A new store starts as a draft. Only you can see a draft, and shoppers reaching your store address get nothing until you publish. Publishing takes the current draft and makes it the live version.
Before you publish#
- Add at least one product, with a price and a description. An empty store looks broken to a shopper and fails payment-provider review.
- Set your store name and contact details in settings.
- Check the store preview in the builder, in every language you sell in.
Publishing#
Open the builder and use Publish. Your store goes live at your free store address straight away. If you have connected a custom domain and it is verified, the store is reachable there too.
Changing a published store#
Edits you make after publishing go into the draft, not the live store. Shoppers keep seeing the last published version until you publish again. That is deliberate: it means you can rework your storefront without a half-finished page being visible.
Publishing does not activate payments. Those are separate, and a published store can take orders using the payment methods available to it while payment activation is still in review.