The Pre-Launch Conversion Checklist: Is Your Shopify Store Actually Ready for Paid Traffic?

By Stan Tscherenkow | Founder, Stan Consulting LLC, Roseville CA MBA, Universität Trier (Germany) · Marketing, Loughborough University (UK) · 15+ years across US, Europe & Asia LinkedIn · stantscherenkow.com

There is a conversation I have regularly with Shopify store owners, and it goes roughly like this:

"We launched our Google Ads campaign three weeks ago. We're spending $1,500 a month. We're getting clicks — about 600 so far. We've had four sales."

Four sales from 600 clicks is a 0.67% conversion rate. The industry average for Shopify ecommerce is between 1.5% and 3.5% depending on category. At 0.67%, this store is converting at less than half the minimum expected rate, which means for every dollar producing a sale, at least one dollar is producing nothing.

The diagnosis in cases like this is almost never the campaigns. The campaigns are doing their job — they're delivering clicks from people who expressed intent. The problem is what happens after the click. The store wasn't ready for that traffic when the campaigns launched.

This checklist exists to prevent that scenario. It covers every dimension of Shopify store readiness that affects whether paid traffic converts — from technical fundamentals to offer clarity to trust signals to checkout mechanics. Work through it before your first campaign goes live, or use it to diagnose why a live campaign is underperforming.

Once you've confirmed your store passes this checklist, the next step is building the right PPC strategy — our Shopify PPC guide for Sacramento and Bay Area stores → covers that in full. This checklist comes first.

Why Readiness Matters More Than Campaign Quality

There is a hard ceiling on what any PPC campaign can achieve if the destination store isn't conversion-ready. The best-structured Google Shopping campaign in the world, running against a perfectly optimized feed with precisely calibrated ROAS targets, will produce poor results if the store it sends traffic to has a slow checkout, unclear pricing, or a returns policy buried in a footer link no one finds before purchasing.

This is not a theoretical concern. In Google Ads, your landing page experience is a direct input into your Quality Score. A poor landing page experience increases your cost per click — you're literally paying more for the same placement because Google's algorithm judges your destination to be a worse experience for buyers. A strong landing page experience lowers your CPC, improves placement, and makes every dollar of ad spend go further.

More critically: a store that isn't ready for paid traffic has a structural conversion problem that compounds with scale. Spend $500/month into an unprepared store and you lose $500. Spend $5,000/month and you lose $5,000. Budget increases do not fix readiness problems. They amplify them.

The checklist below is organized into six sections. Work through each one systematically. Every item marked "critical" is a conversion blocker — something that, if unresolved, will suppress your conversion rate regardless of how good your campaigns are.

Section 1: Technical Foundation

These are the non-negotiable technical requirements. Every item here either directly affects conversion rate or directly affects how Google tracks and optimizes your campaigns. None of them are optional.

[ ] HTTPS is active on your custom domain (Critical) Your Shopify store URL should begin with https:// — not http://. Most modern Shopify stores handle this automatically, but custom domain configurations can break SSL. Check by typing your store URL into a browser and verifying the padlock icon appears in the address bar. A browser security warning on your store kills conversions immediately — buyers who see "Not Secure" leave without hesitation.

[ ] Mobile load time is under 3 seconds on cellular (Critical) More than 60% of Shopify store traffic comes from mobile devices. In California, that number is higher. Test your store's mobile load time using Google PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev) on the mobile setting. A score below 50 and a load time over 3 seconds is a measurable conversion suppressor — Google's own data shows conversion probability drops 32% as page load time goes from 1 to 3 seconds, and drops further after that. Common causes on Shopify: uncompressed images, excessive third-party app scripts, and non-lazy-loaded below-the-fold content.

[ ] Google Analytics 4 is installed and tracking purchase events (Critical) You cannot optimize what you cannot measure. GA4 should be firing on every page of your Shopify store, and specifically tracking these events: view_item, add_to_cart, begin_checkout, purchase. Verify in GA4 → Reports → Realtime by going through your own checkout flow and confirming all four events register. If purchase is not firing on your order confirmation page, your conversion data is incomplete and your Google Ads campaigns cannot optimize toward actual sales.

[ ] Google Ads conversion tracking is linked to Shopify purchase events (Critical) GA4 and Google Ads are separate systems. Confirm that Google Ads is receiving purchase conversion data — either through the GA4 → Google Ads link (import conversions from GA4) or through a direct Google Ads conversion tag on your order confirmation page. Navigate to Google Ads → Tools → Conversions and verify your purchase conversion action shows "Recording conversions" status, not "No recent conversions" or "Tag inactive."

[ ] Google Merchant Center feed has zero disapproved products (Critical for Shopping campaigns) Every disapproved product in your Merchant Center feed is invisible in Shopping ads — it cannot appear regardless of how much you bid. Check Merchant Center → Products → Diagnostics. Fix all disapprovals before launching. The most common disapproval reasons: missing GTIN on branded products, policy-violating images, and price mismatches between the feed and your live store.

[ ] No broken links, 404 pages, or non-loading images on key pages (Critical) Use a free tool like Broken Link Checker or Screaming Frog to crawl your store's key pages — homepage, top product pages, collection pages, checkout. Any broken element on a page your PPC traffic lands on is a trust signal failure. As covered in our guide to trust gaps →, broken page elements signal poor maintenance and actively suppress buyer confidence.

[ ] Checkout works end-to-end on mobile (Critical) Walk through your own complete checkout flow on a mobile device — add to cart, proceed to checkout, enter test payment details, confirm order. Shopify's checkout is generally reliable, but theme customizations, custom checkout apps, and third-party payment integrations can introduce mobile-specific friction. Verify the complete flow works without errors before sending any paid traffic.

Section 2: Product Page Readiness

Your product pages are where the purchase decision is made. For Shopping ads especially — where buyers have already seen your product image and price in the ad — the product page is the final moment of evaluation before "Add to Cart." Every element below either supports or undermines that decision.

[ ] Primary product image is high-quality, white/neutral background, product fills 75%+ of frame (Critical) For Shopping campaigns, the product image in your ad comes directly from your Merchant Center feed, which pulls from your product page. A low-quality, cluttered, or poorly composed image depresses CTR in Shopping ads before the buyer even reaches your store. Once they arrive, a poor primary image is the first thing they see. Image quality is disproportionately impactful for first impressions.

[ ] Price is visible above the fold on mobile without scrolling (Critical) Buyers who have to scroll to find the price of a product experience unnecessary friction. On mobile, ensure your product price is visible in the first viewport — ideally adjacent to or directly below the product title. Price ambiguity at the top of the page creates uncertainty. Certainty about price — even if the price is higher than expected — is preferable to uncertainty.

[ ] Return policy is stated on the product page, not only on a separate Returns page (Critical) This is one of the highest-frequency trust gaps we identify in conversion audits. Most Shopify stores have a Returns page — linked in the footer — that explains their policy. But buyers making purchase decisions on a product page do not navigate to the footer, find the Returns link, read the policy, and return to complete the purchase. They either see the policy on the page they're on, or they don't see it at all. Place a one-line return policy statement — "30-day returns, free return shipping" — directly on the product page near the Buy button.

[ ] Reviews are present, specific, and include at least some with photos (High priority) As discussed in our trust gaps guide →, generic five-star reviews without specifics have minimal conversion impact. For PPC-driven traffic — which is cold traffic arriving with moderate intent — reviews are a critical trust bridge. You need reviews that mention specific outcomes, specific use cases, or specific product attributes. A minimum of 10 reviews before running significant paid traffic is a reasonable threshold; 25+ is preferable for higher-priced products.

[ ] Shipping estimate or delivery timeframe is stated on the product page (High priority) Unexpected shipping timelines are a top-five reason for cart abandonment. "Ships in 7–14 business days" discovered at checkout after a buyer has already committed emotionally to the purchase creates friction and distrust. State your shipping timeline prominently on the product page. For California stores offering same-day or next-day delivery to Sacramento or Bay Area customers, this is a competitive advantage worth making visible — not hiding.

[ ] Variant selector functions correctly and shows correct imagery per variant (High priority) If your product has multiple variants — colors, sizes, materials — the variant selector should work correctly on mobile, and selecting a variant should update the product image to show that specific variant. A buyer who selects "Forest Green" and the image stays on "Navy Blue" experiences a disconnect that generates doubt about whether they're actually purchasing what they selected.

[ ] Product descriptions answer the buyer's three questions (High priority) Every product description should clearly answer: What is this? Who is it for? Why is it worth this price? Generic manufacturer descriptions — copied from a supplier sheet — typically answer only the first question. A buyer-oriented description answers all three. For PPC traffic specifically, buyers who click through from a Shopping ad already know the category and approximate price — they need the description to answer "is this the right version of this product for me?"

Section 3: Offer and Pricing Clarity

Confusion about what is being offered, at what price, under what conditions, is a silent conversion killer. These items ensure your offer is unambiguous before paid traffic arrives.

[ ] The main offer is clear within 5 seconds of landing on any PPC destination page (Critical) Have someone unfamiliar with your store open your primary landing page and, after 5 seconds, describe what is being offered and at what price. If they can't, the offer clarity is insufficient for cold paid traffic. This 5-second test is a more reliable readiness signal than any analytics metric.

[ ] There are no hidden costs that appear only at checkout (Critical) Hidden costs — shipping charges, processing fees, taxes that weren't visible on the product page — are the single largest cause of checkout abandonment globally. Be explicit about total cost before the buyer reaches checkout. If you charge for shipping, show it on the product page. If you offer free shipping above a threshold, state the threshold prominently. Surprises at checkout are conversion killers that no amount of campaign optimization can compensate for.

[ ] Promotional offers match exactly between ad and landing page (Critical for promotional campaigns) If your ad promotes a discount, a bundle offer, or a free shipping promotion, the landing page must display that exact offer prominently — ideally in the headline. An ad that says "20% Off All Bedding This Weekend" landing on a page with no visible discount and no weekend context creates an immediate trust failure. The buyer questions whether the offer is real, whether the page is correct, and whether the ad was misleading. All three questions generate exits.

[ ] Pricing for all variants is visible without selecting each one individually (Medium priority) If your product has size or material variants with different prices, buyers should not have to click through each variant to discover the price range. Show the price range ("From $89") or make variant pricing visible in the selector. Forcing price discovery through multiple clicks creates friction and gives the impression that pricing is being obscured.

Section 4: Trust and Credibility Signals

These signals answer the buyer's fundamental question before committing money to an unknown online store: "Is this business real and will it take care of me?"

[ ] A real person or team is visible on the About page with name and photo (Critical) Anonymous stores — no founder name, no team photo, no city or state — pattern-match to low-trust operators and ghost sellers. For any Shopify store asking buyers to hand over credit card information, human visibility is a prerequisite for trust. At minimum: a founder photo, a first and last name, and a one-sentence credential or company origin story on the About page. Link the About page from your product pages and checkout.

[ ] Business contact information is visible and functional (Critical) A working email address, a phone number, and a city/state location (Roseville, CA is a trust signal for California buyers — it establishes local credibility) should be findable within 10 seconds of landing on your store. Buyers who can't find contact information before purchasing often don't purchase. This is especially true for first-time buyers of products above $75.

[ ] Payment trust badges are displayed near the checkout button (High priority) Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Shop Pay, and Apple Pay logos near your Add to Cart or Buy Now button signal that the checkout process is standard and secure. These logos are so universally recognized that buyers notice their absence more than their presence. Shopify themes often include these by default — verify they are visible on mobile, where they sometimes disappear in responsive layouts.

[ ] SSL/security trust signal is visible on checkout pages (High priority) Shopify handles SSL on checkout by default, but ensure the padlock icon is visible in the browser address bar on your checkout pages. Some custom checkout modifications or domain configurations can inadvertently surface a security warning specifically on checkout even when the rest of the store is secure.

[ ] Social proof is above the fold or within one scroll on mobile (High priority) Review count, star rating, or a featured testimonial should appear within the first one to one-and-a-half viewports on mobile for your primary PPC destination pages. Social proof buried below multiple product images, long descriptions, and shipping information is social proof most mobile buyers never see. Shopify themes vary significantly in where they place review widgets — verify position on mobile specifically.

Section 5: Checkout Readiness

Buyers who reach your checkout have made a purchase decision. The checkout's job is to not talk them out of it. These items ensure your checkout completes sales rather than creating last-minute friction that reverses them.

[ ] Guest checkout is enabled (Critical) Requiring account creation before purchase is one of the most conversion-damaging settings in Shopify. Buyers who arrived from a paid ad to buy a specific product do not want to create an account first. Enable guest checkout in Shopify → Settings → Checkout → Customer accounts → set to "Accounts are optional." This single change can lift checkout completion rates by 5–15% for stores where it was previously required.

[ ] Checkout page loads in under 2 seconds on mobile (Critical) Checkout is the highest-stakes moment in the buyer's journey. A slow-loading checkout page at this stage generates anxiety — buyers question whether the transaction is processing, whether the site is reliable, whether they should proceed. Shopify's hosted checkout is generally fast, but custom checkout apps, additional tracking scripts, and upsell widgets added to checkout can introduce significant load time. Test specifically.

[ ] Multiple payment methods are available (High priority) Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal alongside standard credit cards are the payment methods California buyers expect. Stores offering only standard credit card input miss conversion opportunities from buyers who prefer one-click payment methods — which are disproportionately used on mobile. Shopify Payments enables most of these with minimal setup.

[ ] Abandoned cart recovery is configured (High priority) Shopify's built-in abandoned cart email sequence should be active before any paid traffic campaign launches. Set it to trigger at 1 hour, 24 hours, and 72 hours after abandonment. This complements your Google Ads dynamic remarketing campaigns — email reaches buyers who gave you their email at checkout; remarketing reaches everyone else. Together they recover a meaningful percentage of the 70% cart abandonment rate inherent to all ecommerce. For setup details, see our cart abandonment remarketing guide →.

[ ] Order confirmation page fires correctly and thanks the buyer (Critical) Beyond being good customer experience, the order confirmation page is where your Google Ads purchase conversion tag and GA4 purchase event fire. If the confirmation page has any errors — wrong URL, conditional display, missing order data — your conversion tracking breaks. Test a complete checkout with a real or discounted order before launching campaigns.

Section 6: Campaign-Side Readiness

These final items are on the advertising side rather than the store side — but they're part of launch readiness because launching campaigns without them produces data that can't be trusted or optimized.

[ ] Google Ads and Google Merchant Center accounts are linked (Critical) Shopping campaigns cannot run without the accounts being linked. Verify under Google Ads → Tools → Linked accounts → Google Merchant Center. The link should show as "Active."

[ ] Conversion window matches your typical purchase cycle (High priority) Google Ads defaults to a 30-day click conversion window. For impulse purchases under $50, this is longer than needed. For high-consideration products over $200, it may not be long enough. Set your conversion window in Google Ads → Tools → Conversions → your purchase conversion action → Attribution settings to match how long your buyers typically take from first click to purchase. Mismatched windows either over-credit or under-credit your campaigns.

[ ] Negative keyword list is built before campaigns launch (High priority) Launching Shopping or Search campaigns without a negative keyword list is launching without a filter. At minimum, add: "free," "DIY," "jobs," "careers," "wholesale" (if DTC only), and any competitor brand names you don't want to appear for. For California-specific campaigns, add geographic negatives for states or regions you don't ship to. Every irrelevant click your campaigns absorb in the first 30 days is money spent building data you don't want.

[ ] Budget is sufficient to generate meaningful data within 30 days (High priority) Google's automated bidding strategies need 30–50 conversions in 30 days to optimize effectively. If your budget is too small to generate that many conversions, you'll be stuck in permanent learning phase. A rough guide: if your target CPA is $40 and you need 30 conversions, you need a minimum $1,200/month budget just to exit learning phase. If your budget is below this threshold, use manual CPC bidding until your conversion volume grows.

How to Score Your Store

Work through all items above and note how many are:

• Checked (ready): No action needed

• Partially done: Needs improvement before launch

• Unchecked (missing): Needs to be built before launch

Scoring guide:

StatusRecommendationAll critical items checkedSafe to launch campaigns1–2 critical items uncheckedFix those items first — they will suppress conversion rate regardless of spend3+ critical items uncheckedDo not launch. Build the foundation first. Paid traffic into an unready store generates data you can't use and results you can't replicate once the store is fixed.All items checkedRun the 5-second offer clarity test and a full mobile checkout test as final verification

When to Get a Professional Assessment

This checklist gives you the framework to evaluate your own store. But there are two situations where a professional eye is worth significantly more than self-assessment:

Situation 1: You've already launched campaigns and they're underperforming. Self-assessment after the fact is limited because you're evaluating your own work against a standard you wrote. A professional can identify what you normalized — the things you've seen so many times you stopped seeing them as problems.

Situation 2: The stakes are high enough that you don't want to test and learn. If you're launching with a $3,000+ monthly budget, or if your store's revenue target depends on paid traffic working from launch, the cost of three months of suboptimal performance while you diagnose and fix issues is higher than the cost of a pre-launch professional audit.

For both situations, a Conversion Second Opinion → is specifically designed for this: a professional review of your landing page, Shopify store, or funnel — a Loom video walkthrough, a clear verdict, a Priority Fix Map, and a 14-day execution order — delivered in 72 hours for $997. It is exactly the assessment this checklist points toward when self-evaluation reaches its limits.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to complete this checklist for a typical Shopify store? For a store where the technical foundation (GA4, Google Ads tracking, Merchant Center) is already in place, working through the product page, offer clarity, trust, and checkout sections takes most owners 2–4 hours. If the technical foundation needs to be built from scratch, budget a full day or engage a Shopify developer for the tracking setup specifically — incorrect tracking is worse than no tracking because it produces data you act on incorrectly.

Do I need all 30+ items checked before I can launch any campaigns? Focus on the items marked "Critical" first. Those are the items that will suppress your conversion rate regardless of campaign quality if they're missing. High-priority items improve performance meaningfully but won't completely block conversion. Medium-priority items are worth addressing before you scale, but less urgent at launch.

My store has been live for two years. Is this checklist still relevant? Yes — and often more relevant than for new stores. Stores that have been live for two or more years accumulate technical debt: apps that were installed and forgotten, tracking configurations that broke during a theme update, return policies that were written in year one and never revisited. A readiness audit of an established store frequently surfaces issues that have been silently suppressing conversion rate for months.

I checked everything and my conversion rate is still below 1.5%. What next? If the checklist is complete and conversion rate is still underperforming, the issue is likely in one of two places: offer positioning (the product or price isn't matching what the traffic source's audience wants) or message-to-page mismatch (the ad is generating clicks from people who don't convert when they arrive, because the page doesn't deliver what the ad promised). Both of these require a diagnostic review of the specific page-ad combination rather than a general store audit. That's precisely what our Conversion Second Opinion → addresses.

Does this checklist apply to Performance Max campaigns specifically? Yes, and with extra emphasis on the tracking items. Performance Max campaigns optimize across six channels simultaneously, and they rely heavily on conversion signal quality to allocate budget effectively. Poor conversion tracking in a PMax campaign means the algorithm is optimizing toward bad data. All the tracking items in Section 1 and Section 6 apply with particular urgency before launching Performance Max. For the full PMax context, see our Performance Max guide →.

Ready to Launch — or Ready to Fix?

If you've worked through this checklist and your store passes, you're in a strong position to build and launch paid campaigns. The framework for what those campaigns should look like — for Sacramento and Bay Area Shopify stores specifically — is in our complete Shopify PPC guide →.

If you've worked through this checklist and found gaps you're not sure how to prioritize — or if you want a professional second set of eyes before committing significant ad spend — book a 15-minute fit check with Stan Consulting →

We serve Shopify stores across Sacramento, the Bay Area, Roseville, and California.

Stan Tscherenkow is the founder of Stan Consulting LLC, based in Roseville, CA. He holds an MBA from Universität Trier (Germany) and a marketing degree from Loughborough University (UK), and has 15+ years of experience in marketing consulting across the US, Europe, and Asia. Connect on LinkedIn or visit stantscherenkow.com.