Ecommerce Launch Checklist: Payments, GST/HST, Shipping, Legal and Test Orders

The short answer

An ecommerce launch checklist comes down to six areas you must prove work before the first real customer arrives: payments, taxes, shipping, legal pages, tracking and a round of test orders that exercises all of them. Most launch failures are not design problems. They are a tax rate missing for one province, a shipping zone that quietly excludes half the country, or a purchase event that never reaches analytics, discovered three weeks and several thousand dollars of ad spend later.

How to use this ecommerce launch checklist

Work through the six areas in order, because each depends on the one before it. Give yourself three weeks: two for setup, one for testing and fixing. The checklist is written with Shopify in mind because that is what most Canadian small stores use, but every item applies to WooCommerce or a custom store too. If you are still choosing, our Shopify vs WooCommerce comparison covers the Canadian specifics.

Tax and consumer-protection points below describe the rules in general terms. This is general information, not legal advice; confirm your situation with an accountant.

1. Payments: the methods, the fees, the failure cases

• Activate the main processor and finish verification. Shopify Payments or Stripe will ask for business details, a bank account and identity documents. Start this on day one; payouts can be held until it is complete.
• Turn on express wallets. Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal. In Baymard Institute's abandonment research, 19% of shoppers who left a checkout did so because they did not trust the site with their card, and 9% because there were not enough payment methods. Wallets answer both.
• Know your rates. As of October 2026, Shopify Payments in Canada charges 2.8% plus 30¢ per online card sale on Basic, with higher rates for Amex and international cards. If you use a third-party gateway instead, Shopify adds 2% on Basic. Budget the percentage on the full order, including tax and shipping.
• Decide what happens on failure. A declined card (10% of abandonments in Baymard's list) should show a clear message and let the customer retry with another method, not reload a blank page.

2. Taxes: Canadian GST/HST basics most new stores get wrong

Three rules cover most situations, all from the Canada Revenue Agency.

When you must register. You are a "small supplier" and do not have to charge GST/HST while your worldwide taxable sales stay at or under $30,000 across four consecutive calendar quarters. The CRA's page on when to register and start charging describes two tests: exceed $30,000 in a single quarter and your effective registration date is no later than the sale that pushed you over; exceed it over four quarters and you stop being a small supplier at the end of the month after that quarter. Either way you have 29 days from the effective date to register. You can also register voluntarily below the threshold, which lets you claim input tax credits on what you buy.

Which rate to charge. For goods you ship, the rate follows the delivery address, not your location. The CRA's place of supply examples are explicit: a mattress sold in Vancouver and delivered to Toronto is charged Ontario's 13% HST; a laptop sold in Winnipeg and delivered to Halifax is charged Nova Scotia's HST. Provinces with HST (Ontario and the Atlantic provinces) bundle everything into one rate. Elsewhere you charge 5% GST federally, and provincial sales tax (PST in British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, QST in Quebec) is a separate registration with its own thresholds.

Who files. Your platform calculates; you remit. Shopify's Canadian tax documentation says it plainly: Shopify does not remit or file your taxes for you. Turn on automatic tax calculation, enter each registration number as you obtain it, and set a calendar reminder for your filing periods.

Launch-day test: place orders shipping to Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec and check the tax line on each.

3. Shipping and the delivery promise

• Zones cover every place you intend to sell, and nowhere else. A common launch bug is a "Canada" zone that excludes the territories, or a rest-of-world zone with no rates, which makes checkout fail silently for those addresses.
• Rates match reality. Weigh your top products boxed, pull real carrier quotes to Vancouver, Toronto and Halifax, and set rates or a free-shipping threshold you can afford. Baymard found 20% of abandoners left because delivery was too slow and 13% because the return policy was unsatisfactory, so put a delivery estimate and the return window on the product page.
• Returns. Decide who pays return shipping, how refunds are issued and how long it takes, and write it down where customers see it before they buy.

4. Legal pages and consent

• Privacy policy. Canada's federal privacy law, PIPEDA, includes an openness principle: the Office of the Privacy Commissioner summarises it as making your policies and practices for handling personal information detailed, public and easy to find. Say what you collect, why, who you share it with (payment processor, shipping carrier, email tool) and how to ask for deletion.
• Terms of sale, shipping policy, refund policy. Shopify generates templates; edit them so they match what you actually do.
• All-in pricing. Do not advertise a price that cannot be paid because of a mandatory fee added later. The Competition Bureau describes this practice as drip pricing and says it raises concerns under the Competition Act unless the extra charge is a government one such as sales tax.
• Email consent. Your newsletter pop-up and the checkout marketing checkbox must collect consent that satisfies CASL: unticked by default, clear about what people will receive, with your business identification in every message. Our plain-English CASL guide covers the details.

5. Tracking and the technical pass

• Analytics purchase event. GA4 connected through your platform's integration, with the purchase event carrying order value, currency and items. Verify it in the real-time report with a test order.
• Ad pixels. Meta, Google Ads and any others, firing on view, add-to-cart and purchase, with values. Wrong purchase values at launch poison every campaign decision afterwards.
• Search Console and sitemap. Verify the domain, submit the XML sitemap, and remove the "noindex" or password that protected the store during the build. Forgetting this is the single most common reason a new store has no Google traffic a month later.
• Redirects if you are replacing an old site. Every old URL with traffic or links needs a 301 to its closest new equivalent. The website redesign checklist explains how to map them.
• Speed on a phone. Measure your product template against Google's Core Web Vitals targets (a Largest Contentful Paint of 2.5 seconds or less at the 75th percentile, per web.dev). Compress images and remove apps you are not using before launch, not after.

6. Test orders: the launch-day ritual

Use real cards and refund yourself afterwards; test mode does not exercise payouts, taxes or emails the way a live order does. Run this matrix and tick each cell:

• One order per province group: Ontario (HST), British Columbia (GST plus PST), Alberta (GST only), Quebec (GST plus QST). Check the tax lines against the CRA rate for the delivery province.
• One order per payment method: card, Shop Pay or equivalent, Apple Pay or Google Pay on a phone, PayPal.
• One order with a discount code, one with a gift card, one that crosses the free-shipping threshold and one that does not.
• One order for an item with a single unit in stock, then confirm the product shows as sold out.
• One full refund and one partial refund, and confirm the customer email for each.
• Open every confirmation email on a phone. Click every link in them.
• Check the GA4 real-time report and your ad platform's event tester for each purchase.

Then soft-launch: open the store to a small list of friendly customers for a few days before you spend on ads. When you do hire help for a launch, ask for this checklist back as a signed-off document. We hand one over with every ecommerce build, and any competent builder should be willing to do the same.

Key takeaways

• Payments, taxes, shipping, legal, tracking, test orders: in that order, because each depends on the last.
• GST/HST registration is required once taxable sales pass $30,000 over four quarters, and the rate you charge follows the delivery province.
• Your platform calculates tax; you file and remit it.
• Show shipping cost, delivery time and the return window before checkout; late fees are both a conversion killer and a Competition Act concern.
• Place live test orders to four provinces with every payment method, then soft-launch before you buy ads.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a GST/HST number before I launch an online store in Canada?

Not until your taxable sales exceed $30,000 over four consecutive calendar quarters (or in a single quarter), after which you have 29 days to register. Many stores register voluntarily from the start so they can claim input tax credits on inventory, software and shipping. Ask an accountant which is better for you.

What legal pages does an ecommerce site need?

At minimum: a privacy policy, terms of sale, a shipping policy and a refund or return policy. If you collect emails for marketing, the opt-in must satisfy CASL. Prices must include all mandatory fees other than government taxes.

How many test orders should I place before launch?

Enough to cover every combination that changes the outcome: each tax structure (Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec cover the four in Canada), each payment method, a discount, a gift card, a sold-out item, and a full and partial refund. That is usually 12 to 15 orders, refunded afterwards.

Sources

1. When to register for and start charging the GST/HST — Canada Revenue Agency, accessed October 2026
2. Charge and collect the GST/HST: which rate to charge — Canada Revenue Agency, accessed October 2026
3. Canadian taxes — Shopify Help Center, accessed October 2026
4. Shopify Pricing: Find the Right Plan for Your Business — Shopify Canada, accessed October 2026
5. 50 Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics — Baymard Institute, updated September 22, 2025
6. Drip pricing — Competition Bureau Canada, modified August 24, 2026
7. PIPEDA fair information principles — Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
8. Web Vitals — web.dev (Google), accessed October 2026

How Flowmatix can help

We put this into practice for businesses in Toronto and around the world through our E-Commerce Development, shopify development services. Want to know what it would take for your business? Get a personalised quote in about 3 minutes.