Before your store goes live: 6 areas to check, item by item

Many website problems don’t show up during development. Customers find them after launch: forms that never arrive, buttons that can’t be tapped on mobile, errors at checkout. Spending half a day checking everything item by item before launch avoids most of these embarrassments.

Here’s the checklist approach we use on every handover, in 6 categories.

1. Transactions and forms

• Place a complete order with a real or test payment method, and confirm order notifications and shipping emails work.
• Submit every form once and confirm the emails arrive, don’t go to spam, and contain every field.
• Discount codes, spend-and-save offers and shipping rules work as configured.
• On lead-generation sites, confirm each form shows a clear success message after submission.

2. Mobile

• Test on a real phone, not just a narrowed desktop browser.
• Menus open and close, and buttons are large enough to tap easily.
• Images aren’t distorted, text doesn’t overflow, and there’s no horizontal scrolling.
• Pop-ups can be closed on mobile and don’t cover the buy button.

3. Speed

• Open the homepage and key product pages on a mobile connection; the first screen shouldn’t stay blank for long.
• Compress images to sensible sizes and lazy-load images below the fold.
• Remove apps and scripts you don’t need before launch.

4. SEO basics

• Every page has its own title and description; they shouldn’t all be the same.
• A sitemap has been generated and submitted in Google Search Console.
• The “discourage search engines from indexing” setting used during testing has been turned off.
• When replacing an old site, old URLs have 301 redirects in place.

5. Legal and trust pages

• Privacy policy, terms of service, return policy and shipping information are all in place.
• Contact details and company information are real and verifiable.
• If you use cookie tracking, set up a cookie notice that meets your target market’s requirements.

6. Tracking

• Google Analytics and ad pixels are installed, and events are confirmed to report correctly (page views, add to cart, purchases or form submissions).
• Don’t install the same tracking code twice, or your data will double.

The first week after launch

Launch isn’t the finish line. In the first week, check orders and form submissions once a day, and watch the crawl error and site speed reports in Search Console. Fixing issues as they come up is far easier than fixing them all at once later.

Every project we deliver is signed off against this checklist, item by item. See exactly what you get on our deliverables page.