Online Store Readiness Scorecard

It's twelve statements about your store. Mark each as Yes, Partly, or Not yet, and the scorecard turns your answers into a readiness percentage and a focus list of the areas that still need work. The areas come from how to sell online in South Africa, which covers each one in full.

Nothing leaves your device and there's no email wall; the result is just for you. If you'd rather work from a tick-list, the launch checklist covers the same ground.

The maths is deliberately plain. Yes counts as one, Partly as a half, Not yet as zero, and the total becomes a percentage of twelve. No weighting is hiding in the background, so you can always see why your number sits where it does.

Use Partly properly and the score stays useful. It is for the thing you have started but not finished: a gateway connected but never tested, a returns policy written but never published. Answer as though a customer is about to test each one, because eventually one will.

Six areas, two statements each. They are the six places where South African store launches actually come apart, and none of them is about design. I have never seen a first sale lost to a heading being the wrong size. I have seen plenty lost at a checkout nobody tested.

• Payments: is your gateway (the service that takes the card or EFT payment) live and tested, and does it offer the ways your customers actually pay?
• Shipping and delivery: does checkout show real rates, and are your product weights accurate enough to produce them?
• Products and content: is your product data complete, and are the pages a nervous buyer looks for actually written?
• Legal and POPIA: POPIA is South Africa's personal information law, and it wants a privacy policy, working cookie consent, opt-in marketing, and a registered Information Officer.
• Technical and SEO: is the store on HTTPS (the padlock that encrypts the connection), with page titles, descriptions, mobile behaviour, and analytics sorted?
• Pre-launch test: has a real order gone through from the customer's side, and can you recover if something breaks?

Two statements per area is a deliberate limit. It is enough to tell a finished area from a neglected one, and short enough that you will reach the end rather than abandon it halfway.

Notice what is missing. There is no question about your logo, your colours, your homepage layout, or how modern the site feels. Those things matter, but none of them is why a first store fails to take an order.

The six areas are also roughly the order I would fix them in. Money in, goods out, then the words, the law, the plumbing, and finally a rehearsal of the whole thing from a customer's side.

Work down the twelve statements below. It takes about two minutes, and your answers stay in this browser.

The percentage is the headline, but the focus list underneath it is the part that changes your week. It names the specific statements you marked Partly or Not yet, grouped by area, so a vague worry becomes a short list of jobs.

• 85% and above, ready to launch: the structure is there. Get a second pair of eyes on the last few details, then set a date.
• 60% to 84%, almost there: a real store with a short list of gaps. Clear the focus areas in order and you have a launch.
• 35% to 59%, some gaps to close: the foundations exist but the trading essentials do not. Payments and shipping come first, always.
• Below 35%, early days: this is where most first stores sit, and it is not a failure. The focus list is now your build plan.

One caution about the top band. A high score says your store is set up correctly, not that it will sell well; those are different problems with different fixes. Selling is a traffic and trust question, covered in getting your first sales.

Every focus area maps to a guide in this hub, so the result hands you a reading order rather than a lecture. Work top down: money in, goods out, then the paperwork and the polish.

For payments, the payment gateways guide compares the local providers on fees and settlement time. For delivery, the shipping and delivery guide covers couriers and live rates at checkout.

For products, the product data formatting guide covers titles, variants, SKUs (the unique code you give each version of a product) and the weights that shipping quotes depend on. For the legal items, the POPIA for online stores guide walks through what a store actually has to do.

When it takes money correctly, delivers what it promises, and handles customer data lawfully. Everything else can be improved while you are trading. Waiting for a perfect store is the most common way a first store never opens at all.

The items I would never launch without are the boring ones: a completed test order, a working confirmation email, stated delivery timeframes, and a published returns policy. Those four are what a first-time customer is quietly checking before they trust you with a card number.

If your score is high but a few gaps feel serious, that is the moment for expert eyes rather than another week of guessing. If it is low, the honest read is that you are building, not launching, and the launch checklist is the better companion for that stage.

One more thing worth saying to anyone opening a first store. A low score is information, not a verdict. Every store I have built started at zero on exactly these twelve statements, including the ones that now trade every day.

Pick the lowest area on your focus list and do one item this week. Readiness is not a mood you arrive at, it is twelve small jobs, and the list in front of you already names them.