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Lebanon · 4 min read

How do I open an online shop in Lebanon?

The Helm TeamWritten by the team that builds and runs Helm
A shop's product page for a blue T-shirt with a stock bar beside each of its four colours, red and blue well stocked, cream running low and green sold out, and other products below it; beside the page, a list of orders, each at its own stage, and a taped parcel going out
Every colour or size you stock needs its own count, so you never sell a fifth when four are left.

The short answer

List what you sell, with a price and a stock count for each colour or size. Choose how buyers pay: Whish, OMT, a bank transfer or cash on delivery. Price delivery by area and pick a courier. Then put it all on your own site, so orders arrive in one place, not in your messages.

On this page

An online shop in Lebanon comes down to four things: what you sell, how the buyer pays, how the parcel gets there, and where the order lands. If you are still deciding whether you need a shop at all, start with do I need an online shop?. This guide is for the next step.

1. Put your catalogue in order

Before anything is online, write down each product the way a buyer will see it:

  • A name and a price. Prices in Lebanon run mostly in dollars: the World Bank describes "the near-complete dollarization of consumer prices" (World Bank, January 2026). So price in US dollars, and if you also take lira, say at what rate.
  • Every colour or size you stock, with its own count. "Black, 4 left" is what stops you selling a fifth.
  • Photos you took yourself, on a plain background, the same way for every product.
  • One short line and a description: what it is, what it is made of, how it fits or how to care for it.
  • A size guide, if you sell clothes or shoes: the measurements of each size in centimetres, so the buyer checks before ordering rather than after.

Start with the products that already sell. A small catalogue that is always right beats a large one that is often wrong.

2. Choose how buyers pay

Four ways a Lebanese shop can take payment are Whish, OMT, a bank transfer and cash on delivery. For a transfer, the buyer sends the money and gives you a reference to match against your statement. With cash on delivery, the courier collects it at the door. Taking online payments in Lebanon covers each one, and the order to set them up in.

3. Price delivery by area, and pick a courier

Wakilni, for one, splits Lebanon into two zones, so your delivery prices can follow a map like that. A few named areas work well, each with a price and a time. Add free delivery above an amount if your margins allow it. Before you sign with a courier, ask which areas they cover, when they collect, and how they handle returns. If buyers pay cash on delivery, also ask how often the courier hands that cash over to you. Which delivery companies work with online shops in Lebanon? names the couriers Lebanese shops use and what each one offers.

Then write your delivery terms where the buyer reads them before ordering: the areas, the price and time for each, and how an exchange works when a size is wrong. Clear terms up front mean fewer questions later.

4. Decide where the orders land

A shop run from messages works until the messages are the bottleneck. On your own site, every order arrives in one list with the buyer, the items, the payment method and the delivery area. Nothing is lost in a chat thread.

Keep your messages for what they are good at: a question before someone buys, or a word with a buyer whose parcel is on its way. The order itself belongs in the list, where you can see at a glance what to pack today.

Before you launch, check four things:

  1. Every product has a price, a photo and a stock count.
  2. Each payment method has instructions the buyer can follow.
  3. Every area you deliver to has a price and a time.
  4. You have placed a test order yourself, all the way to its order reference.

How a Helm shop does it

A Helm shop is built for these four steps, and all of it is in one dashboard:

  • Products: each has a price, an optional "was" price, a short line, a description and its photos. You can take a product off sale without deleting it.
  • Colours: each colour keeps its own stock and can have its own price. When a colour you track runs out, the site stops selling it.
  • Collections group products the way you would on a shelf, like Summer or Gifts.
  • Running low is your restock list, and shows how many people are waiting for each item. The waiting list shows who asked about an item that sold out, so you know who to tell when it is back.
  • Orders arrive with the payment method and the delivery area. You confirm the money and move each one along to packed, on the way and delivered.

The shop is available on the Standard and Business plans, and its pages are designed into your own site, so it looks like your business. The detail of how payment works is in an online store that takes Whish, OMT or cash on delivery.