The Pre-Launch Checklist: 12 Things to Check Before You Share Your Link

Your store is built, your products are uploaded, and your finger is hovering over the post button. Stop for ten minutes first. The gap between "looks done" and "actually works" is where most first-week refund requests and awkward DMs come from. Before store.fan/yourname goes into a single bio, run through this list like you're the customer — because in about an hour, a stranger with a credit card will be.

1. Buy your own product with real money

Not a test mode, not a $0 coupon — an actual purchase, even if it's your cheapest item. Use a card that isn't linked to your business account if you can, so you see the real checkout flow with zero shortcuts. This single test catches more launch-day disasters than every other item on this list combined.

2. Confirm the download link actually arrives

After payment, you should land on a page with your file ready on-screen, and a confirmation email should hit your inbox within a minute or two. Check both. Then open the file itself — not just the folder it's zipped in. A broken PDF or a template saved in the wrong format is invisible to you until a customer finds it first.

• Does the on-screen download button work on the first click, not the third?
• Did the email land in your primary inbox, not spam? If it went to spam for you, it will for others too.
• Does the actual file open cleanly — no corrupted export, no missing pages, no placeholder text left in from your draft?

3. Check the mobile experience, not just desktop

Here's the uncomfortable truth: the overwhelming majority of your traffic is going to arrive from a phone, tapping your link straight out of an Instagram or TikTok bio. If you built and previewed your store on a laptop, you've only tested the version almost nobody will see.

Pull out your phone, open your store fresh (not from a saved session), and actually try to buy something. Look for the small stuff: does your cover photo crop somewhere awkward, is your product title getting cut off, can you actually tap the buy button without it hiding behind your keyboard?

4. Verify your payout connection is actually live

Connecting Stripe or adding a PayPal email during setup is only step one. Go back into settings and confirm the connection shows as active, not pending. If you connected Stripe, make sure the account details match your legal name and that you haven't left it half-verified — a pending Stripe account can quietly hold your first payout longer than you'd like on launch day.

Since payments land directly in your own account with no store.fan wallet sitting in between, this is entirely on you to get right before launch, not after.

5. Test Apple Pay and Google Pay specifically

These work automatically once your payment method is connected, but "automatic" is worth a thirty-second check anyway. Open your store on an iPhone and tap through with Apple Pay, then do the same on Android with Google Pay if you have access to one. A shocking share of impulse buys happen through these one-tap flows — if the button doesn't appear or doesn't complete, you're losing your easiest sales.

6. Read every product title and price out loud

Typos hide from your eyes but jump out the moment you read them aloud. Go through each listing and check for the boring stuff that tanks trust fast:

• Is the price what you meant it to be — no stray extra zero, no leftover placeholder like "$XX"?
• Does the product description match what's actually inside the file (right version, right number of templates, right course modules)?
• If you're running a discount code, does it actually apply the discount and not just show a banner?

7. Preview your cover photo, avatar, and theme together

Individually they might look fine. Together, a busy cover photo behind a dark theme can swallow your text, or a low-contrast avatar can disappear into your background. Open the store designer, look at the full page as a stranger would, and ask whether your name and your buy button are both instantly readable in the first two seconds.

8. If you're selling a coaching call or webinar, book yourself a slot

Delivery for calls and webinars works the same way as downloads — automatic, on-screen, and by email — but the moving part is your calendar. Go through the booking flow and confirm the time zone shown matches what you expect, the confirmation email includes a working meeting link, and the slot actually blocks off on your end so you don't get double-booked on day one.

9. Set up your customer list and inbox before, not after

Your first sale will generate your first entry in your customer list. Open it now so you know where to find it later, and check that your built-in inbox is somewhere you'll actually remember to check — nothing kills momentum like a customer's question sitting unread for four days because you didn't know replies landed there.

10. Decide what a refund or a wrong-file complaint looks like — before it happens

You don't need a legal policy page for a first launch, but you do need to know, in your own head, what you'll do if someone emails saying the file won't open or the price feels wrong. Having an answer ready means you respond in minutes instead of spiraling for an hour, which matters enormously in the first 48 hours when word of mouth is fragile.

11. Click every external or free link you added

If your store includes a free lead magnet or a link out to your newsletter, YouTube channel, or another site, click each one from your phone. Dead links and "coming soon" pages are the fastest way to make a whole store feel unfinished, even if your paid product is flawless.

12. Send it to one real person before you send it to everyone

Not a mass post. One DM to someone in your actual audience — a superfan, a friend who's been asking when you'd launch — with something like: "It's live, you're the first to see it." This does two things: it surfaces any last bug on a live audience member instead of a cold crowd, and it gives you a genuine first sale or reaction to build momentum from before the wider announcement.

The store you launch after buying from yourself once is worth more than the store you launch after staring at it for a week.— store.fan team

None of this takes more than an hour, and almost all of it can only be caught by actually walking through the buyer's path yourself — click by click, tap by tap, email by email. Do the checklist, fix what breaks, and then put store.fan/yourname everywhere. The goal isn't a perfect store. It's a store that works exactly the way you think it does, the first time a stranger tries it.