Your Essential WordPress eCommerce Launch Checklist: Boost Sales & Success!

Launching an online store can be daunting, especially for first-timers. You’ll need to manage various aspects, from selecting the best eCommerce platform to marketing your products effectively.

By using an eCommerce launch checklist, you significantly reduce the chances of overlooking crucial steps. This guide will help you stay organized, minimize mistakes, and enhance your overall efficiency.

At CanadaCreate, we’ve assisted numerous partner brands in launching their eCommerce stores, so we understand the complexities involved. That’s why we advocate for the use of a checklist.

In this article, we present the ultimate eCommerce launch checklist specifically designed for WordPress.

Why Should You Use an eCommerce Launch Checklist for Your New Online Store?

An eCommerce checklist ensures that you verify your online store’s security, web pages, payment options, SEO, and other essential features, ensuring nothing is overlooked before your launch.

It serves as a safety net, identifying any potential mistakes or issues you might have missed while preparing your site for launch.

Additionally, it keeps you organized and helps prevent delays. This checklist, whether physical or digital, enables you to prioritize tasks according to their importance and deadlines.

Collaborating with a team ensures everyone is aligned and tasks are efficiently distributed. Additionally, this checklist can help assess your launch and pinpoint areas for enhancement.

Now that you’re prepared, let’s dive into the ultimate eCommerce launch checklist to set your store up for success. Below is an overview of the steps we’ll explore in this guide:

1. Select a Website Builder and Hosting Plan

To launch an online store, the first step is to choose a website builder. We recommend WordPress, as it is the leading website builder globally, powering over 43% of all websites.

WordPress is a free and flexible platform that provides numerous customization options and is highly scalable, making it the perfect choice for your eCommerce store.

Important Note: We are referring to the self-hosted WordPress.org, an open-source platform that offers complete control over your website.

This differs from WordPress.com, which is a hosted service. Check out our comparison of WordPress.org vs. WordPress.com to understand the differences.

Although WordPress itself is free, you will need to purchase a hosting plan and a domain name. Hosting is where your website’s data is stored, while the domain is your store’s online address, such aswww.shoppingonline.com.

If you intend to sell physical products, we recommend Bluehost WooCommerce hosting. This is a WordPress-recommended provider that offers a free domain name, SSL certificate, and pre-installed WooCommerce.

Additionally, Bluehost provides a significant discount for CanadaCreate readers. To take advantage of this offer, simply click the button below.

If you’re looking to sell digital products, SiteGround’s managed hosting for Easy Digital Downloads is the optimal choice.

It includes a complimentary SSL certificate, Easy Digital Downloads pre-installed, all essential optimization features, and a remarkable 81% discount, making it an excellent option.

To take advantage of this discount, simply click the button below.

After purchasing hosting and setting up your domain name, WordPress will be automatically installed for you. You can then access your dashboard to begin building your store.

For further information, check out our guide on creating a WordPress website.

2. Select the Right eCommerce Platform

Before we explore the steps, it’s beneficial to understand how the various components of your online store connect—similar to constructing a physical shop.

WordPress.org serves as the land and foundation for your store. Your eCommerce platform, such as WooCommerce, provides the framework, complete with product shelves and a checkout system.

Next, a page builder like SeedProd acts as your interior designer, assisting you in decorating and organizing your displays to enhance the shopping experience.

After establishing your foundation, the next step is to select an eCommerce platform that enables you to create and launch your online store effortlessly, without any coding skills required.

We recommend using WooCommerce, as it is the leading eCommerce plugin available and is completely free to use.

This plugin simplifies product addition, integrates with various payment gateways, and supports multiple currencies and languages, making it an ideal option for setting up your store. For more information, check out our guide on making WooCommerce easy to use.

If your focus is on selling digital products, we suggest using Easy Digital Downloads instead.

This platform allows you to sell eBooks, music, PDFs, and other digital goods. Many of our partner companies have successfully used it to sell their plugins and have reported great experiences. For more details, read our comprehensive review of EDD.

Additionally, the plugin is user-friendly, supports a wide range of payment gateways, offers detailed reporting, and integrates with email marketing services.

For more information, refer to our tutorial on how to sell digital downloads using WordPress.

Important NoteIf you’ve launched a store that offers digital products, this checklist will serve as an effective guide for your digital product launch.

3. Create and Review All Pages for Your Store

Once you’ve added your products, it’s essential to create key pages on your website. Start with an engaging home page, as it serves as the first impression for your visitors.

Include a Call To Action (CTA) on this page to guide users to your desired actions. Additionally, set up a navigation menu to help customers explore your store effortlessly.

For instance, the homepage of WPForms, a well-known WordPress form builder, features a clear CTA button that directs visitors to the plugin’s online store.

For step-by-step instructions on creating a custom home page for your online store, check out our tutorial on building a home page in WordPress.

Depending on your chosen eCommerce plugin, it should have automatically generated essential pages like the checkout page, products page, and cart page for your online store.

You can personalize these pages using SeedProd, the leading page builder available. It offers full WooCommerce integration and includes specialized WooCommerce blocks that can be added to any page.

The plugin includes a variety of pre-designed templates and a user-friendly drag-and-drop builder, simplifying the setup process.

For additional details, refer to our beginner’s guide on editing WooCommerce pages.

4. Establish a Smooth Checkout Experience

Next, you need to establish a smooth checkout experience for your online store. This will enhance conversion rates, minimize cart abandonment, and elevate your brand’s reputation.

To achieve this, integrate your online store with trusted and popular payment gateways such as Stripe and PayPal. Customers typically prefer these options due to their security, making them an excellent choice.

Moreover, these gateways integrate seamlessly with WooCommerce. Simply install the relevant plugin for these gateways and navigate to the WooCommerce » Settings » Payments page.

Here, you can enable various gateways by toggling the switches and inputting your account details to finalize the setup. For guidance, check out our tutorial on accepting payments with Stripe in WordPress.

After setting up the gateways, you can add an express checkout button to provide customers with a streamlined experience. This button allows users to proceed directly to the payment page without entering any additional information.

For detailed guidance, check out our comprehensive tutorial on adding express checkout buttons in WooCommerce.

For additional tips, refer to our beginner’s guide on customizing your WooCommerce checkout page.

5. Incorporate Social Proof and Create a Sense of Urgency

Once your eCommerce store is ready, it’s crucial to add social proof before launching. This will demonstrate to visitors that other customers have trusted your store and enjoyed their experience.

Additionally, it will create a sense of urgency (Fear of Missing Out) that can enhance your sales. You can achieve this by including testimonials and customer reviews on your site.

If your customers have shared reviews on platforms like Google, Yelp, or Facebook, you can display these feeds on your website using the Smash Balloon Reviews Feed Plugin.

This plugin features a visual editor, making it incredibly easy to connect these platforms with WordPress.

For detailed instructions, refer to our step-by-step guide on displaying your Google, Facebook, and Yelp reviews in WordPress.

Popups and opt-in forms are also effective tools for building urgency and social proof.

You can utilize OptinMonster to showcase popups featuring customer reviews and limited-time offers to motivate customers to take action and make a purchase.

For more information, refer to our comprehensive guide on boosting sales with WooCommerce.

A great way to create a sense of urgency among customers is by using TrustPulse, the leading social proof plugin available.

It monitors your store’s activities, including purchases, signups, and downloads, and displays real-time notifications to visitors that showcase these actions.

For in-depth insights, check out our guide on leveraging FOMO on your WordPress site to enhance conversions.

6. Implement a Contact Form

It’s essential to include a contact form in your online store, allowing customers to reach out in case of issues, such as reporting inappropriate behavior or payment processing problems.

For this purpose, consider using WPForms, the top-rated contact form plugin available. It features an easy-to-use drag-and-drop builder, over 2000 pre-designed form templates, and robust spam protection.

At CanadaCreate, we utilize it to create contact forms and annual surveys for our audience. To find out more, check out our detailed WPForms review.

Once activated, you can easily use the plugin’s ‘Simple Contact Form’ template and add it to any page using the WPForms block.

For further instructions, see our tutorial on how to add a contact form in WordPress.

This solution is ideal for launching your store, but as your website expands, a contact form alone may not meet all customer support needs.

Incorporate Additional Tools for Customer Support

Once you surpass the limitations of a contact form for customer inquiries, we suggest utilizing a business phone service.

We recommend Nextiva as the top business phone service for your website. We use Nextiva for our own business, and you can find more details in our comprehensive Nextiva review.

This service enables customers to reach you via phone calls, and you can also implement an auto attendant feature if desired.

Additionally, Nextiva offers features such as live chat, online faxing, surveys, CRM, analytics, and more.

If your store experiences rapid growth, consider adopting a customer service tool like Help Scout, which allows you to consolidate all customer data in one platform. We utilize Help Scout for several of our brands, including CanadaCreate, to enhance our customer support.

You can also develop a knowledge base, leverage AI for intelligent responses, and establish automated workflows.

For further details, check out our recommendations for the best customer service software.

7. Enhance Your Store’s Search Engine Optimization

To ensure your store attracts more traffic and customers, it’s crucial to optimize it for search engines before launching.

All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is the top WordPress SEO plugin that enables you to optimize your store quickly and efficiently.

This plugin features a broken link checker, schema generator, XML sitemaps, an on-page SEO checklist, keyword tracking, image SEO, and much more.

At CanadaCreate, we have been using AIOSEO and have experienced a significant improvement in our search rankings since we started. For more information, check out our comprehensive AIOSEO review.

Additionally, AIOSEO provides GTIN, ISBN, and MPN schema options, allowing your individual products to appear in search results.

You can also create SEO-friendly product titles and descriptions, optimize slugs, enable breadcrumbs, and add alt text to product images.

For comprehensive guidance, refer to our ultimate WooCommerce SEO guide.

8. Establish Your Email Marketing Strategy

Setting up your email marketing before launching is a smart move, as it allows you to engage with customers from the very beginning. There are two primary objectives here.

The first goal is to build an email list and send newsletters or exclusive offers. The second is to create automated emails based on customer shopping behavior in your store.

Email Newsletters and Campaigns

To build your email list and manage campaigns, we recommend Constant Contact. It’s the top email marketing service for small businesses, making it easy to get started.

Constant Contact allows you to create signup forms and includes automation tools, email segmentation, A/B testing features, drip campaigns, and a visual workflow builder.

The platform also provides straightforward tracking and reporting, built-in social media sharing options, a free image library, Facebook ads integration, and excellent customer support.

For more information, check out our guide on connecting Constant Contact with WordPress.

Marketing Automation for WooCommerce

For store-specific automations, such as sending abandoned cart reminders or follow-up emails after purchases, FunnelKit Automations is the ideal solution. It is designed specifically for WooCommerce.

We have personally tested it, and it is a powerful tool for creating automated sales funnels.

FunnelKit Automations features a visual builder, pre-built templates for various automations, and A/B testing capabilities to help increase your sales. For more details, read our comprehensive FunnelKit Automations review.

For complete instructions, you can also view our tutorial on sending automated emails in WordPress.

9. Configure Google Analytics

A vital step in preparing your store for customers is to install Google Analytics. This tool enables you to monitor your store’s performance and provides real-time insights into user interactions on your website.

You can leverage this data to enhance your marketing strategy and increase sales.

To simplify the use of Google Analytics, consider using MonsterInsights. After thorough testing, we have determined it to be the top analytics solution for WordPress.

At CanadaCreate, we utilize MonsterInsights to analyze our readers’ behaviors and refine our content strategy. For more details, check out our comprehensive MonsterInsights review.

One of the great features of MonsterInsights is its seamless integration with WooCommerce, allowing you to monitor product performance, shopping cart abandonment rates, and checkout behavior.

This enables you to easily identify products with high abandonment rates and take measures to enhance those product pages.

For additional details, refer to our step-by-step guide on how to set up WooCommerce conversion tracking.

10. Create a Backup of Your eCommerce Store

After adding all the features to your online store and feeling confident about its readiness for launch, we strongly recommend creating a backup first.

This will help you protect your data from security threats and allow you to recover it in case of data loss caused by malware or hackers.

For this purpose, we recommend using Duplicator, the top WordPress backup plugin. It offers features such as scheduled backups, recovery points, cloud storage integration, migration tools, and more.

With this plugin, you can create a backup directly from your WordPress dashboard in just a few minutes.

For detailed instructions, refer to our tutorial on how to back up your WordPress site.

11. Secure Your Online Store

After completing all the steps in our eCommerce launch checklist, your store is ready to go live. However, you can take additional measures to protect your online store from malware and hackers.

To safeguard your store, we recommend setting up a firewall. A great starting point for any website, regardless of size, is Cloudflare.

It offers a free CDN (Content Delivery Network) that enhances your site’s speed and a web application firewall (WAF) that blocks harmful traffic before it reaches your website.

Cloudflare also enables you to optimize images to save bandwidth, set up page rules, manage SSL certificates, handle email routing, access speedy DNS services, and detect and block harmful bots.

In addition to using a firewall like Cloudflare, it’s wise to install a security plugin for internal scans.

A plugin such as Sucuri can keep an eye on your WordPress files for any unusual activity, scan for malware, and assist in cleaning up your site if issues arise.

Sucuri provides a free plugin that serves as an excellent starting point for any online store.

For additional advice, check out our comprehensive WordPress security guide.

Remember that after implementing these security measures, it’s essential to regularly monitor your site for threats or malware, which can be time-consuming and somewhat frustrating.

That’s why we recommend Seahawk Media Service. Their expert team offers 24/7 maintenance and support for your website.

Seahawk provides regular updates for WordPress core, themes, and plugins, ensures uptime monitoring, eliminates malware, conducts routine cloud backups, optimizes page loading speeds, and delivers comprehensive maintenance reports.

Additionally, Seahawk offers competitive pricing, making it a perfect option for small businesses. For more information, check out our detailed Seahawk review.

Common Questions About Starting an eCommerce Store

Here are some common inquiries from our readers regarding the launch of an eCommerce website.

Is WordPress a good choice for eCommerce?

WordPress.org is a fantastic platform for your eCommerce store as it is open-source, free, scalable, and user-friendly for beginners.

With 43% of websites on the internet using it, WordPress boasts a large community and offers complete flexibility to create your online store as you wish. For further insights, refer to our guide on the suitability of WordPress for eCommerce.

Do I need coding skills to set up a WordPress eCommerce store?

No coding skills are required to launch an online store. Simply choose an eCommerce plugin and adjust its settings to get your store up and running in minutes. You can also utilize a drag-and-drop page builder like SeedProd to design your store without any coding.

What is the cost of launching a WordPress eCommerce store?

Creating an online store is budget-friendly, but it does incur some expenses.

In your first year, anticipate spending between $150 and $300. This amount typically includes the cost of your domain name (the address of your site) and a reliable web hosting service, which are the primary expenses to get started.

Additional Resources to Assist You in Building an eCommerce Store

• Lucrative eCommerce Business Ideas for WordPress
• The Ultimate Guide to Creating a WordPress Website
• What Are the Costs of eCommerce Websites? (Actual Figures)
• Top WooCommerce Plugins for Your Store (Many Are FREE)
• Effective Strategies to Enhance Your eCommerce Website Speed
• A Beginner’s Guide to Selecting the Best Products to Sell Online
• Outstanding Examples of WordPress eCommerce Websites (+ Design Tips)
• Unbelievable eCommerce Statistics You Need to Know
• Best Alternatives to Shopify (More Affordable and Powerful)

If you enjoyed this article, please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also connect with us on Twitter and Facebook.