An online store without integrations is a catalog with a “Buy” button that does nothing. Customers cannot pay online, cannot see shipping costs, and managers have to manually transfer orders from email to Excel. Sound familiar? For a small store with five orders a week, this is still tolerable. For a growing business, it means chaos, mistakes, and lost customers.
Three key integrations transform a website from a catalog into a full-fledged trading platform: a CRM system for managing orders and customers, a payment gateway for accepting money online, and a delivery service for automatically calculating costs and creating waybills. In this guide, the Estetic Web Design team explains how to connect each of them, taking into account the realities of the Ukrainian market.
Step 1. Connecting the CRM system
CRM for an online store is not just a customer database. It is a control center: all orders come here, their status is tracked here, managers contact buyers from here, and the entire history of interactions is stored here.
Which CRMs are popular in Ukraine for e-commerce? KeyCRM is a specialized CRM for online stores with built-in support for marketplaces, Nova Poshta, and messengers. It is suitable for small and medium-sized businesses. Pipedrive and HubSpot are more versatile and suitable for companies with complex sales cycles. Bitrix24 is a popular choice for those who want CRM, tasks, telephony, and chat in one place.
How integration works. Most modern CRMs connect via API or ready-made plugins. For WordPress with WooCommerce, there are official KeyCRM modules and connectors via Zapier for other systems. For OpenCart, modules are available through the extension marketplace or are custom-developed for a specific CRM.
What needs to be synchronized: new orders are automatically entered into the CRM, status changes in the CRM update the status on the website, customer contact details are stored centrally, and purchase history is available to the manager when the customer returns. If the store runs on Shopify, integration with popular CRMs is implemented through the built-in App Store or third-party connectors.
Step 2. Connecting payment systems
Online payment is not a bonus, but a necessity. According to statistics, stores with online payment have a 30-40% higher conversion rate than those that only accept cash on delivery. If the customer has paid, it means they will definitely pick up their order. Fewer returns, fewer “change of mind” situations, and lower logistics costs.
LiqPay (PrivatBank) is the most widely used payment gateway in Ukraine. It accepts Visa and Mastercard, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. The commission is 2.75% per transaction. Connection: register a merchant account with PrivatBank, obtain API keys, and install the plugin on your website. There is an official module for WooCommerce and several verified extensions for OpenCart.
Monobank (monopay) — is rapidly gaining popularity thanks to lower fees and a convenient account management interface. It supports payment in installments — a feature that significantly increases the average check for goods costing 3,000 hryvnia or more. Integration is similar: API keys, plugins, testing.
WayForPay and Fondy are aggregators that work with several banks simultaneously. They are convenient if you need support for international cards or specific payment methods. The commission is slightly higher than when connecting directly to a bank, but the flexibility is greater.
An important detail: after connecting, be sure to test the entire payment cycle — from clicking “Pay” to receiving confirmation on the website and in CRM. One mistake in the settings — and the customer pays, but the store does not see the order. Test transactions are a mandatory step that cannot be skipped.
Шаг 3. Интеграция служб доставки
In Ukraine, there are two dominant delivery services for e-commerce: Nova Poshta and Ukrposhta. Both have APIs that allow you to automate most processes directly from the store’s admin panel.
Nova Poshta. The API allows you to automatically calculate shipping costs when placing an order (the buyer selects the city and branch and sees the exact amount), create a waybill from the store’s admin panel without logging into the Nova Poshta account, track the status of the parcel, and automatically update the order status. For WooCommerce, there is a plugin called “Nova Poshta for WooCommerce,” and for OpenCart, there are modules available on the marketplace.
Ukrposhta. The API is less developed, but basic functions are available: cost calculation, shipment creation, tracking number retrieval. Ukrposhta is relevant for deliveries to rural areas and small settlements that Nova Poshta does not reach. For stores with a wide customer geography, connecting to both services is a must.
For WordPress stores, delivery integration is implemented through plugins with minimal customization. For more complex scenarios—such as different delivery logic for different product categories or automatic creation of waybills when the status changes—additional modules and options with custom logic need to be installed.
The correct order of integrations
Sequence matters. Connecting everything at once is a recipe for chaos and bugs. The recommended order is as follows.
First, the payment system. This is the foundation: without payment, the store cannot earn money. Connect it, test the full cycle (payment → confirmation → refund), and make sure that all scenarios work correctly.
Next is delivery. After connecting payment, add the delivery calculation to the cart. The buyer should see the total cost of the order—the product plus delivery—before clicking “Pay.” Hidden delivery costs are the most common reason for abandoned carts.
Last but not least — CRM. Once payment and delivery are working, connect CRM and set up synchronization of orders, statuses, and customer data. This way, you can test each level separately and quickly find errors if something goes wrong.
Testing: check everything before launch
After connecting all integrations, conduct comprehensive testing. Place a test order from start to finish: select a product, add it to the cart, choose Nova Poshta delivery, pay via LiqPay, and verify that the order has been entered into the CRM with the correct data.
Check extreme scenarios: what happens if the payment fails? Does the customer receive a notification? How does the refund work? What happens if the Nova Poshta API is temporarily unavailable — will the customer be able to place an order? Every untested scenario is a potential loss of a real order.
After launch, regularly check the performance of integrations. API keys may expire, delivery services update their systems, and banks change security protocols. Technical support for the site includes monitoring the performance of all connected services—so that a broken integration doesn’t cost you customers.
How CMS affects the complexity of integrations
The complexity of connection depends on the store platform. WooCommerce (WordPress) has the richest ecosystem of plugins for the Ukrainian market: ready-made modules for Nova Poshta, LiqPay, Monobank, KeyCRM. Most integrations involve installing a plugin, entering API keys, and configuring settings in the admin panel.
OpenCart offers modules through its marketplace, but the selection is more limited, and some of them require customization for specific projects. Shopify is limited in its options: Ukrainian payment systems are connected through third-party applications, and integration with Nova Poshta is less stable than on WordPress or OpenCart.
If you are planning a store with a full range of integrations, developing a turnkey online store involves connecting all services at the creation stage. This is cheaper and more reliable than improvement an existing store, where integrations may conflict with already installed plugins.
Payment data security
Accepting online payments comes with security responsibilities. An SSL certificate is mandatory; without it, no payment gateway will work. A reliable domain and hosting with SSL, a firewall, and regular updates are basic requirements for any store that accepts money online.
Important: never store bank card details on your server. All verified payment gateways — LiqPay, Monobank, WayForPay — process card details on their side. Your website only redirects the customer to a secure payment page and receives confirmation. This is the PCI DSS standard, and violating it may result in your merchant account being blocked.
CRM, payment, and delivery are three integrations that transform a product catalog into a full-fledged online store. Connect them sequentially: first payment, then delivery, then CRM. Test each stage separately and the entire chain together. Choose a CMS with a developed ecosystem of plugins for the Ukrainian market.
If you need help with integrations or comprehensive turnkey website development with all the necessary services connected, please contact us. We will set everything up so that your store runs automatically: the customer pays, the waybill is created, and the manager receives a notification in CRM. No manual work, no errors, no lost orders.
And for those who want to gain a deeper understanding of search engine optimization for their store, we recommend ordering an audit on SEO optimization of the website — after all, integrations put the internal workings in order, and SEO brings in customers.