E-commerceWeb application · E-commerce
Deals-discovery web app with geo search
We built a standalone deals-discovery web app for a US price-intelligence startup: hosted faceted search over a live deal index, an analytics event pipeline, and geo-filtering by ZIP or browser location. The distinctive piece was bridging the site, embedded in an iframe, to the client's existing browser extension via cross-window messaging so a single click rewrites store cookies and lands the shopper on the cheapest store. It was delivered ahead of the estimated hours.
Problem
The client already had a price-finder extension and wanted a standalone site where shoppers could browse discounted home-improvement products and be taken straight to whichever store had the cheapest price, without re-keying their location.
Solution
The company began with a written architecture decision, comparing a low-code hosted approach against a component-framework single-page app and recommending the SPA for control, portability and analytics. It built the app with a hosted search service, delivering faceted search over the client's deal index with brand and price refinements, pagination and tile results, plus an event pipeline capturing view, click, add-to-cart and conversion events, supplemented by a database collection recording cheapest and highest price and the price difference per purchase. The distinctive engineering was the bridge to the existing extension: the site runs embedded in an iframe, so the team injected the extension's content script into all frames with URL guarding and used cross-window messaging as the transport, and on a deal click the extension rewrites store and ZIP cookies to the cheapest store or, if absent, shows an install-and-configure modal. Geo search was added mid-project via the search service's geolocation with browser location or a ZIP resolved through a mapping API, and the UI was designed in-house and built responsive with light/dark theming.
Key features
- Architecture trade-off analysis (hosted low-code vs component-framework SPA)
- Hosted faceted search with brand and price refinements, pagination and tile results
- Search-analytics event pipeline (view, click, add-to-cart, conversion)
- Database collection recording cheapest/highest price and price difference per purchase
- Iframe embedding with cross-window messaging to the existing browser extension
- Cheapest-store cookie rewrite on a 'See Deal' click, with an install-and-configure fallback modal
- Geo search by browser location or ZIP resolved through a mapping API
- Responsive UI with a collapsible filter sidebar and light/dark theming, designed in-house
Tech stack
- Algolia InstantSearch (React)
- Bitbucket
- Chrome Extension MV3
- Figma
- Firebase Auth
- Google Analytics
- Google Maps Geocoding API
- React
- TypeScript
- Vite
- ngrok