The Night Before Launch: An Ecom Website Checklist From One Coffee Roaster's Near-Miss

It was 10 p.m. the night before launch, and Rafael was very proud of himself.

He roasted coffee in a small warehouse in Portland. For three years he had sold bags to cafés and at farmers markets. Tomorrow morning, his new ecom website would go live, and he had already posted about it to everyone he knew.

Then his sister, visiting for the weekend, said the most dangerous sentence in online retail: "Can I try buying something?"

She ordered a bag of Ethiopian. The order went through. The confirmation email went to her spam folder, and it said "Order #1001 from My Store." The shipping charge was for international delivery, to an address in Oregon. And when she clicked the "Contact us" link, it went to a page that said "Lorem ipsum."

Rafael did not sleep much that night. But he did write a checklist. Here it is, tidied up, so your launch goes better than his nearly did.

Why every ecom website needs a launch checklist

An ecom website has a lot of moving parts that only show up when a real person tries to buy. Payments, shipping rules, tax settings, emails, inventory, policies. Each one is simple. Together they are easy to get wrong in ways you will not notice by just looking at the pages.

Your first customers are often the most important ones: friends, family, early fans, people who will tell others. You want them to have a smooth experience, not to become your bug testers.

The ecommerce website checklist: products and pages

• Every product has several clear photos, including one that shows size or scale.
• Prices, variants and stock levels are correct. Click through every size, grind and weight option.
• Descriptions answer real questions: what it is, what it tastes or feels like, how big it is, how to use it.
• No placeholder text anywhere. Search your site for "lorem," "sample," "test" and "My Store."
• Categories make sense to a stranger, not just to you.
• The About page tells your story in a way that makes people trust you.

Checkout, payments and shipping

This is where Rafael's launch nearly fell apart, and where most stores lose sales without realising it.

• Place real test orders. Several. Different products, different quantities, different addresses. Then refund them.
• Check shipping rates for local, national and (if you offer it) international addresses.
• Check tax settings with whoever handles your accounts. Rules differ by state and by product, so do not guess.
• Test every payment method you offer, including digital wallets.
• Try a discount code to make sure it applies correctly.
• Make sure guest checkout works, so people do not have to create an account to buy.

Emails and notifications

Customers judge your store by the emails it sends as much as the website itself.

• Order confirmation, shipping confirmation and refund emails all show your real store name and logo.
• Emails come from an address on your own domain, and you have checked they do not land in spam.
• You get notified of new orders somewhere you will actually see them.
• Abandoned-cart reminders, if you use them, are friendly and not pushy.

Trust, legal and policy pages

• Shipping policy: where you ship, how long it takes, what it costs.
• Returns and refunds policy: clear and easy to find.
• Privacy policy and terms: present and appropriate for your business. A lawyer is worth asking if you are unsure.
• Real contact details: an email address that someone checks, and ideally a phone number or chat.
• Security: the site loads over HTTPS everywhere, with the padlock showing.

Speed, phones and search

Rafael had built and tested his store on a big desktop monitor. His sister was on her phone. So, likely, would be many of his customers.

• Test the whole buying journey on an actual phone, not just a resized browser window.
• Pages load quickly, especially product pages with lots of photos.
• Buttons are big enough to tap, and the cart is easy to find.
• Every page has a sensible title and description for search results.
• Product images have descriptive alt text.
• Analytics is installed so you can see where visitors come from and where they leave.

After launch: the first two weeks

Launch day is a beginning, not a finish line. For the first couple of weeks, Rafael checked a few things every day:

1. Did every order arrive in his system and get packed on time?
2. Were any customers emailing with confusion? (Each question is a hint about something to fix on the site.)
3. Where were people leaving? A product page? The cart? The shipping step?
4. Were the payment and shipping numbers lining up with what he expected?

Small fixes in those early weeks add up. A clearer shipping note, a better photo, a simpler checkout field. Each one helps a few more visitors become customers.

How the launch actually went

Rafael pushed the launch back by one day. He fixed the emails, the shipping zones and the placeholder pages, and ran a dozen more test orders until his sister got bored of helping.

When the store went live, the first orders came from friends and regulars, exactly as he expected. What he did not expect was how ordinary it felt. No panic. No apologetic emails. Just bags of coffee going out the door, and a store that worked the way a store should.

If you would rather have a team handle the build and the testing, take a look at our ecommerce and website services.

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Your first customers deserve a store that works. So do you.