Planning on launching an e-commerce site? Often, the launch is one of the most exciting parts of your business, but it can also be one of the most overwhelming. Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be a stressful experience, but it does require some organization to get right.
Before hitting “publish” on that shiny new online store, ensure you’ve covered all bases. Here are ten important things to check before launching your e-commerce website for the first time. Follow these steps, and you have a high chance of launching stress-free.
1. Test Your Website
The proof is in the test. It’s essential to test your new website from the point of view of a visitor so you know everything—everything—is working properly. Test every link. Check the page loading time. Make a test payment.
Better yet, ask a few different people to go through this process. You can ask your mom, spouse, friend, or cashier at the store or make a quick social media ad. However, if you want to do it, get external, impartial testers.
Remember, you want to test these on both desktop and mobile and in various browsers. It’s also a good idea to ask your testers for their opinions on the visual design of your site, as well as how user-friendly and easy it is to navigate.
2. Check the Security of Your Website
The last thing you want to do is create an awesome site that gets hacked and ruined. Check the security of your site, and double-check it, because you can’t afford to slack on this!
Check security with your web host before you sign up with a provider. They should be able to provide you with an SSL certificate and other security measures. It’s also a good idea to install a few security plugins, depending on your needs.
Firewalls and two-step authentication are other security features you may want to include. You can’t go wrong with security—unless you neglect it!
3. Shopping Cart & Checkout Process
Your site is pointless if your cart and payment processes don’t work! Not only will you not be making any money off of it, but customers who genuinely want to buy your products are likely to get annoyed and never return!
This is why it’s absolutely essential to do a few test payments before you launch—at least one for every payment partner you’re using.
4. Test Your Shipping Options
If you need to ship items to your customers, this is something else you need to test beforehand. Ensure the process is seamless and customers can easily track their order as it makes its way to them.
Getting others to test this before you officially launch is also a great idea. Ask their opinions on the process and notifications—did they feel informed every step of the way, or was something missing?
Also, ensure you have a clear policy on your website, which provides information on ETAs, costs, and your return or exchange policies with the help of the order fulfillment service.
5. Proofread Your Content
This is a step that trips up so many new e-commerce site owners! Whether you’ve written the content yourself or hired a copywriter to do it for you, it’s worth taking the time to proofread it before you make your site public.
Your content needs to be fact-checked to ensure it’s accurate and up-to-date. There should also be NO typos or grammar issues—these things make your business look unprofessional.
6. Optimize for SEO
SEO might sound complicated, but you can do some basic SEO by Googling! The premise here is that every one of your products should have a main keyword that it ranks for on Google, so when people search for it—”big-screen TV,” for example—your product that matches that keyword will appear.
But it’s not just in the product title that your keyword should show up. It needs to be placed in the description, the meta descriptions, and the meta title. You may need to do some keyword research to find out what’s “trending.” There are plenty of free keyword research tools out there!
7. Test Your Mobile and Responsive Design
As mentioned above, it’s essential to test how responsive your site is on mobile. Interestingly, more than half of customers prefer shopping on mobile for convenience, so you can’t afford to neglect this! It should look good, be easy to navigate, and load quickly.
8. Set Up Analytical Tools
Analytics are an important part of running a successful business. The good news is that tools like Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics make it much easier than it used to be. If you’re launching a Shopify store, it’ll have its analytics built in.
You can do some research on these tools to find something that you understand and find user-friendly. Make sure you can easily understand it and that it shows you the data you need to track your success and make changes accordingly.
9. Make Sure You Customize Your Email Sequences
Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to sell. Remember that you’ll need to build your email list once your website is launched, but once people start signing up for your list, it implies that they’re actively interested in your product—which makes them warm leads.
Ensure you’ve set up a welcome sequence, order receipts, abandon cart series, abandon checkout sequence, order confirmations, shipping notifications, and post-purchase sequences. Don’t neglect this—you’ll miss numerous opportunities to offer more to your subscriber list.
10. Ensure That Your Site Is Backed-Up
The last thing you want is for your successful site to crash… And you have no backup to implement. Ensure the web host you choose performs regular backups and can easily restore your site if something goes wrong.
Neglecting this step might never be an issue for you. But on the rare occasion that something does happen and your site goes down, if it’s not backed up, you’ll find yourself starting from scratch… And potentially with a bunch of unhappy customers.
