Selling via Telegram: bot, Mini App and order notifications for your store

Many of your customers already spend hours a day in messaging apps. Every time they have to leave the chat, open the browser and look for your website, some of them drop off along the way. Telegram has something other messaging apps do not offer with the same freedom: programmable bots and Mini Apps, small web applications that open inside the chat itself.

That makes it possible to set up a store inside Telegram connected to your real catalogue. Let us look at how it works and what to bear in mind.

The pieces: bot, Mini App and channel

• The bot is an automated account you create with @BotFather. It responds to messages and buttons. It can show products in the chat itself, with photos and “Add to cart” buttons.
• The Mini App is a web page that opens full screen inside Telegram, launched from the bot (for example, from the menu button). It offers a store experience: product grid, filters, cart.
• A channel or group is used to announce new products and offers, with links that open the bot or the Mini App.

How a bot can take payment

Native Telegram payment

Telegram has a payments API: the bot sends an invoice and the customer pays inside the app with a payment provider you configure in @BotFather. The important thing is that the order is only created when Telegram confirms the payment, and after checking that the amount and currency match the cart.

Handing over to your store's checkout

The bot hands the cart over to your website and the customer completes the purchase with the payment methods you already have: card, Bizum, bank transfer, whatever you use. It is the simplest option if you already have your gateways set up and want everything to go through the same order, invoice and tax process.

Order notifications: what customers appreciate most

Even if you do not sell via Telegram, notifications are already worth it:

• For the customer: a message in the chat when the order is confirmed, shipped or delivered. It is read more than an email, which ends up in promotions or spam.
• For you: an alert on your phone or in a team group for every new order, every failed payment or every return. You see the business live without opening the back office.

Choose carefully which statuses you notify the customer about: three or four messages per order inform; ten annoy.

Privacy and permissions

• A bot can only write to a user who has started the conversation with it. It cannot be used to send messages to people who have not asked for them, and that is how it should be.
• Promotional messages to customers are commercial communications: they require the consent set out in the LSSI (article 21), just like an email.
• Order status notifications are information about the contracted service, not advertising.
• Store only what is necessary: the chat identifier linked to the customer or the order.

Common mistakes when setting up a store on Telegram

1. Creating the order before taking payment. A customer who closes the invoice without paying leaves a ghost order.
2. Disabled or out-of-stock products visible in the bot. The bot must apply the same visibility rules as the website.
3. Logging in on the customer's behalf. The bot must not know passwords; if an account is needed, the customer logs in on the website.
4. A webhook that does not arrive. Telegram sends updates to a URL on your store. A firewall or WAF that blocks those requests leaves the bot silent without anyone noticing. If the bot “does not respond”, check that first.
5. Forgetting languages. Telegram indicates the user's language; use it to show the catalogue in theirs.

Is it worth it?

It depends on where your customers are. If you already have a Telegram channel with followers, a community or a young, technical audience, it is a natural channel. If your customers do not use Telegram, the bot will not bring them: it is a conversion channel, not an acquisition channel. And order notifications for you and your team are useful in any case.

Checklist

1. Bot created in @BotFather with name, description and image.
2. Catalogue read in real time from the store.
3. Order created only after payment is confirmed.
4. Status notifications chosen with care.
5. Webhook tested from outside your network.
6. Consent for promotional messages.

How to handle it in PrestaShop

RKR Telegram Store (Mini App) turns a Telegram bot into your store: catalogue with combinations, real stock, gallery and discounted amounts, category filters, search, cart via chat and PrestaShop discount codes, plus a full-screen Mini App with 23 themes. It takes payment in two ways, which you can enable at the same time: native Telegram payment, creating the order only when Telegram confirms the payment and after checking chat, amount and currency, or handing the cart over to PrestaShop's normal checkout with all your payment methods. Disabled, hidden or unavailable products cannot be seen or bought, and every status change you choose reaches the customer's chat. For internal order alerts to your own Telegram, the modules that accompany this article cover that part.