How to Enable OTP Phone Number Verification for Customers in WooCommerce During Checkout

If you are the owner of an online store, it is likely that you have encountered the problem of fake orders, which are requests that are sent on the store’s products using fictitious data, either through the fault of the customer or due to wrong behavior on the part of the user, which may cause inconvenience to your support team and possibly losses at times. 

By relying on the OTP verification system, which asks the user to make confirmation through a message that comes to him on his phone number, this helps you get real orders from real customers. 

In this article, you will learn about the importance of activating the OTP customer phone number verification system, as well as the way this system works, and through practical steps, you will know how to activate the phone number verification system within your online store to address fake or fake requests.

The OTP phone number verification system works through 3 basic steps:

1. The customer begins by entering his data, including the phone number, inside the site or store. 
2. The OTP program verifies the entered phone number, and if it is a valid phone number, an SMS message is sent to the person containing a code consisting of numbers or unique numbers and letters. 
3. The customer enters the confirmation code on the site, and thus it is verified that he is a real person first, as well as making sure that he uses a correct phone number secondly

The importance of activating OTP verification within your online store

Directly or indirectly, the verification system through the phone number helps you to raise the efficiency of the requests that come to you, through the following:

• Reducing the percentage of returns within the store : Some online stores send orders directly to the shipping company that has the inventory of the products, and therefore if the customer’s phone number is incorrect, the order will be set as a return, and therefore if verification of the customer’s phone number is activated, then This contributes significantly to the low percentage of store returns. 
• Verify store customer data : Activating OTP verification helps you to ensure that your customer data inside the store is correct, and thus you can use it for marketing purposes or send discounts and gifts to your customers, other than if you are not sure of your customer data, which means dedicating your marketing efforts
• Addressing the phenomenon of electronic fraud : some saboteurs may use programs to send large quantities of orders within your store with the aim of consuming the store's server resources, and when activating the OTP verification system, no order will be accepted or processed until after verifying the customer's phone number, and thus you can counteract an image Great for scams within your store. 
• Reducing unintended errors : Sometimes a person enters the store and creates an order, and unintentionally enters his phone number incorrectly, and therefore he may not be able to receive the order, but if he confirms the phone number via the OTP verification code, this helps reduce the percentage of Such unintentional errors. 

Steps to enable OTP verification of the phone number while completing the order inside the store

In order to activate the OTP verification activation service, we will use the Sms Verification add-on , which you can start for free, to verify the phone number of your online store customers when completing the order. 

This add-on was developed by FraudLabs, a company that specializes in producing software systems that support securing and protecting websites and combating fraud. Add points from your free points balance, and if you want to get more points, you can upgrade to one of the paid plans . 

After installing and activating the add-on on your site , you will go to the add-on settings tab from within the WordPress control panel, and we note that the balance of points available to us is 0, so we must click on the (Add more credits ) button in order to transfer us to the add-on site where We register a free account to get 500 points credit for free:

We will be transferred directly to the official website of the extension, and from there we click on the free registration button Try for free:

You must register a free account on the site where the registration window opens in which you put your data such as name and email, then click on the registration button:

After you successfully register the account, your account control panel on the site will open in front of you, in which you will find the API Key external link code:

Copy this API Key code, then go to the WordPress control panel, specifically within the plugin settings tab, and then paste the API code in the space provided for it:

Within the same settings page for the addition, you will find a set of settings related to the method of sending and receiving OTP confirmation messages for the phone number of store customers, and among these options are the following:

1. SMS Attempt Limit, in which you can set the maximum number of attempts you allow the client to request to send an OTP code. 
2. Instructions for verifying messages : In it, you type the text that you want to appear on the payment completion page in order to ask the customer to confirm his phone number. 
3. SMS Content: In it, you write the text that is sent in an SMS text message to the customer's phone number with its confirmation code. 
4. SMS Timeout : It is the period of time during which the OTP confirmation code is valid for use after it is sent in a text message to the customer. 
5. Country Code : Here you choose the country for the store, so that confirmation messages are sent using a phone number that uses the country code, which gives the tendency more confidence in the content of the messages. 

Within the same settings page, you will also find some other options, such as:

6. Invalid phone number message: here you write the text that appears in front of the customer in case the phone number is written incorrectly. 

7. Incorrect OTP message: Here you write the text that appears in front of the customer if he incorrectly entered the OTP confirmation code sent to his phone.

And in the end, after you configure and complete all the settings for the addition in the way that we explained, and in the appropriate manner for your store, do not forget to click on the Save Changes button.

Now there is only one step left for the OTP confirmation system for phone numbers to run on your store, which is by entering the add-on settings page, then going to the Woocommerce tab, then clicking on the (enable) button, and below the enable button we find an option to select the type of customers that you want to confirm from Their phone numbers, where you find some options such as (a new customer) or (a customer from a specific country), you can choose the appropriate option for you and then save the changes on this page: 

At this step, you have completed all the basic settings to operate the in-store customer phone number verification system during order completion. 

Now visit your store and create a new order for one of the products. On the order completion page, you will notice a notice telling you that you need to confirm your phone number, which you entered in the order completion form:

note: The text on the button is in English (Verify your phone number now) The plugin does not allow it to be translated by default, so you can use one of the translation plugins in WordPress to translate the text into Arabic if you want to. 

When you click on the confirm button, you are asked to confirm from the phone number to which the OTP confirmation code will be sent: 

Immediately after that, the OTP confirmation code will be sent to the phone number:

 A window appears asking you to enter the verification code that was sent to your phone: 

After you enter the confirmation code and click on the Verify button, you will be redirected to the order completion form and you will notice a notification informing you that your phone number has been verified successfully, and you can complete your order inside the store: 

In the end, it is necessary to secure your website or online store, and the OTP verification system is an effective way to deal with fraud and ensure the quality of orders that reach you.