Overview
SHEAIMS is a multi-brand beauty destination that brings together a curated selection of iconic and emerging makeup, skincare, hair and body brands — from international names to Moroccan labels. I designed and built their complete e-commerce platform from scratch: a bilingual storefront, a custom REST API, Moroccan payment and delivery integrations, and a back-office that lets the team run the entire shop on its own.
The challenge
- A large, deep catalogue — several brands, three levels of categories and products with multiple variants — that had to stay easy to browse and fast to search.
- Local payment expectations: online card payment through Morocco’s interbank gateway, PayPal for international buyers, and cash on delivery, which remains the most popular option in Morocco.
- Real logistics: shipping prices that depend on the country and city, multiple carriers, and automatic shipment creation with a courier.
- A non-technical team that needed to manage products, promotions, orders, returns and content every day without a developer.
What I built
Bilingual storefront
A fully localized French/English shop with brand pages, a three-level category tree, product pages with variants and image galleries, customer reviews and likes, a promotional announcement bar, hero sliders and editable content blocks — all animated with Framer Motion and React Spring for a premium feel.
Cart, checkout & payments
- CMI (Centre Monétique Interbancaire) card payments with secure hashed requests and server-side callback verification.
- PayPal checkout for international customers.
- Cash on delivery, with dedicated success, failure and processing pages for every payment outcome.
- Coupons (percentage or fixed amount, optionally limited to non-discounted products) and time-limited flash sales.
Shipping & logistics
A shipping engine based on zones defined down to the country and city level, with configurable carriers and rates. Orders are pushed to the Speedaf courier API; its DES-encrypted protocol was implemented in pure JavaScript (node-forge) to stay compatible with modern Node.js and OpenSSL 3.
Customer area
Customers can follow their orders, manage addresses and settings, keep a wishlist and request returns online, choosing a reason (defective, wrong item, damaged…). Refunds can be issued to the original payment method, as store credit or by bank transfer. Transactional emails confirm every important step.
B2B access & marketing
- Dedicated Pro and Retail application forms for beauty professionals and resellers.
- A newsletter offering a discount on the first order, a “News & Tips” blog, a brand gallery and a careers page.
Admin back-office
More than twenty management screens covering products, brands, categories, orders, returns, refunds, coupons, flash sales, shipping zones, carriers and rates, hero slides, announcements, content blocks, blog, gallery, newsletter subscribers and users — with a rich text editor for content and Excel exports for orders and subscribers.
Architecture & security
- Frontend: Next.js 15 (App Router), TypeScript, next-intl, TanStack Query for data caching, SASS.
- Backend: Node.js / Express REST API in TypeScript with Prisma ORM and PostgreSQL, organized in about thirty feature modules and a fully translatable data model.
- Security: JWT authentication in HTTP-only cookies, role-based access (customer / admin), Helmet, rate limiting and Zod validation on every input.
- Infrastructure: deployed on a Linux VPS behind Nginx for full control over performance and configuration.
Outcome
- A complete, independent online shop — catalogue, payments, delivery and after-sales — running on a custom stack with no platform fees.
- Payment and delivery options adapted to the Moroccan market while remaining open to international customers.
- A team that manages its catalogue, promotions and orders day to day through its own back-office.