Shopify store for a supplement brand: custom checkout with Nova Poshta, WayForPay and KeyCRM

In short: over four months (June–October 2026) we turned a Ukrainian supplement brand’s Shopify store into a system where an order from a custom checkout flows into Shopify, the KeyCRM sales CRM, Telegram and e-mail on its own, while the customer picks a Nova Poshta branch or parcel locker and pays through WayForPay. On top of that: a metafield-driven theme, moderated reviews, promo codes, Google and Meta product feeds and an English version.

The client and the brief

The client is a Ukrainian dietary supplement brand (we will name it once the client approves). The range covers supplements, medical devices and a few licensed medicines that, by law, can only be sold through pharmacies. The store already ran on Shopify with a Dawn-based theme and two page builders.

What was holding sales back:

• the standard checkout had no convenient way to choose a Nova Poshta branch or parcel locker (Ukraine’s dominant delivery network) or to pay via WayForPay, the local payment gateway customers expect;
• orders were re-typed by hand into KeyCRM, where the team works;
• product copy (ingredients, dosage, who it is for) was hard-coded into templates, so every text change became a developer ticket;
• ad platforms were missing data: no ecommerce events and no product feeds for Google Merchant Center or Meta.

Constraints

• Shopify checkout. Deep changes to the checkout steps are only available on Shopify Plus. Delivery and payment had to be built alongside it without losing order records in Shopify itself.
• Secrets. Keys for WayForPay, Nova Poshta, KeyCRM and the e-mail services cannot live in a theme, because theme code is shipped to the browser.
• A live store. The theme syncs from GitHub, so anything merged to the main branch goes live immediately. Sales could not stop for a single day.
• Medicines. They cannot have a cart or online payment, so their product page needed different logic.
• No-code editing. The client’s team had to manage content in the Shopify admin themselves.

The solution: architecture and stack

The system has three parts, each with a clear job:

Part	What it does	Technology
Shopify theme	Storefront, product page, cart, custom checkout page, customer account	Liquid, JavaScript, metafields and metaobjects
Serverless back end	Receives orders, signs WayForPay payments, creates orders in Shopify and KeyCRM, sends Telegram and e-mail notifications, proxies the Nova Poshta directory, syncs reviews	Node.js on Vercel, Shopify Admin API, webhooks
Utilities	Bulk SEO field updates, handle transliteration, store-to-store data migration	Node.js scripts, Admin GraphQL API

Every key lives only in the back end’s environment variables. The theme only knows the back end’s URL.

Stage 1. A custom checkout

• City, branch or parcel locker selection with suggestions from the first typed character, and a Ukrainian phone mask.
• Online payment through WayForPay: the back end signs the request and the browser moves to the secure payment page. Cash on delivery is also available.
• The back end creates the order in Shopify via the Admin API, so Orders, reports and inventory stay in Shopify.
• In parallel the order goes to KeyCRM with structured delivery fields, the team gets a Telegram message, the admin gets an e-mail and the customer gets a confirmation through eSputnik.
• The customer sees the thank-you page straight away while integrations run in the background. Each outbound call is capped at 8 seconds so one slow service cannot hold up checkout.

Stage 2. A metafield-driven theme

• One universal product template for the whole catalogue: benefits, ingredients, how to take it, usage steps, ingredient cards, FAQ and section images all come from metafields and metaobjects.
• An empty field hides its whole block, so the site never shows “coming soon” placeholders.
• A short guide for the team: which field drives which block and how to set it up in the admin.
• Medicines get a “where to buy” button linking to pharmacies (marked nofollow sponsored) instead of a cart; the price is hidden and the delivery block is not shown.
• A mega menu by category and by need, a filterable catalogue, a branded search page, a blog, a sale page and a branded 404 page.

Stage 3. Sales and trust

• Gift with purchase: the gift product is set in a metafield, no code needed.
• Discount popup: each subscriber gets a unique single-use code valid for a month, created via the Admin API and delivered by e-mail through eSputnik.
• One-click buy with its own analytics event.
• Cart popup after add-to-cart and cross-sell in the cart (excluding medicines and medical devices).
• Reviews: a form on the product page and a dedicated reviews page, with an average rating and a star breakdown. A review goes live when a manager marks it verified in the admin; a Shopify webhook then adds it to the product or removes it.
• Contact form enquiries are routed to the right KeyCRM pipeline.
• Customer account: order status and one-click reorder.

Stage 4. Analytics and SEO

• GTM and GA4 with ecommerce events in the dataLayer, plus Meta Pixel.
• An XML feed for Google Merchant Center (with a separate feed image set via a metafield) and a Meta catalogue feed.
• SEO basics: an H1 on the home page, a custom robots.txt, product image alt text, an automatic meta description when none is set by hand, and noindex on utility pages.
• A script to bulk-fill SEO titles and descriptions, and a script to transliterate the handles of pages, collections, articles and products.

Stage 5. Migration and the English version

For the move to a new store we built a Shopify-to-Shopify migration tool on the Admin GraphQL API. It copies metafield and metaobject definitions, products with variants, prices, SEO and metafields (re-mapping references), collections, customers and, as far as the API allows, historical orders. Steps run one at a time with checks in between. After that came the English version of the theme and content pages.

Challenges and how we solved them

• Checkout without Plus. Rather than fight the platform, we built a separate checkout page and create the order through the Admin API. Customers get the local flow they expect, and the books stay in Shopify.
• Slow third-party services. At first checkout waited for every integration. We split them: the customer gets a response at once, while Telegram, the CRM and e-mails run in the background with a timeout.
• One discount everywhere. A promo code had to show the same way in the cart, on the thank-you page, in e-mails, in eSputnik and in KeyCRM. In the CRM the discount is applied to line prices rather than just noted in a comment; otherwise the totals would not match.
• Duplicated delivery addresses in the CRM. We switched delivery to KeyCRM’s structured fields instead of one free-text line.
• Page builder code. We did not hand-edit sections generated by the page builders; our blocks live in separate, prefixed sections.
• GitHub sync. A single Liquid error stops the theme from syncing, so changes shipped in small releases and were checked on a test store first.

Results

We do not publish conversion rate, average order value or revenue: those figures sit in the client’s accounts and we will share them once the client approves. What changed in practice:

• orders appear in Shopify, KeyCRM and Telegram with no manual re-entry;
• customers choose a parcel locker and pay online without phoning a manager;
• the client’s team edits ingredients, dosage and product FAQs in the admin;
• ad platforms receive ecommerce events and product feeds;
• the store has an English version and a data migration tool.

Scope: about four months of continuous work (25 June – 16 October 2026), more than 330 commits in the theme repository, not counting Shopify’s automatic sync commits.

What you can apply to your store

• A checkout that does not fit your market is not a reason to switch platforms. A separate checkout page, a small back end and the Admin API keep your records in Shopify.
• Keys belong on a server. Anything in a theme is visible to anyone.
• Put content in metafields. One template for every product plus fields your team fills in costs less than dozens of one-off templates.
• Run integrations in the background. A customer should never wait for your CRM to respond.
• Discounts, prices and delivery must match everywhere — cart, e-mail, CRM and analytics.

If you are weighing a CRM for your store, our comparison of custom and off-the-shelf CRMs is a good place to start.

Related services and reading

• Online store development and Shopify development
• CRM integration and analytics and tracking
• Problems this kind of project solves: shoppers abandon their carts, enquiries get lost
• Another Shopify case: tracking and attribution audit

Want your store connected to delivery, payments and your CRM in the same way? Tell us about your project and we will reply with a plan and an estimate.