An online store is not a product page. It is a selling machine with parts, and if one part breaks the rest stops. Here is what actually matters, in the Egyptian market.
Before you build: two decisions that shape everything
Who are you selling to?
Selling to consumers is not selling wholesale. A wholesale store needs price tiers, minimum order quantities and credit accounts. Build a retail store and then decide to sell wholesale, and you build again.
How will you ship?
This is the most-postponed decision and the most damaging. Flat-rate shipping loses money on distant governorates; calculated shipping needs an integration with the courier. Decide before you build.
The cart: this is where the money leaks
Most people who add to a cart never finish. The causes are well known and the fixes are simple:
- Shipping cost revealed at the last step. Show it on the product page.
- Forcing registration before purchase. Allow guest checkout — register them after the order.
- A long form. Every extra field reduces completion. Ask only for what delivery needs.
- No cash on delivery. A large share of Egyptian buyers still prefer it. Without it you lose part of the market.
And one that gets forgotten: an abandoned-cart message. A WhatsApp or email two hours later recovers a meaningful share of lost orders, and once it is set up it runs itself.
The product page: details that close the sale
- Real photos from several angles — not the supplier's. A familiar object beside the product for scale cuts returns.
- Sizes and dimensions as numbers — "large" is not information.
- Clear availability — in stock, sold out, or arriving in N days.
- A written returns policy — it builds more trust than it costs in returns.
Stock integration: the most important technical piece
If you have a physical shop, the store must read the same stock. Otherwise you will sell online something that sold over the counter this morning, and call the customer to apologise — which is worse than not selling at all.
Online payment
Most Egyptian gateways take a percentage of each transaction and sometimes a monthly fee. Compare the rates, and ask how long settlement to your account takes. Keep cash on delivery running alongside it.
Being found: the store will not surface on its own
The biggest wrong expectation is that a store brings customers simply by existing. What works:
- A written description per product — not copied from the supplier. Duplicate content is ignored.
- Product structured data so price and availability show in the search result.
- Articles answering pre-purchase questions — these bring visitors before they decide.
- Paid ads at the start, until organic search begins to work.
The numbers to watch
Not visits. Watch: the share of visitors who complete a purchase, average order value, and return rate. Moving completion from 1% to 2% doubles revenue on the same traffic — far cheaper than doubling ad spend.
At Money Leek we build stores tied to real stock with an Arabic dashboard that runs from a phone. See the service or send us your details.