Launch-Day Checklist

You’ve spent weeks building a waitlist — launch day is when it pays off. This is a short checklist to run through before, during, and right after you flip a product from “coming soon” to “buy now”, so nothing falls through the cracks.

Use it alongside the Quick Start Guide (setup) and Email Providers (where your list lives).

Before launch (the day before)

• [ ] Confirm your provider is connected. For MailerLite products, check the API key is saved under WooCommerce → Super Speedy Settings and the product has the correct MailerLite Group ID. For SSE products, confirm the right SSE Form is selected.
• [ ] Do a test signup. Use a private/incognito window, sign up with a test email, and confirm it appears in your provider (MailerLite group or SSE) and, for MailerLite, in the local table. See Viewing & Exporting Your Signups.
• [ ] Check the countdown. Make sure the Arrival Date matches your real launch moment so the timer hits zero at the right time.
• [ ] Know your final numbers. Pull the signup count and, if you ran the referral system, your top referrers — you may want to give them early access. See Referral & Sharing System.
• [ ] Draft your launch email in MailerLite/SSE so it’s ready to send the instant the product goes live.
• [ ] Reconcile split lists if any product changed providers — combine and de-duplicate exports so everyone gets the announcement (see Switching a Product’s Email Provider).
• [ ] Stock & price check. Confirm the product has stock and a price set so it’s actually purchasable the moment add-to-cart returns.

At launch

• [ ] Untick “Mark as Coming Soon” on the product and click Update. The normal WooCommerce add-to-cart button reappears immediately — no other change is needed.
• [ ] Load the product page (ideally logged out / incognito) and confirm the add-to-cart button shows and a test add-to-cart works.
• [ ] Send your launch email to the waitlist group/form for that product. If you promised referrers priority, send to them first.

After launch

• [ ] Keep your records. The local wp_sscs_signups rows remain after launch — handy for analysing who converted. You can leave them or clean them up later.
• [ ] Honour data requests. If anyone asks to be removed, delete them from both your provider and the local table (see Privacy & Data Handling).
• [ ] Reuse the setup. For your next drop, you can re-tick Mark as Coming Soon (with a new arrival date and group/form) and the same waitlist flow runs again.

Quick gotchas

• Don’t forget the price/stock. Removing the coming soon flag reveals add-to-cart, but the product still needs a price and stock to be buyable.
• Cookies remember signups. When testing, returning visitors see share buttons instead of the form because of the year-long sscs_mailerlite_user_id cookie — use a fresh incognito window to see the form again. See Troubleshooting.
• SSE products have no share buttons, so there’s no referral leaderboard for those — plan early access differently if you used SSE.

Related

• Quick Start Guide — initial setup.
• Viewing & Exporting Your Signups — pulling counts and exports.
• Referral & Sharing System — rewarding top sharers at launch.