Online-store in Telegram: an advanced solution for online business

Today, many companies that specialize in selling certain goods and services resort to the help of social networks to distribute their products, increase brand awareness, and attract as many target audiences as possible. And this is quite understandable, because these platforms provide more than impressive coverage of the target audience. But in parallel with social networks, messengers have also begun to provide a lot of opportunities for business development today, in particular Telegram. Today, the number of active users here is already approaching 700 million and, according to many experts, this is still far from the limit. Every day more and more new users will connect to the messenger. This means that it would be extremely short-sighted to miss such an opportunity for business development.

Moreover, modern technologies allow you to create online stores in Telegram in the shortest possible time without any expenses for software developers, designers and other specialists. It is enough just to use a number of specialized designers. At the same time, your customers will be able to make a purchase directly through Telegram, which will eliminate the need to go to the website. That is, in the messenger you can implement the full range of work of a classic online store, from consultation to placing and paying for orders.

In this review, we will dwell in more detail on the benefits that both sellers of goods and services and buyers will receive from launching an online representative office in Telegram. Let us show with a simple example how such an online store will work. Let's dwell on why in this case it is worth using a Telegram bot, and not a full-fledged mobile application. We’ll also talk about how to create your own Telegram channel for sales and what tools you will need to ensure the most stable and functional work here without any risks or restrictions.

Why you should open an online store on Telegram

The fact that Telegram is actively developing today and is attracting more and more attention from users every day — this is just one reason to open your own online store here. Along with this, this format for selling goods has a fairly large number of advantages, both for the buyers themselves, for you, as business representatives. Let us tell you what exactly we are talking about.

Benefits of the Telegram store for business owners

If you decide to open your own online store on Telegram, you can give a new impetus to the development of your business. The advantages of this solution include:

1. Effortless creation and launch. Let us immediately note that the time spent on developing a Telegram store will directly depend on how many product items you plan to place on your virtual shelves. That is, the creation process itself will require a little time, while the main time costs will be associated with filling the online showcase with goods. If not many products are planned, then the creation process will take several hours. If you are planning to launch an online store of clothing or children's goods, that is, a fairly large-scale online presence, then it will take much more time, ranging from a week to a month. But even in this case, we can confidently talk about the speed of creation and launch, since creating full-fledged websites from scratch takes much more time.
2. High level of automation of the sales process. Most of the work that your managers do in a regular online store will be done here using a chat bot. So, at the stage of its creation and configuration, you can connect absolutely any tools that increase the level of involvement of the target audience. Most often, such decisions include options such as “Order again”, “View current promotions”, “Show similar products”, “Get a discount” and others. Thanks to detailed thought, most routine tasks will be solved directly by the bot, while real managers will be involved directly at the final stages of interaction with customers, and only if the need arises.
3. Significant budget savings. If you have already thought about such a question as creating your own online store or mobile application, then you are probably familiar with the price of the issue. This is thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, because the work ahead is very large-scale and a large number of specialists are involved in it, requiring timely payment. These include software developers, web designers, and copywriters. Unlike classic applications, the Telegram store will not require you to involve various specialists, which will largely determine the minimal cost of both creation and subsequent support. All work will be carried out directly by bots. But you still have to work hard to create them. But these are the jobs that you can handle on your own with basic knowledge and skills.

All this allows us to confidently say that those business representatives who are looking for a reliable and effective tool for online sales, but are not ready for serious financial investments, can safely opt for the Telegram store.

Advantages of the Telegram store for customers

At the beginning of the review, we already said that the benefits of launching a Telegram store will be appreciated not only by business owners, but also by consumers directly. And here we highlight some of the most significant advantages:

1. Simple and intuitive interface. There is no complicated navigation here, no hidden options that you need to look for. Everything is very simple and intuitive. This is ensured by connecting a bot. He will literally guide customers step by step from the first acquaintance with the store until placing an order. At the same time, the entire interface will be clear and straightforward. In addition, the absence of complex layout and heavy design solutions will ensure the fastest loading of product cards and instant response to user requests.
2. A large number of functions implemented in a simple design. If you take a quick look at the Telegram store, it seems that it is too basic and that all of its functionality is limited to directly purchasing goods. Well, if you delve a little deeper, it becomes clear that here you can, for example, put the product you like in your favorites, leave a comment under certain items, ask the seller questions and immediately receive answers to them. Buyers will also be able to choose delivery methods that suit them, share their favorite products with friends, and leave reactions. That is, the functionality here is not much inferior to a full-fledged online store, but it will be faster and more convenient in operation.
3. Everything you need to make a purchase is already in the messenger. That is, you do not have to additionally download certain software products or launch a browser. You just need to go to Telegram to start shopping. Thanks to the advanced functionality, you can easily compare several items you like with each other in order to ultimately purchase the most suitable item. This simplification of interaction greatly increases loyalty, and at the same time the likelihood of a purchase.

That is, users from the Telegram store will receive quick, simple purchases of the goods they need. Minimum movements, time expenditure — and your order is already with you.

To make it more clear how the Telegram store works, let’s give a basic example.

How the Telegram store works using an example

At its core, an online store in the Telegram messenger — This is a chatbot with wide functionality. This solution will be most effective for those who specialize in the sale of clothing, shoes, cosmetics, jewelry, goods for children and more. Now we’ll tell you how such an online store will work using the example of selling children’s toys. The entire process of interaction between a potential buyer and the Telegram store will be carried out in the following sequence:

• A person enters your store’s chatbot. And here he is offered a brief description of the company itself, just a few words about what products can be found and a couple of key advantages over competitors. If he decides to continue, presses the “Start” button.
• Immediately after this, the main menu of your store opens. It will be classic, that is, the way we are used to seeing it at any online sales point. There will be a catalog with goods, a block with promotional offers, a basket for adding orders, the latest news, and an option with settings. Often, business owners also add an “About the Company” block here, where particularly interested buyers can study information about a particular brand or the store itself. You decide which buttons will be located in the main menu yourself at the stage of creating your Telegram store.
• Click on the “Catalog” button to get acquainted with the range of products and then place an order. Since we are talking about children's toys, the catalog may look like this: “Toys for babies”, “Toys for girls 3-5 years old”, “Toys for boys 3-5 years old”, “Toys for girls 6-10 years”, “Toys for boys 6-10 years old”. This approximate breakdown by age will allow potential buyers to choose the product category that interests them at a given time.
• As soon as you click on a particular category, subsections will immediately open. Let's assume that you selected "Toys for girls 3-5 years old." In this case, the subdirectory may look something like this: “Barbie dolls”, “Baby dolls”, “Games for outdoor activities”, “Board games”, “Dishes”, “Household appliances” etc. There are a lot of options, and they should fully cover the range that will be presented in your store.
• After going to the appropriate subsection, the user will automatically be taken directly to the block with product cards. It will also be designed according to the standard, as in any online store or marketplace. That is, it will include a photo and a short text description, including materials, current price, availability in stock, etc. Also, already active buttons will be present here. Basic solution — This is the “Buy” button, and the rest you, as a business owner, choose yourself. This could be a “More details”, “Add to favorites” button. etc. If desired, in the product card you can also add a link to a similar card, but from your website, or a link to Google Drive, where the information will be presented in more detail. If a potential buyer is interested in this, he will go and study all the material on his own.
• After a person chooses a toy that suits him, he adds it to the cart. Everything here is also simple and intuitive. Often there is an option to delete a position or add the same product, if there is a need to purchase two identical toys. They often provide a button to switch between different product items so that users can make a quick comparison. And without fail there will already be a form for making a purchase.

What the subsequent interaction between the user and the Telegram store will be directly depends on the settings you make. For example, this could be directly sent to one or another payment system, or the presence of another form through which you can contact the store manager to finalize the order and clarify the details of cooperation, if additional need arises.

As you can see, everything is very simple and clear. But the most important thing is that it is very convenient both for a potential buyer and for you as a business owner.

Why should you choose a Telegram bot instead of launching a mobile application?

We are not saying here that the Telegram store will be much better than a full-fledged mobile application and we are not inclining you to perform this or that action. We are only presenting facts indicating that a well-designed Telegram store will be much more profitable in terms of convenience and cost than a mobile application. And the first thing I would like to draw your attention to is that the user will not have to download third-party software products to his phone or other device.

In addition, today on the market the number of different applications can be calculated in tens of millions, if not more. This means that it will be increasingly difficult for users to find your product in this variety. In addition, competing for space in the memory of a client’s smartphone is becoming more and more difficult every day. And besides, it will not be very convenient for the users themselves to download the application just to place one order, and then, potentially, because there is a possibility that none of the products presented in your catalog will simply suit the person.

In addition, your Telegram store will be constantly available to users. It will be enough for them to simply enter the name of your bot in the search, and it will be immediately redirected directly to the page itself. And one more small, but very significant advantage for business owners: you will be able to send mailings to all those users who have already launched your bot. This means that with one click you can inform your entire audience about planned discounts or any other attractive offers.

Agree, the arguments are quite weighty and allow us to say with confidence that the Telegram store — this is something that in the near future will become a full-fledged competitor to the mobile application of online stores, or even push them out of the market altogether.

Three questions about launching a Telegram store

After you have realized the need to create your own telegram store, you can move on to the actual work. And now let us dwell in more detail on three key issues:

1. How to launch a Telegram bot for sales.
2. How to create a group in Telegram to communicate with clients.
3. How to create a chatbot for a store.

First things first.

Sequence of launching a channel for sales in Telegram

To launch a sales channel in Telegram, you can use 2 channel options:

1. Private. The optimal solution for internal corporate communication, as well as for control over the work of your store.
2. Public. It will be used directly to organize the sales process itself.

You can create it by 5 sequential actions, in particular:

1. Go to the Telegram messenger and in the upper left corner click on the icon with the image of three horizontal lines. This will open the main menu.
2. From the options presented here, select the “Create channel” tab. Here we indicate its name and a brief description.
3. We determine what type of channel you are creating, private or public. If it is private, then in response to your actions a corresponding link with an invitation will be immediately generated, which you can then send out to all users who join your channel. If the channel is public, then you come up with the link yourself and write it in Latin.
4. Add participants to the channel. The first thing the system will offer you is to select those users who are at the top of your contacts. You will also have the opportunity to add individual people, everyone that you have in your contacts, or use the “Skip” option if you do not plan to add anyone to the channel yet.
5. На этом ваш канал создан, осталось выполнить его внутреннюю настройку и заняться тематическим оформлением.

At this stage, you should understand that the name of the channel should be as simple and understandable as possible for your audience. It should be associated with your company and the products that are left on the market. It is optimal to use a brand logo or other picture as a cover. The main thing is that it has a visual connection with your company. This will increase brand awareness.

Sequence of actions to create a group in Telegram

In parallel with creating a channel in the Telegram messenger, it is also optimal to create a separate group for your customers. Direct communication and exchange of reviews will take place here. People will also be able to find out from you in more detail about the assortment, current prices, terms of delivery and payment for orders, and ask any other questions that interest them and to which they would like to receive an answer not from a bot, but directly from a real person. This group can also be used to launch various quizzes, sweepstakes, and any other online events that will attract the attention of potential buyers, encourage them to interact with your online store and, as a result, make a purchase.

Such pages have now become the norm for many social networks and have shown their fairly high effectiveness in practice. This means that it would be the best option to launch something similar in instant messengers. The entire process of creating a group will be exactly the same as we described in the previous stage. That is:

1. Go to the main menu and select the “Create group” option.
2. We enter its name, adhering to the same recommendations that we have already discussed above, that is, we make it recognizable.
3. Select participants from those present in your phone book or register them manually.

Immediately after creation, your own group chat will open in front of you. The maximum number of participants that Telegram allows today to gather in one community — 200,000 people. As you can see, the figure is quite impressive, which means that you will have the opportunity to reach a fairly impressive volume of the target audience and systematically move people along the sales funnel.

Creating your own chatbot

All that work on creating groups and channels in Telegram — These are just additional events that are designed to expand the convenience of working with your store both directly for your managers and for potential customers. But still, the main functionality will be assigned to the chatbot. We will tell you in as much detail as possible about how to create a Telegram store that will be controlled by a bot.

The first thing you need to do is use the search bar and enter the word @BotFather in it. This way you will launch a bot that will help you create your own chatbot in the Telegram messenger. Immediately after this you will see a set of commands that you can use in this case:

• /newbot. With its help you can create a new bot.
• /mybots. Used when adjustments need to be made to existing bots.
• /setname. Click on it if you want to change the name of your bot.
• /setdescription. Allows you to make adjustments to the existing bot description.
• /setabouttext. Designed to change information about the bot.
• /setuserpic. It's worth using if you want to change the bot's profile photo.
• /setcommands. Designed to change the list of commands.
• /deletebot. Click on it if you need to delete your chatbot.

Since in this case we are just starting work, we need to create a new bot, that is, select the /newbot command. After launching it, you will have to come up with a name for the bot. In this case, it would be optimal to simply write down the name of your online store or the name of the Telegram group. Also, come up with an appropriate username for your bot. There can be any option here, the main thing is that the word bot is present in the name. If it turns out that the name you chose is already used by other users, you will need to come up with another option.

If you completed this work correctly, the system will provide you with the bot address and a unique token — this is a set of characters that will be used for authorization in the system. That is, here you will not need to enter your login and password. It will be enough to simply indicate this token.

By and large, the work related to creating a bot for your store has been completed. All you have to do is add a description to your bot and upload a logo. But you must understand that the bot itself will not sell anything. That is, now you must create the online store itself and give the bot the opportunity to sell your products. To create a Telegram store, you can use special constructors.

Creating a Telegram store using constructors

Today there is a huge variety of platforms on the Internet, using which you can quickly and without additional material investments create your own online store in the Telegram messenger. Now we will show you how to perform these tasks using the Botobot constructor. Today this is one of the simplest, most convenient solutions that allows you to create a store in just a few minutes. But again, the choice is not limited to this application, you can choose other options for yourself, but the sequence of actions in all cases will be approximately the same.

So, let’s proceed directly to creating an online store in Telegram using the Botobot constructor. Even before direct use, you can click on the “See in action” button to see a demo of how your store will work in this case. We perform further actions in the following sequence:

1. We go through standard registration in the application. Here you need to indicate exactly the phone number to which Telegram is connected, which will become the basis for your online store. Confirmation of registration will be sent to you directly in the messenger.
2. Select the language that will be used subsequently from the proposed options and click on the “+ Create store” button.
3. A standard window opens in front of you for entering the relevant information. Here we write down the name of your store and the token that you received earlier. Also select the time zone that suits you and save the information you entered.
4. We must add a link to the public offer agreement. The contract itself must contain information about the name of the product, its description and technical characteristics, cost, terms of payment and delivery of orders, detailed information about the terms of the agreement and the responsibility of each of the parties to the transaction. Details of the parties are also provided. Such a document is absolutely mandatory for any online store, regardless of how it is created: as an application, as a separate website, as a Telegram store.
5. Add a link to the Help section. This is necessary so that new customers can navigate the work of your online store. Fill in this section with basic information. Subsequently, if your customers have questions, they can click on the link and get answers to them.
6. Add products. To do this, you need to go to the vertical menu located on the left side of the active designer window. Here we click on the “Catalogue” button, and select “Products” from the drop-down list. At this point, the system will show that nothing was found, but here you can use the “Import” option. in order to load all products using the table. At this stage, the system will ask you to confirm that the actions are performed directly by you. We confirm and move on.
7. Select your file with the price list and click on the “Download” button. Before creating this same price list, it is advisable to familiarize yourself with the designer’s recommendations. And here detailed instructions are provided, including indicating those fields that must be present in the price list.
8. If you plan to sell the same things, which will differ from each other in certain characteristics, then there are a number of nuances. This is true, for example, if you sell clothes or shoes and the same product is offered in different sizes. To simplify this work, you just need to fill out one line, indicating the smallest size. Next, simply copy and paste into the next line, while changing the product ID code by one position and indicating the current size. We do this with absolutely all products.
9. Once the table is completely created, it is automatically uploaded to the site. And if there are any errors in it, the system will warn you about this and indicate what exactly is wrong. After that, go to the “Products” section. You will see that the full range of products from your Telegram store is displayed in front of you.
10. We set up delivery methods. To do this, go to the appropriate section of the designer and enter information in the standard fields. Here you can also specify the shipping cost. In this case, your chatbot will automatically add it to the order amount. Also be sure to indicate the services you plan to work with during the transportation of your products. You can immediately enter information about how much it will cost the buyer to deliver your orders in a particular case, which will allow people to choose the most optimal option for themselves, including price.
11. Setting up the payment acceptance method. To do this, go to the payments tab, then select the “Settings” option. and here we click on the “Connect” button. Everything here is also clear on an intuitive level. You simply enter the payment systems that you plan to use in your work and then indicate the details. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that if you create a Telegram store, you will be able to use your own messenger payment system, in particular Telegram Payments. Detailed information about it is presented on the page of the bot that will accept payments. The setup process itself is simple and will take you a few minutes of time.
12. We check the functionality of the online store you created. To do this, use the Telegram search engine and enter the name of the store, then click on the “Launch” button. After this, we consistently follow step by step through all the stages that each of your clients will need to go through when purchasing a particular product. Here the main thing for us is to see that the order has been formed and it is displayed in your “Orders” section.

If everything happened like this, then you have completed your work correctly and the online store in the Telegram messenger is ready for work. You can safely launch it.

To summarize

The fact that online shopping has become part of the everyday life of an ordinary person — this is already an undeniable truth. First of all, it is simple, convenient and quite economical. But business representatives also benefit significantly from this. Therefore, if you want to not miss your audience, offer them an even simpler and more effective shopping solution — Telegram store. Above we described all the work that you will need to implement at this stage.

The only point that I would also like to draw your attention to is to ensure maximum stable and functional work on the Internet and with the Telegram messenger, in particular. And mobile proxies from the MobileProxy.Space service can guarantee this. This is how you get yourself a reliable assistant who will reliably hide your real IP-address and geolocation. This ensures:

• bypassing all kinds of regional restrictions: this means that you can work with Telegram in any country and region of the world, including where the messenger is prohibited;
• ensuring a high degree of confidentiality and security of work on the Internet, protection from any unauthorized access;
• the ability to change the IP-address and geolocation as often as you need in your workflow in order to adjust working conditions to current needs.

This is all that will make your work with Telegram stores and the Internet in general as convenient, functional, and safe as possible. You should not be afraid of any restrictions or sanctions from the system, blocking, even when using programs to automate actions or simultaneously work with a large number of accounts.

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