Go-live checklist

Going live has two halves. First you complete the setup gates the dashboard onboarding guide tracks — products, theme, payments, business details, shipping, and tax. Then you run a short set of pre-launch tests and perform the one action that actually puts your store in front of the public: turning off the password page.

Your store dashboard shows a Setup guide with live progress. Each item below maps to a step in that guide, detected from your real store data, so you can follow either one.

Note

You do not need to upgrade to launch. A store on the Free plan can go live; paid plans add capability, not the ability to sell. See Plans and billing.

Sequence matters

Fill in business details first (Settings → General). Your store name, contact email, country, and address feed shipping rate calculation, GST invoices, and payment-gateway onboarding. Several later steps quietly depend on them, so doing this early saves rework.

Setup gates

Work through these in order. The dashboard marks a step complete only when the underlying data exists — not when you’ve merely opened the screen.

1. Add at least one product. Go to Products → Add product, fill in title, price, and at least one image, and save. The guide counts this step as soon as your catalog has one product. See Add products.

2. Customize and publish your theme. Open Online store → Themes, edit your theme, then publish it. A theme only counts as live once it has a published (live) version — editing a draft is not enough. See Themes and the editor.

3. Connect a payment provider. Go to Settings → Payments → Connect and set up at least one supported online method (for example Razorpay, PayU, or Cashfree for INR). The store cannot accept money until one online payment method exists. See Payments.

4. Add business details. In Settings → General, enter your store name, contact email, country, address, and city. All five are required for this step to complete, and they power shipping, tax invoices, and gateway onboarding. See Business details.

5. Set up shipping. Open Settings → Shipping and create at least one shipping profile with at least one zone. A profile with no zone means a shippable cart has no rate and checkout fails for physical orders. See Shipping and checkout.

6. Set up taxes (recommended). Go to Settings → Taxes and add at least one tax rate (GST for India). This step is optional in the guide, but launching without it means orders carry no tax. See Taxes.

7. Connect a custom domain (optional). In Settings → Domains, connect or transfer your domain. Until you do, your store runs on its default Sellerlane address. See Custom domains.

8. Launch — turn off the password page. This is the action that makes you public; it is covered in detail below.

Caution

Scheduled products keep their schedule after you launch. A product set to a future publish date stays hidden until that date arrives — going live does not override it. Check that anything you want visible at launch is actually published, not scheduled.

Launching: the password page

On Sellerlane, “launched” has a precise meaning: your store is not password protected. A brand-new store starts unprotected, so if you never enabled the gate, you are already public once setup is done. If you turned on the coming-soon password page while building, going live literally means switching it off in Settings → General.

What the password page does

While the gate is on, every storefront page redirects anonymous visitors to a /password screen, and that screen carries a noindex tag so search engines do not list your store while it is closed. Visitors must enter the store password to get in; a correct password sets a long-lived access cookie (valid for a year) so they are not asked again. The password screen is rate-limited — after 10 failed attempts from the same address in 5 minutes, further tries return a “Too many password attempts” error with a retry delay. Your own preview links from the theme editor bypass the gate, so you can keep reviewing the live storefront while it stays closed to the public.

Turn it off to go live

1. Go to Settings → General.
2. Disable storefront password protection (turn off the coming-soon / password page).
3. Save. The storefront stops redirecting to /password, search engines can index it, and anyone with the link can shop.

Tip

Keep the password page on until your pre-launch tests below pass. It is the cleanest way to stage a store: connect the real domain, place test orders, and proof your theme without strangers stumbling onto a half-built shop.

Final pre-launch tests

With setup done, run these checks before you announce. Leave the password page on (or test from an editor preview link) until they all pass.

• Test order and refund — place a real ₹1–₹10 order through your gateway, confirm it appears in Orders, then refund it from the order. Verifying the refund path now avoids surprises later.
• Confirmation email — check the order confirmation arrives in the inbox, not spam. If you connected a custom domain, confirm email is sending from your domain (see DNS and deliverability).
• Policies — publish your refund, shipping, and privacy policies in Settings → Policies. Indian payment gateways expect these to be live before approving a store. See Policies.
• Mobile pass — open your store on a phone over mobile data and walk through the home page, a product page, and checkout.
• Domain and SSL — if using a custom domain, confirm it loads with the padlock (SSL active) and that the www variant resolves.
• Analytics live — open Analytics → Live and confirm your own visit shows up, so you know tracking is firing. See Analytics.
• Abandoned-checkout recovery — turn it on under Marketing → Automations before launch, so the first real abandoned carts are recovered. See Automations.

Edge cases worth knowing

• A theme must be published, not just edited, to count as live — a saved draft will not satisfy the gate.
• At least one online payment method is required; manual methods alone do not let online checkout collect payment.
• A shipping profile must have at least one zone, or shippable checkout fails for customers in uncovered regions.
• Business details (address and email) are a prerequisite for shipping rates, GST invoices, and gateway onboarding — fill them in before the steps that rely on them.
• Disabling the password page is immediate: there is no separate “publish store” button beyond turning the gate off.

Next steps

Payments

Finish connecting a supported gateway. Payments

Shipping & checkout

Tune zones and rates. Shipping and checkout

Marketing

Run your first campaign. Marketing

Analytics

Watch live and lifetime metrics. Analytics