ShopHub

Building a marketplace that works for both shoppers and sellers

A marketplace is harder to build than a standard e-commerce store because you have two groups to serve at once. Shoppers need fast search, intuitive filtering, reliable product information, and a checkout that does not give them a reason to drop off. Sellers need clean onboarding, inventory management they can actually use, and confidence that their products are being discovered.

The client also wanted the experience to feel premium. Many US marketplace platforms look functional but dated. ShopHub needed to feel modern and trustworthy from the first screen, which meant getting the design right alongside the engineering.

On the technical side, search performance and page load speed were non-negotiable. Product catalogues at this scale need Elasticsearch-powered search and well-structured caching to keep response times fast under real traffic. The AI recommendation layer also needed to be genuinely useful from early in the user journey, not something that only improves after months of data collection.

A complete e-commerce platform across web and mobile

We built ShopHub end to end using Next.js for the web frontend, which gave us server-side rendering for SEO performance alongside the fast client-side experience shoppers expect. The mobile apps were built for both iOS and Android with a design that matches the web platform so users switching between devices get a familiar experience.

The seller side of the platform includes a clean onboarding flow, a dashboard for managing listings and inventory, and order management tools that do not require any technical knowledge to use. Sellers can be live with their catalogue within an hour of signing up.

The AI recommendation engine was built on top of user behaviour data, surfacing relevant products across the home feed, product detail pages, and the cart. It started contributing to higher average order values from the first weeks of data accumulation.

A modern stack built for scale, speed, and search performance

Next.js handled the web frontend with server-side rendering for SEO and fast initial page loads. Node.js powered the API layer. MongoDB stored product, seller, and order data flexibly across categories with very different structures. Elasticsearch handled product search and filtering at speed. Redis kept session data and frequently accessed catalogue information fast in cache. Stripe and PayPal handled the payment layer. AWS managed hosting, storage, and CDN for global asset delivery.

A platform that shoppers trusted and kept coming back to

ShopHub launched to strong early traction with sellers onboarding quickly and buyers responding well to the quality of the browsing and checkout experience. The mobile app ratings reflected the effort put into the UX: users consistently praised how easy it felt to discover products and complete a purchase without frustration.

The AI recommendation engine delivered measurable results from the start. Users who engaged with recommended products had a significantly higher average order value than those who only used search and category browsing. That early signal shaped how the client prioritised the feature roadmap going forward.