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Aini28

Online plush-toy catalog with a cart whose orders are sent via WhatsApp or email. Managed from Sanity CMS and optimized for cost, SEO and security.

Overview

Plush-toy store for a Peruvian small business. The client needed to showcase the catalog without a payment gateway: orders are assembled in a cart and closed over WhatsApp or email, exactly how he wanted to sell. It has been in production for ~2 years. I did everything end to end —design, frontend, backend and security— with the catalog, offers and checkout fully managed from Sanity.

Key decisions

Headless Sanity for cost

I chose headless Sanity over Shopify/WooCommerce to remove monthly fees: the client only pays for the domain (once a year) and everything else runs on free tiers. From a single panel he manages catalog, offers, cart and checkout.

Orders via WhatsApp/email, no gateway

The client preferred closing sales over WhatsApp. The cart assembles the order and sends it via WhatsApp or email (React Email + Nodemailer), which also covers order confirmation, contact and the complaints book. No gateway: simpler and aligned with how he sells.

Preventive security

Even for a small site I hardened production: CSP, rate limiting with Upstash Redis on the mail endpoints and JSON-LD sanitization. A preventive measure to avoid spam or abuse down the line.

Cost-conscious decisions

I prioritized zero recurring cost down to the details: I use the native <img> tag instead of Next's Image component (whose optimization has a cost) and rely on agents and skills to speed up maintenance.

Challenges & learnings
  • No new technical challenges: I already had experience, so the value was in the judgment to pick the right tools.
  • The focus was minimizing recurring cost: free tiers and native <img> instead of Next's paid component.