Cash on delivery is not a fallback — designing checkout for Morocco

Import a storefront template built for a card-first market and you inherit its assumptions. Card fields first, cash on delivery last, and a checkout that asks for an account before it asks for an address. Every one of those choices costs conversions in a market where a large share of buyers intend to pay the courier.

Put the real payment method first

If most of your orders are paid on delivery, that option belongs at the top, selected by default, described in plain language. Burying the majority path under card fields signals that you consider your typical customer an edge case.

Confirmation is the whole product

A cash-on-delivery order is a promise, not a transaction. Nothing has been paid, so trust has to be manufactured elsewhere: an immediate confirmation, a real order number, an expected delivery window, and a phone number that a person answers. Stores that skip this see cancellation rates that get blamed on the market rather than the checkout.

Address fields that match how people actually navigate

• Postal codes are frequently unknown or unused — do not make the field required
• Directions matter more than street numbers in many neighbourhoods; give a free-text landmark field
• Phone number is the delivery-critical field, not email — validate it properly and confirm by SMS or WhatsApp
• Let people order without creating an account, then offer the account after the order is placed

Design for the conversation that follows

In practice, a meaningful share of orders continue on WhatsApp — confirming an address, adjusting a delivery slot, chasing a courier. Treating that as a failure of the website is a mistake. Build for it: put the order reference in the message, make the thread easy to start from the confirmation page, and stop pretending the checkout is the last interaction.