A media buyer for Iraq.
Seif Gomaa builds cash-on-delivery stores and runs their ads for brands selling in Iraq. On one Iraqi store there is no checkout page at all: the order form sits on the product page and writes the order straight into Shopify, because every extra step in a cash-on-delivery market is a step where the order is lost.
Usually answered the same day, Cairo time.
Does an Iraqi store need a checkout page?
Not for cash on delivery. A standard checkout asks for an email, an address format and a payment choice the buyer is never going to use. On an online pharmacy in Iraq, the form sits on the product page: the bundle choice, then the name, the phone number and the governorate.
Submitting it creates a real Shopify order, unpaid and tagged cash on delivery, so the team handles it like any other order. The price is taken from a list on the server, never from the browser, so nobody can edit it on the way in.
How do you stop fake and lost orders on a COD form?
The form checks the Iraqi mobile format (07, then nine more digits, with +964 accepted), allows one order per phone number per minute, and carries a hidden field that only bots fill in. Each of those removes a kind of order that would otherwise reach the confirmation team.
Lost orders are the other half. When someone types a valid phone number and leaves without ordering, the page saves one draft order for that number. The team sees it in Shopify and turns it into a real cash-on-delivery order in one click once they reach the customer. When that customer does order, the draft is deleted so nobody is called twice.
How do cash collection and confirmation change the numbers in Iraq?
Cash is collected at the door, so an order becomes revenue only when it is delivered and paid. On that account everything is counted on net delivered sales: Shopify orders minus cancellations, returns and refused deliveries, without the delivery fee. The ads are judged on that number, not on purchases in Ads Manager.
Confirmation is where a COD order either becomes a delivery or a cost. A form that only accepts real Iraqi numbers gives the team a clean list to confirm, and the lost-order drafts give them a second list of people who were one tap from ordering.
Messages or an order form for ads in Iraq?
Messages sell in Iraq: before the store, that account ran conversation ads and about one conversation in ten became an order. The weakness is measurement. Orders were counted by a label the team put on the chat, and when the team moved to WhatsApp and stopped labelling, the account lost its only order signal. Pushing one ad set's budget far up also raised the cost per conversation by 22 to 55%.
A form that writes a Shopify order and fires a purchase event gives Meta something real to optimise for, and gives the owner a number to check against the bank.
What happened on a real Iraqi store?
Shopify · Iraq
An online pharmacy in Iraq: an order form with no checkout page
The situation. The product was sold through a single-page landing on another platform, and the owner wanted the store on Shopify without adding steps for a buyer paying cash.
What we found. Shopify's normal path puts a cart and a checkout page between the ad and the order, built for card payments. For a cash-on-delivery buyer each of those screens is a place to drop off. The old page also carried claims the store could not back: a made-up compare-at price, a "free unit" that was really a discount, and a "most ordered" badge on a store with no orders yet.
What we changed. A standalone Arabic page in Iraqi dialect with the form on the page itself, posting to a small server that creates the Shopify order and checks the phone number and the governorate. The unbacked claims came off. The delivery promise stayed only after the owner confirmed it holds in every governorate. Real customer messages went on as reviews with names and photos hidden, and the old landing link redirects to the new page.
What happened. Orders land in Shopify like any other, tagged cash on delivery, and the lost orders show up as drafts the team converts in one click.
Shopify · Iraq
Same store: the pixel that went blind after the move
The situation. The domain had moved to Shopify, and a purchase-optimised test campaign was ready to launch.
What we found. The pixel had received zero events since the move. Shopify's Meta app only sends a purchase from Shopify's own checkout, and this store has none, while the page's own purchase event waited for a pixel script that never loaded. The homepage redirect was also dropping the click ID the ads attach.
What we changed. The pixel was fixed to load on the page, the purchase event fires when the form creates the order, and the redirect now keeps the click ID and UTMs. Then the test went live.
What happened. Day one returned a ROAS of about 2.6 on purchase optimisation, and the four ads that sold went into a separate scaling campaign the next day.
Clients are not named unless the owner agreed. Figures are ratios only, with no sales, spend or order counts.
What should you read next?
Questions about selling in Iraq.
Who runs ads for online stores in Iraq?
Does an Iraqi store need a checkout page?
How do I stop fake orders on a COD form?
Why does Meta show no purchases from my order form?
Messages or an order form for Iraqi ads?
Tell me about the store.
WhatsApp is fastest. If you would rather not start a chat yet, leave a number and a link and I will message you within 24 hours.
Usually answered the same day, Cairo time.