The Shopify Launch QA Checklist We Use Before Go-Live

Our QA model: four passes, not one final click-through

This separation matters. Builders naturally know how a feature is supposed to work, which makes them more likely to follow the happy path. Independent QA is more likely to behave like a customer and find the missing state.

1. Developer self-check — confirm the feature matches the task and obvious errors are removed.
2. Dedicated QA — test the feature independently against design, requirements, responsive states, and edge cases.
3. Client UAT — validate business rules, content, operational workflows, and approvals that only the client can own.
4. Launch verification — repeat the critical journeys on the live domain after DNS, payments, redirects, analytics, and production settings are active.

1. Design fidelity and responsive behavior

• Compare homepage, collection, PDP, cart, account, and key landing pages against approved Figma.
• Check typography, line heights, spacing, borders, radii, icons, image crops, and component states.
• Review mobile, tablet, laptop, and wide desktop layouts — not only one desktop screenshot.
• Test sticky elements, drawers, menus, accordions, sliders, modals, filters, and hover/focus states.
• Check long product names, missing images, sale states, sold-out states, large variant sets, and content overflow.
• Confirm touch targets, keyboard access, contrast, and focus visibility on critical interactive elements.

2. Catalog, search, filtering, and merchandising

• Validate product status, variants, pricing, compare-at prices, inventory, unit information, and subscription options.
• Check metafields/metaobjects powering specifications, badges, size guides, FAQs, product relationships, and custom logic.
• Search full product names, partial terms, SKUs, synonyms, common misspellings, and important category words.
• Verify predictive search and the full search-results page behave consistently.
• Test collection filters, sorting, pagination/infinite loading, out-of-stock handling, and merchandising order.
• Confirm product recommendations, bundles, upsells, and cross-sells do not surface invalid or unavailable combinations.

3. Cart, checkout, payments, shipping, and order flow

Shopify recommends placing test orders before launch. A test order validates much more than the visual checkout: it exercises order processing, inventory, shipping, taxes, and payment configuration.

• Add, remove, and change quantities for standard, subscription, bundle, and discounted products.
• Test cart drawer/page, discount codes, free-shipping thresholds, gift cards, and cart notes where relevant.
• Run successful and failed payment scenarios using Shopify Payments test mode or the appropriate gateway sandbox.
• Test representative shipping addresses and rates for each important market.
• Validate taxes, duties/import settings, currencies, Markets behavior, and localization where applicable.
• Confirm order confirmation, fulfillment, cancellation/refund, notifications, and inventory updates.

4. Apps, integrations, feeds, and operational systems

• Subscriptions: plan selection, recurring price display, customer portal, order creation, cancellation/pause flows.
• ERP/PIM: product/customer/order sync, identifiers, error handling, and duplicate prevention.
• Search/recommendations: indexing, catalog coverage, availability, and fallback behavior.
• Reviews/loyalty/CRM/email: customer identity, events, widgets, consent, and automations.
• Feeds: Google Merchant Center, Meta, marketplaces, structured product attributes, and disapproved-item checks.
• Webhooks/APIs: production credentials, retry/failure behavior, rate limits, logs, and ownership after launch.

5. SEO, redirects, analytics, and discoverability

For migrations, redirects are not optional polish. Shopify's launch guidance explicitly calls out 301 redirects and post-launch 404 checks because broken old URLs can damage user experience and search visibility.

• Validate page titles, meta descriptions, canonical tags, robots behavior, sitemap accessibility, and structured data.
• Map important legacy URLs to their closest relevant Shopify destination; do not redirect everything to the homepage.
• Test redirect chains and high-traffic legacy URLs after go-live.
• Verify GA4, Google Ads, Meta, consent mode/CMP, affiliate tags, and other measurement events.
• Test product_view, add_to_cart, begin_checkout, purchase, and any custom business events.
• Confirm Search Console and Merchant Center ownership/access and submit or resubmit the sitemap after launch.

6. Launch day and stabilization

1. Freeze non-essential theme/content changes before the final QA pass.
2. Confirm backups/export points and ownership of DNS, domain, payments, apps, analytics, and third-party accounts.
3. For migrations, run the planned delta migration for customers/orders/content created after the initial cutoff.
4. Switch production settings: payments, primary domain, DNS, password/private mode, live app credentials.
5. Immediately run a live purchase journey, search, forms, account login, analytics, redirects, and representative market checks.
6. Monitor 404s, app/webhook errors, payment failures, feed issues, and analytics for the stabilization window.

If you only have one hour before launch, test these first

• Mobile homepage → collection/search → PDP → cart → checkout → order confirmation.
• One successful test order and one failed-payment scenario.
• Top 20 legacy URLs / redirects for a migration.
• Analytics purchase event and primary ad pixels.
• Primary navigation, search, filters, forms, account/login, and contact flows.
• Shipping/tax for the highest-revenue market.
• Live domain, SSL, sitemap, robots, and noindex/password settings.