This guide walks through them in the order you need to decide them. The technical build is the easy part once the answers exist.
1. Decide what you sell — and how it reaches the customer
Before any platform discussion, be specific about the range: how many products, how many variants each has, and whether they are in stock now or made to order. A brand with twelve products in three sizes is a different build from a shop with four hundred items and a supplier feed.
Fulfilment matters just as much. Are you shipping from your own stock, ordering from a supplier per sale, or making each item? That decision determines what you can honestly promise about delivery times, which is the promise customers judge you on hardest.
2. Choose where you sell
Three broad options, and they are not mutually exclusive:
| Option | Best for | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Social selling | Testing demand with little setup, small changing ranges | Manual order taking, nothing recorded, no search visibility |
| Marketplace | Reaching an existing pool of buyers quickly | Commission per sale, limited branding, the customer belongs to the platform |
| Your own store | Owning the brand, the customer data and the margin | You are responsible for bringing the traffic |
Many Lebanese brands start on Instagram, prove there is demand, then build their own store while keeping social as the discovery channel. That is a sound sequence — see website vs Instagram for how the two fit together.
3. Get the catalogue right before the design
The catalogue is the structure of the store. Decide your categories from how customers think, not from how your stockroom is organised, and settle the variant model early: size, colour, material, and which combinations actually exist. Retrofitting variants onto a store built without them is genuinely painful.
Product photography deserves the budget people usually cut. On a screen, the photo is the product. Consistent framing and lighting across the range does more for perceived quality than most design decisions.
What a product page needs
- Clear images, including scale and detail shots
- Price, and whether delivery is extra
- Variants that show what is actually available
- A short description answering the two or three questions you always get asked
- Materials, dimensions, care or ingredients where relevant
- Realistic delivery expectations
- A visible, single call to action
4. Make checkout short and mobile-first
Assume nearly every customer is on a phone, often on mobile data. Every extra field is a chance to lose the sale. Ask only for what you need to fulfil and contact — forcing account creation before a first purchase is one of the most common self-inflicted losses.
Show the full cost before the final step. Delivery charges appearing at the last moment is the most reliable way to lose a customer who had already decided to buy.
5. Work out payments early
How do online stores in Lebanon take payment?
Cash on delivery remains widely used and is worth supporting for most consumer stores. Card and online payment options depend on what your business can arrange with a bank or payment provider — availability, fees and requirements vary by provider and by the type of business, so confirm what you can actually open before designing the checkout around it.
Whatever you support, be explicit about it on the product page and at checkout. Uncertainty about payment is a reason people abandon a cart.
6. Plan delivery like part of the product
Decide which areas you deliver to, what it costs, and how long it takes — then publish it. If you ship abroad, be clear that duties and customs are the customer's responsibility where that applies. Delivery is the part of the experience you control least and are judged on most, so under-promise.
Practically, decide who hands the parcel over, how the courier gets the order details, and what happens with a failed delivery or a return. These operational answers belong in the build, not in someone's memory.
7. Keep WhatsApp in the flow
Customers here often want to ask before they buy, and that is not a failure of the store. Make contact easy, let people ask about an item from its page, and send order confirmations where customers actually read them. The point is not to move ordering back into chat — it is to remove hesitation while the order still gets recorded properly.
8. Keep stock honest
Selling something you do not have costs more than the sale. Stock should decrease when an order is placed, and the store should stop selling an item at zero unless you deliberately allow backorders. If you also sell in a physical shop, decide early which system holds the truth — the alternative is two sets of numbers and a weekly argument.
9. Earn trust on the page
A first-time buyer is deciding whether you are real. What helps, and costs nothing:
- A visible way to contact a human — phone, WhatsApp or email
- Clear delivery and returns information written in plain language
- Honest photography rather than borrowed stock images
- A working site on HTTPS with no broken pages
- Real customer content, where you have permission to use it
10. Be findable, then measure
A store nobody can find is a catalogue in a drawer. Give products and categories real titles and descriptions, keep URLs clean, and make sure the site is indexable from launch. Then connect analytics and watch three things: which products get viewed, where people abandon, and what they searched to arrive. Those numbers tell you what to fix next.
A realistic launch order
- 01
Confirm the range and fulfilment
Products, variants, stock, and how each order physically reaches the customer.
- 02
Sort payments and delivery
Talk to your bank or provider and your courier before the checkout is designed around assumptions.
- 03
Prepare catalogue content
Photography, descriptions, prices, categories. This is usually what delays launches.
- 04
Build the store
Catalogue, product pages, cart, checkout, order dashboard, delivery rules.
- 05
Test with real orders
Place them yourself on a phone, all the way through to the confirmation and the courier handover.
- 06
Launch and drive traffic
Tell your existing audience first — social, WhatsApp, email — then work on search over the following months.
Planning a store?
Tell us what you sell and how you fulfil orders. We will come back with what we would build, in what order, and a fixed price for the first phase.
See e-commerce developmentFrequently asked questions
- How do I start an online store in Lebanon?
- Decide what you sell and how you will fulfil it, confirm which payment and delivery options your business can actually offer, prepare the catalogue content, then build the store around those answers. Test with real orders on a phone before launch, and announce it to your existing audience first.
- Can I accept cash on delivery?
- Cash on delivery is widely used in Lebanon and is worth supporting for most consumer stores. It should still be a recorded order in the system with the customer, address and items captured, rather than an informal arrangement.
- Do I need a company set up before I sell online?
- Registration, tax and licensing requirements depend on how and what you sell, and are outside what a web developer can advise on. Speak to an accountant or lawyer about your specific situation — it is also the answer your payment provider will need before opening an account.
- Should I sell on a marketplace or build my own store?
- A marketplace gets you in front of existing buyers quickly, at the cost of commission, limited branding and not owning the customer relationship. Your own store costs more effort in traffic but keeps the margin, the data and the brand. Many businesses do both, using the marketplace for reach and their own store for repeat customers.
- Can WebHub connect my store to WhatsApp?
- Yes. Orders and enquiries can be routed to WhatsApp so you see them immediately, while the order is still recorded in the dashboard with the customer and delivery details. See our e-commerce development page.