Overview
The Craft Pallet is a production e-commerce and order management platform developed for a personalized gifts business.
The business previously relied heavily on Instagram and WhatsApp to receive and coordinate customer orders. This created friction around collecting product selections, customization details, customer photos, payment information, and tracking order progress.
I designed and developed a centralized platform that digitizes this workflow while keeping the experience simple for customers and manageable for the business.
Customer Experience
Customers can browse products, select available options, provide customization information, upload required images, and create an order through the website.
After creating an order, the system generates a unique order reference and guides the customer through the payment process. This creates a structured flow instead of requiring the customer and business to coordinate every detail manually through WhatsApp.
Admin Dashboard
A dedicated admin interface allows the business to manage products and orders from a centralized location.
Orders can move through defined stages such as payment verification, approval, production, completion, and delivery. This gives the business a consistent way to track the lifecycle of every order.
Payment Integration
Razorpay was integrated to handle online payments.
The payment workflow was connected to the application's order lifecycle so that payment information can be associated with the corresponding order and verified before processing.
Image Management
Since personalized products require customers to submit photos, the platform includes image upload functionality using Cloudinary.
This provides a dedicated storage layer for customer-provided images instead of relying on manual file transfers through messaging applications.
Email Notifications
Resend was integrated for transactional email delivery, allowing the application to send relevant customer communications from the business domain.
Architecture
The application uses Next.js and React for the frontend, Node.js and Express.js for backend APIs, PostgreSQL for persistent data storage, and Prisma as the ORM.
The system was deployed to a Linux VPS using Nginx as the reverse proxy, with the production application configured for the custom domain and HTTPS.
Engineering Challenges
Managing Custom Orders
Personalized products require different combinations of products, quantities, options, and customer-provided images. The ordering workflow therefore needed to capture these details in a structured way while remaining simple for customers.
Payment State Management
Payment processing introduced additional states into the order lifecycle. The system needed to distinguish between orders awaiting payment, successful payments, and orders ready for business-side processing.
Business Workflow
The system was designed around the actual operational workflow of the business rather than treating the application as a generic online store.
Outcome
The result is a production-ready platform that provides The Craft Pallet with a centralized digital ordering system, online payment processing, structured order tracking, product management, and customer-facing ordering capabilities.
