StarkShopper — Local gift card and discount platform for Stark County businesses.
We designed and built StarkShopper.com from the ground up — a custom ecommerce platform where Stark County shoppers can purchase discounted gift cards from participating local businesses, driving foot traffic and revenue back into the local economy.
Local businesses needed a way to drive customers in — and shoppers wanted a reason to shop local.
Small businesses in Stark County face constant pressure from online retailers and national chains. Many local businesses have loyal customers who want to support them, but lack a compelling mechanism to actually drive repeat visits and new customer discovery.
At the same time, shoppers looking to support local businesses had no centralized place to find deals or purchase gift cards from participating local merchants. The two sides of the problem — businesses wanting to attract customers, and shoppers wanting to buy local — had no platform connecting them.
The core challenges to solve
- Businesses needed a simple way to list discounted gift cards without complex merchant onboarding
- Shoppers needed a trusted, easy-to-use storefront to browse and purchase local gift cards
- Gift card fulfillment, redemption, and balance tracking needed to be handled by the platform
- Multiple participating businesses had to be supported in a single unified shopping experience
- The platform needed to be multi-merchant — each business managing their own listings and inventory
A purpose-built local gift card ecommerce platform.
We built StarkShopper as a fully custom ecommerce platform — not a plugin or off-the-shelf solution. The platform supports multiple participating local businesses, each able to list discounted gift cards that shoppers can browse and purchase in a single checkout experience.
The platform includes a consumer-facing storefront where shoppers discover and purchase gift cards, a merchant-facing dashboard where businesses manage their listings and track sales, and a platform administration layer for managing participating merchants and monitoring overall health.
Platform features delivered
- Consumer storefront: browse participating businesses, view discount offers, and purchase gift cards
- Full ecommerce checkout with payment processing and order confirmation
- Digital gift card delivery and redemption tracking
- Merchant dashboard: manage gift card listings, set discount levels, and view sales
- Multi-merchant architecture: each business manages their own listings independently
- Platform admin: UST-managed controls for onboarding businesses and monitoring platform activity
Built from scratch for this specific use case.
Custom full-stack application
Built entirely from scratch — no off-the-shelf ecommerce platform. Every feature was designed specifically for the local gift card use case.
Stripe
Secure payment processing for gift card purchases, with order management and payout handling built into the platform.
Merchant isolation
Each participating business manages their own listings, pricing, and gift card inventory through a dedicated merchant dashboard.
UST Application Hosting
Deployed on UST-managed infrastructure with SSL, daily backups, uptime monitoring, and ongoing maintenance.
From merchant onboarding to shopper checkout.
Business joins the platform
A local Stark County business signs up and gets access to the merchant dashboard where they can create and manage their discounted gift card listings.
Lists discounted gift cards
The business sets up their gift card offers — face value, discount amount, and availability — through the merchant dashboard. No technical knowledge required.
Shoppers browse and buy
Shoppers visit StarkShopper.com, browse participating businesses, and purchase gift cards at a discount. Cards are delivered digitally and ready to use.
Business tracks redemptions
Businesses can see their gift card sales and redemption activity through the merchant dashboard, giving them visibility into how the platform is driving traffic.
What made this project technically interesting.
Multi-merchant ecommerce from scratch
Supporting multiple independent businesses in a single storefront — each with their own listings, pricing, and payouts — required a multi-tenant data model and merchant isolation layer built in from the start, not bolted on later.
Gift card lifecycle management
Digital gift cards have their own complexity: unique code generation, balance tracking, partial redemptions, and expiration handling. We built this logic into the platform rather than relying on a third-party gift card service, keeping the system self-contained and the costs predictable.
Keeping merchant onboarding simple
The target merchants are small local businesses — not technical users. The merchant dashboard had to be simple enough that a restaurant or retail shop owner could manage their listings without training or ongoing support from UST.
A live platform supporting Stark County's local business community.
StarkShopper is live and serving both local businesses and shoppers in the Stark County area. Participating businesses use the platform to offer discounted gift cards to customers who want to support local — with no manual fulfillment, no spreadsheets, and no back-and-forth required.
The platform handles the entire transaction lifecycle automatically: purchase, delivery, redemption tracking, and merchant reporting. UST hosts and maintains the infrastructure.
What was achieved
- Live multi-merchant gift card ecommerce platform serving Stark County
- Full checkout and digital gift card delivery built from scratch
- Merchant self-service eliminates manual management for participating businesses
- Automated gift card lifecycle: purchase, delivery, redemption, and balance tracking
- Hosted and maintained by UST on managed application infrastructure
Want to build a custom ecommerce or local marketplace platform?
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