The brief
Build a complete commerce system for selling directly to consumers: something a business could run on from the first order, and keep running on as the catalogue and the traffic grow.
That meant treating it as a system from the start, with clear responsibilities for each part, and not as a storefront with features bolted on.
How it is built
The platform is three separate parts with one job each.
The storefront is what customers see and buy from. It is built with Next.js, and its pages are prepared ahead of time and cached close to the customer, so browsing stays fast when a campaign brings a rush of visitors.
The backend owns the business itself: orders, catalogue, customers and payments. It is built with NestJS on PostgreSQL and exposes one structured interface. The storefront talks to it, and so can anything added later, such as a mobile app or a marketplace integration.
The content system is where the business team will manage products and content without asking a developer. It is the next part to be built.
Decisions that matter to the owner
The parts are separate on purpose. The storefront can be redesigned without touching how orders are processed, and the backend can grow without a redesign.
The technology is proven. Next.js and NestJS are widely used and well documented, and the pool of developers who know them is large. The business is never dependent on one specialist.
The structure is enforced. Every area of the backend follows the same pattern, so a new developer can find their way around in days.