How we reinvented the wheel: building an e-commerce engine when zero-code fails you
We at WTM produce handy and up-to-date original FinTech content in different forms: free country outlooks and long-read, deep-dived digital reports covering economics, payment habits, banking systems, crypto, and e-commerce across various countries.
There was a moment when we faced the inevitable. We decided to sell our reports online. This is a mundane task to figure out, or so we thought. Here is a personal story of (the pain) a challenge.
Building e-commerce functionality into zero-code website when no templates are available.
Choosing the website builder
First things first, our website is built on Tilda. Historically speaking, this was not a 100% conscious, well-thought-through choice, but we made it work along the way. When the need for e-commerce functionality came around the corner, Wix, Shopify, and others were better suited.
However, it turns out that the e-commerce functionality will only work with the payment providers supported by the platform. Or if a custom payment provider can be connected. Unfortunately, the only provider available for us on Wix was PayPal. No kidding.
Don’t get me wrong, PayPal is a great product, love it, it was THAT easy to configure, however, it is not going to fly with just PayPal.
So we have turned our heads around only to see that our beloved Tilda had support for the custom payment gateway. It lacks almost everything else for e-commerce, but it has custom payments. So, the choice was made. We are building basic e-commerce features on Tilda using non-native tools to connect to it.
Logic design
Since we plan on connecting multiple payment APIs and using more than one provider in the future, we had to build our e-commerce payment logic first. Along with the way we are going to deliver the purchase.
- Tilda was set up as a basic CRM for e-commerce orders.
- Payments processing module and widget to interact with the payment provider.
- Gmail for the email and .pdf file delivery, and Google Drive to store the reports.
- N8N automation tool was used to marry the Tilda CRM with the service delivery.
- ChatGPT served us well in advising on cryptography and issuing private and public keys for the payment provider.
Connecting custom payments API
Connecting a third-party API, even for payments, is embedded in Tilda’s core functionality. All we had to do was prepare the infrastructure before to ensure we had a secret and URLs to configure the connection.
We created our own payments processing module to process orders to ensure that different payment APIs will get integrated into it first and not directly to Tilda. It is a middle-man between Tilda and a payment provider. Universal, adaptive, allowing to switch the providers on/off without interference to the payment flow.
The payment processing module was coded in PHP and hosted on the virtual private server on NameCheap.
The payment widget at pay.wt.money as a part of the payment module also had to be ours. However, we cannot accept, process, or store card data. So, we have included the payment provider’s payment widget code on our page. This is an iframe. When interacting with the form, the customer actually interacts directly with the payment provider while staying on our payment page.
E-commerce CRM
Tilda’s order management is quite basic but enough to keep track of orders, emails, and payment statuses.
Each order is logged along with the basic information: name and email. If the order is created, it will be logged with the unique order ID. Payment status is updated as the payment goes through and the payment notification reaches us.
There are still some issues and imperfections with Tilda’s CRM, so perhaps we will shift it to another service sometime in the future.
Reports digital logistics
We had to figure out how to deliver the heavy-weight .pdf reports after the purchase. Ideally, we thought that would be the ‘click to download’ link.
Since we decided to build our e-commerce functionality on the website without native tools for digital reports’ delivery, our first decision was to use one of the email services integrated with Tilda.
We tried to create campaigns on UniSender, SendGrid, and SendPulse. SendPulse looked like heaven at first because it included everything that we wanted, but later on, it was understood that we still needed some middle service for more automatization to use different downloading links for each report.
We finally set our eyes on n8n — a service that helps to automate workflows by building a connection between different services through “nodes.” Every node consists of a set of functionalities and has some pre-integrated collaboration. Gmail is one of them and also our major email client.
We trained Gmail to send reports every time to a new email address and choose the correct link to the correct report. To do that, we receive information from Tilda CRM through the webhook connected to the n8n node. Tilda was set up to send information about orders to n8n only after successful payments. Our Gmail account was connected with the n8n Gmail node through OAuth2 credentials. Last but not least — we created a path where we show which link for reports’ downloading needs to be used. Voila!
To sum up
Initially, we had this fantasy that launching a store could be done with the standard tools and templates. We even thought ChatGPT could help us code if necessary. At the bare minimum, AI will guide us through the process. The reality turned out to be different.
The e-commerce engine templates and standard tools will only work if you are from a country supported by the platform or their connected payment providers. ChatGPT will only guide you through the complex process if you already know what you are doing, what logic you apply, and how you want to design your processes.
It all boils down to people, their minds, experience, and creativity.
‘What the Money?’ is a fintech consultancy bureau that advises on doing business across the globe and talks about digital innovations, payment landscapes, and e-commerce. WTM releases monthly digests, regular reports, and articles on hot topics in these industries.
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