The Shopify Store Setup Checklist for New UK Brands
Setting up a Shopify store is deceptively quick — you can have something live in an afternoon. Setting it up so you don't have to unpick it in six months is the harder, more valuable job. This is the checklist I work through with new UK brands: the decisions that are cheap to get right at the start and expensive to fix later.
It's ordered roughly the way I'd tackle it. You won't need a developer for most of it — but I've flagged the points where getting it wrong quietly costs you money.
1. Foundations: plan, domain, and store settings
Start on the cheapest plan that doesn't block you — you can upgrade the day it pays for itself. Connect your own domain (not the .myshopify.com one) before you do anything else, because changing it later means redirects and lost link equity. Set your store currency to GBP, your address and timezone correctly, and your customer-facing store name and email so transactional messages don't look like spam.
2. Tax and shipping — the UK specifics
This is where UK stores most often get it wrong. Decide whether your prices include VAT (most B2C UK stores show VAT-inclusive prices) and configure tax accordingly. If you're VAT-registered, set that up properly from the start. For shipping, build real rate zones — UK, then EU and rest-of-world if you ship there — rather than a single flat rate that either loses you money on heavy orders or scares off light ones. Free-shipping thresholds are a conversion lever; pick one deliberately, don't default to it.
3. Products and collections, structured for growth
Model your catalogue the way you'll want to merchandise it in a year, not just today. Use variants for genuine options (size, colour) and separate products for genuinely different items. Set up automated collections with sensible rules so new products file themselves. Write product titles and descriptions for humans first and search second — and fill in the meta fields; "Untitled" pages are a wasted ranking opportunity.
4. Payments and checkout
Turn on Shopify Payments (and Shop Pay) plus the wallets your customers actually use — Apple Pay and Google Pay convert well on mobile, which is where most UK traffic is. Keep the checkout short: every extra field costs you completed orders. Resist the urge to bolt on five upsell apps before you've made your first hundred sales; a cluttered checkout converts worse than a clean one.
5. Apps: install fewer than you think
Every app adds scripts, monthly cost, and a potential point of failure. Before installing one, check whether Shopify now does it natively — increasingly it does. Be especially careful with anything that injects into the checkout or the theme. A lean app stack is faster, cheaper, and far easier to debug when something breaks.
6. Analytics and SEO basics
Connect Google Analytics and Search Console on day one — you can't improve what you never measured, and the historical data is worth having from the start. Mark your real conversions (purchases, and lead forms if you have them) as key events so you can attribute what's working. Submit your sitemap, and make sure your canonical URLs and HTTPS are clean so search engines see one tidy version of each page.
7. Pre-launch checklist
Before you remove the password page: place a full test order end-to-end (and refund it), check the store on a real phone, confirm transactional emails arrive and read well, add your policies (returns, privacy, terms), and verify your contact route works. Launch is not the finish line — it's the point where you start learning from real traffic.
When to bring in help
You can do most of this yourself. It's worth bringing in a developer when the cost of a mistake gets high: a custom theme build, a migration from another platform, checkout customisation on Plus, or a subscription programme. Those are the areas where the "afternoon setup" approach quietly creates problems that take far longer to undo.
Zerglo helps UK brands set up and scale on Shopify — from a clean first launch to custom development and local store-setup support. If you'd like a second pair of eyes before you launch, get in touch — we're happy to tell you what you've already got right.