From “DM to order” to a shop that sells on its own.

Selling through direct messages works until it doesn’t. Orders got buried between questions, stock lived in the owner’s head, and every sale needed a conversation to collect a name, an address and a payment method.

The obvious fix — a Shopify store — runs into a wall in Lebanon: Shopify Payments doesn’t operate there, and most customers prefer to pay in cash at the door anyway.

A shop where every colour is its own product with its own stock, so a sold-out colour shows “Notify me” instead of disappointing someone at checkout. A cart that shows how close the order is to free delivery. A guest checkout with no account to create, cash on delivery by default, and Whish transfers with a receipt upload that the owner can switch on without help.

Delivery works by zone, each with its own fee and delivery window, plus a daily cut-off. Customers track an order with their order number and phone, and can review each item once it arrives.

Everything is run from the admin, on a phone: products, colours, stock, photos and video; orders moved forward with one tap, with stock returned automatically on a cancellation; promo codes, sets and pre-orders; the homepage and announcement bar; and a switch to pause the shop entirely.

New orders arrive as a push notification and an email. A “getting started” checklist covered the first week.

Every uploaded photo is cleaned up and cut into four sizes automatically, with the background lifted onto the shop’s own backdrop, so product grids stay consistent without a photographer. Uploads are checked by content, not by file name; logins lock after repeated failures; the admin has two-factor sign-in.

Search engines get structured data, a sitemap and a Google Merchant feed. A backup runs every day.