Magento Launch Checklist

Isaiah Bollinger

Isaiah Bollinger

You may think you are ready for launch, but chances are you have overlooked something that could kill your conversions, SEO, and overall sales.
You need to be thorough when it comes to launch, and should really leave at least several weeks for just testing alone.
Here are the major areas to finalize for launch!
Place Holder Image
If some of your products don’t have an image you will want a placeholder image. Make sure you update the placeholder image in the System Config Catalog setting for placeholder images.
Favicon
Don’t launch with the default Magento favicon and update it to your brand Favicon! 
Update Admin URL 
Update the admin url to be specific to you so random people can’t find it easily. 
Store Settings
You need to update store settings with your information as well as shipping settings and other basic store settings.
SSL Certificate 
Make sure you have an SSL certificate ready for production launch to your main URL.
Integrations & Modules 
Your integrations and third party modules may require a license key or production credentials when you go live. Make sure the settings are all in place so that when you move to the live URL none of your third party modules or integrations break. 
404 Page
The default 404 page is not your brand, update it to be unique to your brand and perhaps lead people back to where they want to go! 
Remove Test Data
You may have been playing around with test data, make sure you remove it all and keep your site clean for production launch.
Browser Testing: The first simple place to start is simply browser testing. There are many browsers and versions of browsers and you also have to test mobile and different devices for each browser.
Some of the major areas to test:

  • Google chrome
  • IE versions
  • Safari
  • Firefox
  • Mobile and Tablet browser versions.

eCommerce Checkout functionality:
Once you have tested that all browsers work fine and the site looks good on every device. Its time to make sure people can actually checkout and buy!
I would look at:

  • Add to cart
  • Cart functionality / updating cart
  • Checkout
  • Order Confirmation
  • Inventory and stock levels
  • Payment
  • Checkout
  • Taxes

Test to make sure the entire checkout flow works including payment, shipping, and taxes
Transactional Emails:
Many people overlook transactional emails. At the very least you should update them to have your brand and perhaps customize the language from the default templates. If you have more time invest in making them high quality and truly unique to your brand.
Search functionality:
Is your search up to par? Consumers expect high quality search, and basic default Magento search might not cut it. Make sure you have optimized search with a third party tool like Klevu or Celebros, or at least optimize the basic search functionality of Magento for your business.
Final Data Transfer: 
If you are coming from another eCommerce system then you will need to do a final data import of orders and customers. This is not something to overlook and should be done by a Magento certified developer.
Base URLs:
The base URL might be a staging url, so update it to the new production url.
Reindex Data:
Reindex any new data that might be imported.
Enable Caching:
During development you might have caching turned off to see changes faster. Enable caching for launch.
Test All Forms:
If you have forms for various things like newsletters, contact us, etc…Make sure they are all tested and go to the correct place.
Log Cleaning:
Clean out the log files so they are optimized for launch. Log files can pile up and slow down your site.
301 Redirects
Has your URL structure changed? If so you need to redirect the old URLs to the appropriate new ones or you could lose a ton of SEO value. Make sure you have a plan for this or you could face a much longer SEO recovery time.
Google Web Masters & Google Analytics
Make sure you are ready to optimize your site for Google via a quality sitemap submission to Google Web Masters and your site is trackable via analytics. You don’t want any gaps in your analytics or Web Master tools upon launch.
Optimize CSS and Javascript: 
You can minify CSS and Javascript for site performance and reduce it to one smaller file. 
Site Speed / Performance:
Your site might be fine with a few people working on it, but is it ready for production visitors. Make sure you are confident it can handle speed and performance testing for the volume you expect to bring in.
Check your PHP and Magento settings to make sure it can handle all the requirements you have for performance.
Development Operations & Post Launch: 
Are you ready for deployment and post launch improvements? Make sure you have a dev ops process for pushing new code to production and managing versions via Git. Expect bugs and new work to come in immediately so having a process for this is critical to success.

Leave a Comment

Share this post

Related Posts

See all posts