How to test my Shopify website before opening

In the admin you see every product, every variant and every setting at once, and you preview the store with your own session. A shopper arrives on one product from a link, with no session and no saved details. In some themes a sold out size still shows an add to cart button, a discount code can look applied in the cart and change nothing at checkout, and a cart drawer can cover the checkout button on a phone. The owner checks the store through the admin and misses all three, because the admin does not behave like a stranger's browser.

• Open the store in a private window, not the admin, and walk from the home page to checkout.
• Pick each variant, including the sold out ones, and check that a sold out option is not offered as available.
• Apply a discount code in the cart and at checkout, and check the total changes both times.
• Type a country and check the shipping choice matches the regions you set up.

Start where the shopper starts, on the home page, with no saved login and no cart. Find the product a shared link or an ad would send them to, read its title and price, and pick the options it offers. Add the item, open the cart, and check that it shows the same product, variant and quantity you chose. Then go to checkout and fill it in with an address you have never used in this store. Note each step where you had to guess, and each step where the number on the screen changed without a reason you could see.

Themes control how a product page looks and behaves, so two themes with the same products can show different things. Some show a sold out option as available, some keep an add to cart button active before a size is picked, and some hide the checkout button behind a cart drawer on small screens. A discount code can look accepted in the cart and then change nothing at checkout. Wrong: a sold out size that accepts a click and does nothing. Right: a sold out size shown as unavailable, and a discount that changes the total in the cart and at checkout.

The admin is built for the owner, so it shows drafts, hidden products and unpublished pages. A shopper sees only what is published, arriving as a stranger with no history with the store. A product can be live and still missing from every menu and collection, so a shopper reaches it only through a link you did not send. Test the store from the outside first, by opening it in a private window with no login, and use the admin only to fix what the shopper walk shows you.

Themes, discount codes and shipping rules change on their own schedule, and each change can break a path that worked on launch day. Rerun the same shopper path after every change, starting from the home page with no saved login, and compare the step each visitor reached. Keep the path fixed between runs, so the comparison shows the change and nothing else.