BuySmarter.online is a web application designed to help users make better buying decisions by providing a structured way to compare products. Instead of managing countless browser tabs or spreadsheets, users can organize their product research in one centralized location with automated data fetching.
Tech Stack:
Next.js
supabase
MongoDB
Coolify
Hetzner
Payloadcms
puppeteer
AWS LambdaFounder & Developer
Personal Project
About
My friends group is obsessed with gear. And I think so are others. But even if you are not spending hours over hours on each buying decision researching the best price value combo, diving into the deepest rabbit holes to then think you'll need what the pros are using, you still want to make good buying decisions online. That's why I created buysmarter.online. A place where you can store all your links from your online research and get a personalised comparison out of it. In the format you like. You are a reader? Get a comparison article with just all the products you want to compare. Or you are the data guy? Save hours on creating an ugly excel and get your data in a beautiful table format.
Challenges
This is my first real web application for which I build the backend myself. In the fotoprints.shop shopify took care of the backend. Now I needed to take care of everything myself, including: Google OAuth Integration, Supabase Setup, Row Level Security (RLS), API Route Handlers, Puppeteer, AWS Lambda Functions, Chromium Integration: Using @sparticuz/chromium & Payload CMS Integration.
Results
Users being able to login & out, access and manage my products and collections. Store them continously and get the first simple information automatically on adding a product via an url. Being able to add important information manually. Additionally a clean, responsive UI with a functional dashboard and sidebar navigation and a self-hosted deployment on Hetzner with Coolify for production access. This could be improved by enriching the product added via an url with every important information to be found on the website (e.g. price, images, specs, ratings, ...) leaving the user with close to nothing to add manually.
