Getting Started
Going Live: Publish Checks, Policies and Privacy
What BestWebby checks when you switch a storefront on, how to review your store policies, how the cookie banner affects your store statistics, and the per-store voice search switch.
Overview
Switching a storefront on is one toggle on Channels → Sites. This guide covers what happens around that toggle: the checks BestWebby runs before a site goes live, the policy pages every store shows, how the cookie banner decides what your store statistics count, and the voice search switch each store has.
Going live is part of every plan.
Before you go live: preview your store
Your store is on its yourshop.bestwebby.com address while you set it up, and it is not public there. To see it the way a shopper will, before you go live:
- Sites → Preview yourshop.bestwebby.com opens the whole store.
- On a product's edit page, Open in store opens that product's page. If a shopper would not see the product yet, it tells you why: it is waiting for review, it is hidden on that site, or it has no price there.
A preview opens in your browser only, for 12 hours, with a banner across the top. Search engines are told not to index it. Checkout, appointment booking and subscribing are off, and shopping agents are not shown the store, so nobody can pay for anything while the store is not open. Leave preview in the banner ends it. On a domain of your own, the preview works once the domain is verified on Settings → Domains.
Products show in the preview once they are on the store: click Publish to store on the Products list, which works on a store that is not live yet. Pages you publish in the site builder show too, and the builder's own Preview button opens the page you are editing as a private preview while the store is not live.
Step 1: Switch the site on
A store never goes live on its own. When your domain, its certificate and your email are all set up, the site shows Ready to publish on Channels → Sites and we tell you; it stays offline until you switch it on.
Go to Channels → Sites and turn on the toggle next to the site. Before anything changes, BestWebby checks two kinds of thing.
What has to be in place. The store cannot go live until each of these is done, and the dialog offers no way past them:
| Requirement | What it means |
|---|---|
| The store is on your own domain | A yourshop.bestwebby.com address is where your store is set up; it cannot go live. Stores go live on a domain you own, because your order and support email sends from that domain. Connect yours on Settings → Domains and it moves this store onto it. |
| Your domain is verified | The TXT record on Settings → Domains proves the domain is yours. |
| Your domain has a certificate | We issue it once the domain's A record points at us. Without it, shoppers would get a browser error. |
| Your email is set up | Order receipts and replies to customers send from your own address, never ours. Your email records have to be published on Settings → Email. See Custom domains and branded email. |
Each one links to the screen that fixes it, and the dialog only offers Close until they are done.
What would get in a shopper's way. These do not stop you publishing. In the order a shopper would hit them:
| Check | What it means |
|---|---|
| No products are published | Shoppers would find an empty store. Publish at least one product first. |
| Payments are not connected | Shoppers can browse but cannot pay at checkout until you connect your Stripe account. On a store that sells in Canadian dollars, turning on Interac e-Transfer also lets them pay. |
| Card payments are not connected | You offer Interac e-Transfer but have not connected Stripe, so shoppers can pay by e-Transfer and not by card. (BestWebby is not endorsed by or affiliated with Interac Corp.) |
| Every order ships at no shipping charge | You sell physical products but have no active shipping zone, so checkout charges $0 shipping on every order. Add a zone and a rate, or a $0 rate if you mean to charge nothing. |
| Shoppers cannot check out for delivery | You have a shipping zone but no active rate in it, so checkout refuses every order that needs delivering. |
| Store policies not reviewed | Your refund, shipping, privacy and terms pages go live with the store. |
| No contact email for shoppers | Order emails would go out without a support address. |
Each item links straight to the screen that fixes it. You can choose Not yet and fix them first, or Publish anyway and fix them after. When nothing is missing, the dialog says so and you just click Publish. If the site cannot be switched on, the dialog says why and the toggle stays off rather than showing a site as live when it is not.
Step 2: Review your store policies
Every store shows a privacy policy, refund policy, terms of service and shipping policy from the day it opens. They are built from your store name and the returns, shipping and payments text you write in Shop settings, so a store that never fills those in goes live with policies that say nothing about how it actually trades.
- Go to Settings → Legal and open Your store's policies.
- Read each policy, then add your own returns, shipping and payments terms in Shop settings.
- To use your own wording for terms or privacy, publish a page of that type in your site's Pages. Your page then replaces the standard one everywhere it is linked.
- Click I've reviewed these.
Review your store policies is a step on your get-started checklist. It ticks itself once you have saved your own policy text or pages, or when you click I've reviewed these.
Step 3: Understand the cookie banner
Your storefront asks each shopper before measuring anything beyond what the store needs to work. Cart, sign-in and checkout are essential and are always on.
- Store statistics wait for a yes. The visits and purchases in your store statistics, and Google Analytics if you added a Measurement ID, count only shoppers who choose Accept all or turn on Analytics under Preferences. Shoppers who choose Reject non-essential are not counted, so your visitor numbers cover the shoppers who allowed it.
- Marketing appears only with an ad pixel. The banner offers a Marketing choice only when a Meta or TikTok pixel is set in Settings → General → Tracking. Ad pixels, and purchase details sent to Meta's Conversions API, are used only for shoppers who allow it. A shopper's earlier yes never covers a pixel you add later.
- Shoppers can change their mind at any time from the Cookie preferences link in your storefront footer.
The banner is on for every store by default. The Cookie consent banner card on Settings → General → Tracking lets you turn it off, which counts and tracks every visitor without asking. Only do that if you are sure none of your visitors are in a region that requires consent; that decision is yours as the store owner. A choice a shopper has already recorded is still honoured.
Your store's privacy policy explains the store statistics to shoppers automatically.
Step 4: Decide on voice search
Each storefront has its own Voice search switch on Channels → Sites. When it is on, shoppers can search your store by speaking, and the store's privacy policy mentions it automatically. It is off until you turn it on.
Voice search also has to be enabled for stores on the platform. If it is not yet, the Sites screen tells you so; your choice is kept and takes effect as soon as it is.
Optional: have BestWebby check your business identity
You can ask BestWebby to check your business identity from Settings → Business → Business identity check. A member of BestWebby staff will ask you for an official registration document, such as your certificate of incorporation or business name registration, and look your business up themselves in the government registry it is registered with.
When the legal name on the document and in the registry match, your storefront shows a short line in its footer, at checkout and on the order confirmation page:
Business identity checked by BestWebby on October 18, 2026: Maple Goods Inc.
It links to a page that tells shoppers exactly what was checked (that the business is registered under that legal name) and what was not: it is not a review of your products, delivery, service or refunds, it is not a guarantee, and it gives shoppers no buyer protection.
- Only BestWebby staff can add or remove it. You can ask for a review; nothing you change in settings can turn it on.
- Nothing is shown until it is checked. A store without the check shows no line at all, never "not verified".
- We keep what we checked, not your documents. We record the legal name, registration number, registry and the kind of document seen; we do not keep a copy of the document.
- It can be removed, with the reason sent to you, if the registration lapses or the details turn out to be wrong. You can then ask again.
Before your first refund
If you switch on two-factor authentication (Settings → General → Security), every refund asks for a fresh 6-digit code from your authenticator app. That covers refunding an order or a booking, approving a refund or store credit on a return, refunding a sale at the register, and approving a refund suggested in the Inbox or on Home. One code covers further protected actions for five minutes. Team members without two-factor authentication are not asked.
What's next
- Getting Started if you are still adding products and payments
- Storefront prices if you run more than one storefront
- Custom domains to serve your store from your own domain