalog, people can see all the different products that are available for sale on your site. You can also use this catalog to create an affiliate program so that people can promote other products from their website or blog when they buy something from yours!
Conclusion
There’s no magic recipe to guarantee success when launching a Shopify store. However, the tips above should provide you with the information on how to go live on Shopify to get your store off on the right footing. Ultimately, remember to give customers what they want in your products, focus on customer experience and sales conversion rates, and continuously check for issues in the settings. In this way, you should be well on your way to becoming a successful online entrepreneur.