Go live planning

Introduction

No matter what your launch journey on Shopify Plus looks like, it all leads to a go-live date: the time your customers can finally shop on your new store. 

In this guide, we’ll look at the preparation, execution, and post go-live activities you should carry out for a successful launch.

By the end of this guide you’ll know:

• What you should do in preparation to go-live
• How to go live with your store
• What you should do after launch to ensure a smooth transition

 

Prepare to Go Live

Order Flow Check

Thoroughly check your order flow, from placing orders on the storefront to fulfilling those orders. 

When placing orders, test as many scenarios as possible. For example, orders with:

• Discount codes
• Customer logged in and logged out
• Different payment methods
• Different shipping rates
• Different shipping addresses (with particular attention to how the tax is calculated)
• Different devices
• Failed transactions

Once an order is placed:

• Verify that you’re satisfied with the order notification
• Test the fulfilment flow, whether it’s manual or through an app or ERP
• Add tracking information and check the shipping notification
• Test a partially fulfilled order
• Try to issue a full or partial refund

Refer to our Orders Help Center documentation for information about how to manage your orders.

Note that not all test orders can be deleted. Only the following types of orders can be deleted:

• Paid with the Bogus Gateway
• Paid with Shopify Payments in test mode; orders paid with other gateways in test mode are not considered test orders
• Paid with a manual payment method
• Draft orders marked as paid
• Orders imported via API

Many payment methods can only be tested with live orders. For example, some local payment methods such as Sofort and iDEAL are only available with Shopify Payments in live mode. Likewise, many third-party payment gateways, including PayPal, don’t have a test or sandbox mode enabled with their Shopify integration. If you create orders with these payment methods, you can cancel and refund them, but not delete them, and they could be synced with integrated systems like Avalara or an ERP. 

Integrations Check

Ensure all your integrations are working properly. A careful review of your integrations will make sure that you go live with a robust, well-integrated tech stack, and help to avoid issues after launch. The exact details of what you need to test in this phase depend on what systems and apps you have connected to Shopify.   

Analytics Setup Checks 

Connect your Google Analytics account to Shopify as explained here. You can also find tips and best practices for tracking campaigns in Google Analytics and setting up UTM parameters in this blog post. 

As a Shopify Plus merchant, you can also use Google Tag Manager. Learn how to set it up here. 

Google is sunsetting Universal Analytics in July 2023. Google Analytics 4 is Google’s next-generation measurement solution, and is coming to Shopify in March 2023. Find out what this means for you. 

DNS Settings and Servers Checks

We recommend that you find out the following information at least four weeks ahead of your desired go-live date:

• Which domain registrar you use
• Who has access to your domain registrar 
• How your settings can be updated to point to Shopify 
• If you use any hosting services (like AWS), and if you will still need them after you go live on Shopify
• If you use a DNS management system or proxy service (like Cloudflare), and if they are compatible with Shopify

Having this information at hand will help you to smoothly make the switch on launch day.

About a week before your go-live, we recommend that you log into your domain registrar and change the Time To Live (TTL) to the lowest value possible (generally, 300 seconds). This will guarantee that, when you update the DNS settings to point to Shopify, the changes will propagate as quickly as possible. 

SSL Certificate

Shopify provides an SSL certificate with your subscription at no additional cost. Existing SSL certificates from another provider can’t be transferred to Shopify. Please take this into account as you prepare to go live.

Backing Up Data 

Shopify does not offer an option to back-up your store data. If, for example, you delete all the products on your store, there is no way to restore this data. For this reason we recommend that you make plans to back up your store data either manually or with a third-party app. This is especially important if you have a large team or integrations that can impact your store’s data, like products, inventory, customers, pages, or themes. 

 

Go Live

When you’re ready to go live, follow these steps to launch your new store:

1. Change the A record of your root domain and point it to Shopify’s IP address
2. Change the CNAME record to your Shopify-hosted domain
3. Connect your domain in Shopify 
4. Set your primary domain in Shopify
5. Remove your online store password

 

After Launch

Right after you go live, take the following steps to ensure a smooth transition to the new store. 

Send Customer Account Invitations

If you migrated your customers to Shopify, they will not be able to use their old password to log into your new store. After launch, invite your existing customers to activate their new account and set up a new password on Shopify. As a Shopify Plus merchant you have access to the Bulk Account Inviter app on your store, to send customer account invitations in bulk to your imported customers. It is highly advisable that you configure their SPF records (following our email best practices) prior to sending out a campaign. This will help in reducing the amount of emails that go to your customers’ spam folders. We always recommend doing a test to a small batch of internal emails to test a campaign. 

Customize the account invite notification template to match your branding and messaging and run tests before you send out your invites in bulk. After you have sent the initial invites, update the notification template again to be suitable to customers that create an account on your store after launch.

Resubmit Your Sitemap 

Once you’re live, resubmit your sitemap to Google Console. This will help Google find and index your new site structure and contents. 

Track 404 Errors

Even if you have carefully set up your 301 redirects, chances are that there will be 404 errors after you go live with your new online store. We recommend that you identify and resolve all 404 errors after launch. Doing so will help to maintain your SEO rankings after you move to Shopify.