I recently completed my first project as an independent developer, Elemental Gift! This e-commerce website sells handcrafted gift boxes designed to spread warmth and joy. Each gift box is lovingly made with attention to detail, making it a perfect token of affection to create cherished memories for your loved ones.

To meet my client's expectations, I created a simple website with a clean design and a colour palette that conveyed the desired feeling. My priority for this project was to provide my client with a standalone system that she could easily manage to display product information, options, and pricing using a CMS. We process payments using Stripe and monitor them through a dashboard, which also helps us schedule package deliveries. A domain-based email was set up for business communication.

To build the website, I styled NextJS using a combination of ChakraUI and my custom TailwindCSS components. I integrated GraphQL to generate the data layer and API functions, Stripe to process payments, and Google Analytics to track website traffic and user behaviour.

The website is deployed on Vercel and linked to my GitHub repository. I paid close attention to the user experience, ensuring the website's performance, responsiveness, and security met high standards. I used media queries to adapt to different screen sizes and implemented server-side rendering for faster page loads. Moreover, I integrated React Hook Forms and requests to the NZPost API to calculate shipping costs and localisation features.

On the project management side of things, I used Clockify to track my time and verify my estimations at the beginning of the project. Also, I configured a Trello board to break down the tasks and track what is going on at any time.