The online store launch checklist for Pakistani sellers

Most launch problems are not technical. They are a payment method nobody tested, a delivery zone with no rate, a returns policy that doesn't say who pays, or a phone number that rings a SIM sitting in a drawer. Each one is small, and each one shows up on a real order, in front of a real buyer, at the worst moment.

This checklist puts everything in the order you need it: the decisions to make before you build, the build itself, the testing that is easiest to skip, launch week, and your first month. Work through it top to bottom and tick things off. Where a step needs more than a line, it links to the guide or help page that covers it.

It is written for selling in Pakistan, so it assumes cash on delivery, a courier rather than the post, and buyers who may want to message you on WhatsApp before they buy.

Before you build

The store is the easy part. These decide whether it makes money.

1. Choose products you can restock, and know how long your supplier takes to deliver.
2. Work out your landed cost: what each product costs at your door, not the supplier's price.
3. Set prices from real costs, including packaging, delivery, returns, gateway fees and ads, using how to price products online.
4. Start with a focused range you can photograph and describe properly, not everything you could sell.
5. Shoot five photos per product: the item, its scale, a detail, the item in use and the label. Here is how, without a photographer.
6. Measure everything: garment measurements in inches, product dimensions, and the weight once packed.
7. Pick a store name, and check that the domain and the Instagram handle are free; see choosing a domain name.
8. Get a business number on WhatsApp that you will keep for years.
9. Gather the business details payment and courier accounts ask for: ID, address, and a bank account in the matching name.
10. Apply for EasyPaisa and card merchant accounts now. Approval is outside your control, and COD works while you wait.
11. Shortlist couriers for your top destinations and plan a short test, as in how to choose a courier.
12. Buy packaging for your first few weeks of orders.

The phone number matters more than it looks. It goes on your store, your courier labels and every message a buyer receives, and changing it later breaks all three at once.

If you haven't sold the product anywhere yet, sell it in DMs first. A week of real orders from strangers teaches you more than a month of planning; the reasoning is in how to sell online in Pakistan.

Build the store

If you build on Storecrafto, the dashboard has its own setup checklist that ticks itself off as you go: first product, the free AI homepage build (one per store), theme, AI Studio, payments, delivery and domain. Until you add real products, the editor fills its preview with sample products so you can judge the design. The list below is wider, because it includes the decisions no setup screen can make for you.

1. Create your store. The Free plan costs nothing and every paid plan starts with a free trial, and you get a free yourstore.storecrafto.com address straight away (creating your store).
2. Connect your own domain if you have one. The SSL certificate is set up automatically (custom domains).
3. Choose a theme that suits what you sell, then set your logo, colours and fonts.
4. Add each product with its price, a full description, real measurements and every photo.
5. Set up sizes and colours as variants, each with its own stock count.
6. Put products into categories that match how your buyers shop.
7. Clean up weak photos in AI Studio, which can also draft titles, descriptions and alt text.
8. Write your policy pages for returns and exchanges, delivery, privacy and terms, in plain and specific words.
9. Put your WhatsApp number, your city and your working hours where buyers can find them.

A policy page is not paperwork. A returns policy that says how many days a buyer has, what condition items must be in, and who pays for the return delivery settles arguments before they start; writing a return and refund policy walks through it.

Set up delivery, payments and checkout

This is where launch-day problems like to hide, because none of it is visible until someone tries to pay.

1. Create shipping zones for where you deliver, each with rates that are flat, by weight or by order value.
2. Give every zone at least one rate. A zone with none blocks checkout for its cities.
3. Remember that a store with no zones at all delivers free everywhere. Set zones unless that is the plan.
4. Decide on free delivery above a threshold, and check your margin on an order just over it.
5. Give each zone a delivery time, then add a delivery estimate so buyers see when to expect their parcel.
6. Switch on Cash on Delivery.
7. Connect EasyPaisa and cards through PayFast using your own merchant accounts.
8. Add your bank details for bank transfers, and decide how you will check a transfer has landed before you ship.
9. Make one real, small payment through each digital method, and confirm the money reaches your account.
10. Check what checkout asks for. Physical orders always collect an address; for digital, booking, rental and service products, you decide.
11. Decide how you will confirm orders: the optional step that asks buyers to confirm by email, and confirming COD orders on WhatsApp before you ship.
12. Add the WhatsApp chat button, pointed at a number someone actually watches.

Because the gateway accounts are yours, the money from those test payments lands in your own account, which is exactly what you are checking. Storecrafto takes 0% commission on it, and on every sale after it; the details are on the payments page.

Be conservative with the delivery times you publish. Use what your test parcels actually took, not a courier's best case. A parcel that arrives a day early makes a happy buyer; one that arrives a day late gives a COD buyer time to change their mind.

Test everything as a customer

Do it on a phone as well as a laptop. Plenty of your buyers will only ever see your store on a phone, over mobile data.

1. Place a test order with every payment method you have switched on.
2. Take one COD test order all the way through: confirm it as the buyer would, then mark it fulfilled with a courier and tracking number.
3. Read every email the buyer receives, and every WhatsApp update if your plan sends them, and check each one makes sense.
4. Look the order up on your store's tracking page, the way a buyer would.
5. Print a packing slip and pack one real parcel from start to finish.
6. Cancel one test order and record a refund on a paid one, so you know both before a real buyer needs them (refunds and cancellations).
7. Record a manual order, exactly as you would for a sale taken on WhatsApp.
8. Browse the whole store on a phone, from the homepage to a category, a product, the cart and checkout, and tap everything.
9. Load it on mobile data rather than Wi-Fi, and notice how long the first page takes to appear.
10. Ask two people who have never seen the store to buy something while you watch without helping.
11. Archive any product you made for testing, and cancel the test orders so none look like real ones.

A refund recorded on an order doesn't move money by itself. The money goes back through your own gateway or in cash, so learn how your gateway's refunds work now, not on the day a buyer is waiting. And if something confuses your two test buyers, it will confuse strangers. Fix it before launch, not after the first complaint.

Launch week

Your first orders are most likely to come from people who already know you, so start there. The full sequence, from friends to strangers, is in how to get your first 100 orders.

1. Tell the audience you already have, on Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp status and broadcast lists; selling on Instagram covers the posts.
2. Put the store link in your Instagram bio and your WhatsApp Business profile.
3. Run a launch offer with a clear end date: a discount code, or free delivery above a threshold.
4. Switch on the welcome popup, so visitors who aren't ready to buy leave their email.
5. Answer every message quickly. Launch week is when first impressions are made.
6. Confirm COD orders and dispatch fast. Your first orders become your first reviews.
7. After each delivery, ask the buyer for a review; only buyers who ordered can leave one (collecting reviews).
8. Hold off on paid ads until organic orders show the store converts (ads for a small store).

Your first month

The first month is for learning what actually happens, and fixing the gaps before they turn into habits. Daily and weekly are different jobs: orders, confirmations and dispatch are daily, while stock, returns, payouts and analytics are weekly. Give the weekly jobs a fixed day, so they actually happen.

1. Check new orders every day, and confirm COD orders before they ship.
2. Mark each order fulfilled with the courier and tracking number as it leaves.
3. Reconcile each courier payout against your delivered COD orders.
4. Log every return with the product, the reason and the city; how to reduce COD returns explains what to do with the log.
5. Count your stock weekly against the store's figures, as in inventory management.
6. Look at your analytics each week: what sold, what is stuck, and where buyers drop off.
7. See what your abandoned carts hold. Reminder emails with a resume link go out on their own (abandoned-cart recovery).
8. Verify your store with Google Search Console and Bing from your settings, and submit your sitemap (search engines).
9. Work through your SEO score from the top, fixing what it lists.
10. Turn the questions buyers keep asking into answers on your product pages.
11. At the end of the month, compare the plan with what happened: margin after returns, courier performance, best-sellers.

If the month-end numbers surprise you, good: that is what tracking them is for. And if you get stuck on anything in the store itself, a human reads every message sent to support.

The short version

• Most launch problems are untested basics, not technical failures.
• Know your restock time and your real margin before you build anything.
• Give every delivery zone a rate, and remember that no zones means free delivery everywhere.
• Test every payment method with a real, small payment before launch.
• Walk one COD order through confirmation, fulfilment and tracking yourself.
• Test on a phone, on mobile data, with people who have never seen the store.
• Launch to the audience you already have, with an offer that ends.
• In the first month, check orders daily, and count stock, returns and payouts weekly.