12 things to make sure before launching an online store

Undoubtedly, the launch of an online store is a very special event and causes a lot of positive emotions, such as joy and optimism, but also causes fear and anxiety.

It is natural to be afraid of forgetting some small detail or making a mistake in your online store, so it is essential to have a checklist or checklist that you go through before launching your online store.

That's why we've put together this list just for you, to round up the 12 most important things you need to check before launching your online store.

What you need to check before launching an online store

Checklists are not new at all, on the contrary, they are very common in many areas, for example, pilots and astronauts have a few things that they must check before each flight.

It's okay to forget a lot of things from time to time, we're human after all, so we need to analyze what we're doing and make sure everything goes well.

And if we focus on e-commerce, in particular starting your online store, we will find that there are many details that you have to take care of, in addition to dozens of things that can go wrong and cause a lot of problems.

Therefore, we have prepared for you a list of the 12 most important things that you should check before launching your online store, and we have collected them for you in one image that you can save and download for yourself.

1. Discover an online store as a buyer

Feel like a visitor trying to view and buy products in the store, this will allow you to discover many problems and errors, whether in the design of the site or in the user experience.

The most important thing to pay attention to at this stage:

Make sure the store navigation is simple and smooth, and the user experience you have planned makes sense.

Make sure your store is interactive and compatible with different screens and devices.

Try to spot any errors or issues with the store's design or colors.

Review the texts in your store and try to correct them for spelling or grammatical errors.

Find broken links and 404 "Page not found" errors in your online store.

This will help you at this stage to get other people to look at the store and give you their opinion, and this step will prevent you from launching your store and it contains many problems and errors.

2. Make sure other marketing and sales channels are activated

The second point is a very necessary and important point to make sure that you cover all the other marketing and sales channels that you plan to launch when you launch your online store.

You may forget to add a small detail like adding a Facebook shop button, using Rich Pins, or even adding a matching Instagram bio for the shop.

And you can launch your store as well as start selling on Amazon, eBay, and other retail and commercial platforms.

Since we have come to this point, I must emphasize the need for your presence on many platforms on the Internet in order to increase sales and attract new customers.

Many online store owners say that the social media platform, Instagram or Pinterest, is responsible for most of their sales or keeps new customers flowing to their stores, so you shouldn't neglect social media marketing.

3. Install the Apps Your Store Needs

You will definitely need to install some apps to make it easier to manage your online store operations such as sales, marketing, customer service, and others.

Make sure you don't use too many apps in general, especially when starting your online store, and install only the apps you need.

Here are some of the applications you may want to consider getting started:

Promotion and marketing applications.
Sales channel applications.
Applications for search engine optimization.
Applications to increase sales and conversions.
Inventory management applications.
Applications for customer service.

Later, you can write an article about the most important online store applications that you should use when starting your online store.

What is meant by apps here: These are additional software that you add to your online store, and if you use WordPress, we can call them add-ons.

4. Rethink your email marketing strategy for your online store.

There is a saying in the field of e-marketing that "content is king", but in the world of e-commerce and sales, the rule of thumb is "e-mail marketing is king".

First, you'll need an email address for your store or website domain, such as info@yourdomain.com.

In order for the e-mail of this e-mail to be transferred to your personal e-mail and separate it from your other e-mails.

Tools like Google Workspace or Fastmail can help you get and manage that email for your store's domain.

After this initial step, you will need to prepare your email marketing strategy by preparing important email templates such as:

Welcome emails: to thank the buyers who gave you their email, and to introduce your store and what will be useful to them.

Forgotten Cart Emails: Many shoppers put items in their cart, but for one reason or another, they don't complete the shopping process, so you'll have to send them this type of email to encourage them to buy.

Post-purchase thank you emails: This type of email will build trust or a bond between you and your online store buyers.

Letters with feedback Feedback. A feedback email is one of the most important emails to know about your buyer's experience and their opinion about the products you sell.

Order Confirmation and Follow-up Emails: You should prepare confirmation and follow-up emails to keep in touch with your customer until their order is confirmed and track the various steps until the order is delivered to them.

Offer emails: You can prepare these emails to increase your sales by offering new products or even positive products to your customers.

Sale Emails: These emails are designed to inform your customers about discounts, special offers, freebies, and more.

Customer Engagement and Loyalty Emails: I don't need to talk about the importance of these emails and their role in building loyalty to your brand.

Having a strong email marketing strategy will be a huge and very important step that will help you increase your online store sales.

5. Prepare and implement a marketing plan before launching your online store.

Every online store needs social media hype before it launches, so you should prepare or appoint someone to prepare a marketing strategy for your store before it launches.

You need to attract customers and encourage them to enter your store and switch between your products, which will help you increase sales and profits.

You can start by choosing just one or two platforms, promoting your store before launch, and waiting for results.

But make sure you:

Set reasonable goals for this marketing plan.

Focus on your target audience and try to target them with paid advertising.

At that point, offer them discounts and deals they can't refuse.

Try to get them to share your ads and your store on their pages and in their circles.

If you have no experience in email marketing, hire an email marketer from the Fiverr platform or any other freelance platform.

6. Check Your Store's SEO

Never underestimate SEO, according to statistics, more than 44% of people start their online shopping from search engines, and more than 37% of online store traffic comes from search engines.

Thus, search engine optimization is one of the most important things in e-commerce, as it is your way to get customers who are intent on buying and thus increase the percentage of them buying your products.

With an SEO plan focused on keywords related to your products and your niche, you will be able to get a lot of visitors and therefore sales.

Of course, this might be a bit premature, but there are a few things you need to confirm before launching an online store:

Find the right keywords for your store and the products you want your store to rank for on search engines.

Include the most important keywords in your store, be it product descriptions, image descriptions, and more.

Get rid of all duplicate or copied content from other stores or websites as this will greatly hurt your store's search engine rankings.

Compress the images you use to speed up your online store and speed is a very important factor for search engines and you can do this with tools like tiny png.

Improving the description of images by writing keywords that express them, as they are very helpful in improving your store's search engine rankings, and we will write a special article about these small details in SEO very soon.

If your eCommerce platform doesn't already do this, consider matching your online store at launch.

Review the meta title and meta description of your store home page and make sure that the meta title is between 50 and 60 characters and the meta description is within 160 characters.

7. Check the product pages in your store several times.

Not only is the home page the most important page in your store, but customers can also find you through one of the product pages you sell through search results.

That's why you need to make sure all of your product pages are healthy and flawless - at least free of big killer bugs - when launching your online store.

Here are a few steps that can help you a lot:

Check for any spelling or grammatical errors on product pages.

Edit product descriptions to make them more appealing to your customers.

Make sure your call to action phrases are present.

Make sure your product classifications or categories are correct and appropriate for those products.

Try adding your store's unique outlets and products to product descriptions.

Try using a marketing psychology trick to get visitors to buy your products.

Make sure there is an "Add Items to Cart" button.

Add information about the different sizes and colors of your products if they are not available.

If you are selling to different countries that use different currencies, you can set up a currency conversion tool to help your customers.

Optimize product pages to run as fast as your store's home page.

Add product codes.

8. View or add static pages to your store.

There are some static pages that must be present in your online store, and this is either due to SEO in order to gain the trust of visitors or for legal reasons.

Among the most important of these pages that you should review when starting your online store are:

a) About us page

The About Us page is a very important page, and if you monetize good content on it, you'll get fantastic results.

Since this page is what is behind your brand, products, and everything else, this page talks about your business story and goals.

They are the most human and the most connected to your visitors, so try to tell them your story in a professional and creative way to make a positive impact.

If you're interested, we can dedicate an article on how to write a professional "About Us" page that boosts your sales.

b) FAQ Page

Some online store owners neglect the FAQ page at first because they don't know what to write on it, but this is a big mistake.

Most visitors and clients, when they encounter any problem or question, go to it as the first option, so if you don't write it well, clients will contact you, which will cost you a lot of time and effort.

To overcome this problem, you can browse the FAQ pages of stores that are in the same niche as your store and use them when writing your own.

c) "Contact Us" page

The Contact Us page is one of the important pages of your online store that allows your visitors and customers to communicate with you.

This is one of the most visited pages on all websites and e-shops, so you should review it to make sure it is intact and free of errors and that its software, which allows visitors to send messages by filling in data, is working. correctly, and the messages are actually sent.

Try to include your address, zip code, and email address where customers should contact you, and a phone number if they want to call you by voice.

Of course, you don't have to add all of these, and this varies from one business to another, but at least you should add two of them so that your customers can communicate with you in case of any complaints or queries.

d) Privacy Policy Page

The "Privacy Policy" page is the page that answers all your customers' questions and concerns about how the data that your store will receive is handled.

e) Terms & Conditions Page

Another static page of ours that we would like to talk about is the Terms of Service or Terms$Terms page.

This is the page that covers all the legal details of your online store and what the user expects to get from your site.

f) Shipping policy pages and return and cashback policy pages

There are two additional pages you can add to your online store: the Shipping Policy page and the Return and Refund Policy page.

9. Back up your online store

It is important that you create a backup of your online store when you launch an online store so that you can be sure if something happens to it. Some platforms can do this for you.

For example, if your store is built using the Shopify e-commerce platform, all your store data will be protected in the platform's cloud, and you will only need to do some simple things from time to time, and even those that you can get by with if you use the app Rewind.

And if you are using one of the other eCommerce platforms or even WordPress, you can ask us a question in the comments and we will get back to you with the best way to back up your online store.

10. Review the purchase process and all cart details.

It will be very helpful for you to familiarize yourself with some aspects of the checkout and shopping cart process before launching an online store.

I compiled it here for you:

Experiment with the entire process to make sure it works effectively.

Having a strong CTA.

There is an option to add to a wish list so that the buyer saves the items so that he can remember them to buy them later.

Make sure the discount coupons are made in the shopping cart.

Make sure the customer can change their cart.

Verify that an e-mail was sent to the buyer with a purchase notification.

The presence of a progress indicator of the purchase process, so that the buyer knows what he has left.

The buyer does not need to register his email address before making a purchase, so as not to disturb him and force him to leave the store.

Try to make it possible to make a purchase as a guest without registering there.

Show shipping cost and expected delivery time.

Have a final thank you page after the customer has completed the purchase.

Sending a reminder email to the customer in case they have not completed the purchase process.

11. Check your store's payment methods

Try to include all payment methods popular with your target audience to make sure they buy from your store.

Because shoppers are often frustrated that they don't have their own payment method, they don't make the purchases they did.

And it would be better to provide a cash-on-delivery method when you launch your online store because it makes life easier for many people, and the younger generation prefers to pay online.

12. Add analysis and tracking tools

The last thing to do on our list is to add the analysis and tracking tools you need to manage your online store.

The data and results that you get with these tools will greatly help you to find errors in them and fix them later.

And you can first make sure you do these things before you launch your online store:

Install Google Analytics for your online store.

Track your purchase details and add items to your shopping cart.

Add a Facebook pixel to your store.

Keep track of all the metrics you're interested in, and we'll dedicate an article later on to the most important eCommerce metrics you should track.

Conclusion

In this article, we have provided you with the 12 most important things you need to make sure of before launching your online store to make this amazing and intimidating step easier for you.

If you check these things, you will ensure that your store is free of bugs - at least serious ones - before it launches.

I hope you enjoyed the article and I'd love to see your comments on it, whether it be queries or posts with other things that are important to review before launching an online store.

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