Retail and eCommerce Case study
Also: Business software and compliance
Top Tier Editing: quote calculator and order platform
A .NET Blazor quote calculator, order and checkout flow and back office for Top Tier Editing, an editing service: instant prices from admin-set rules, document upload with word count, Stripe and PayPal payments and scheduled emails.
- Client
- Top Tier Editing
- Service
- Web apps, eCommerce, Integrations
- Years
- 2023–2026 (3 years)
- Stack
- AWS Elastic Beanstalk, AWS CodeBuild, ASP.NET Core, ASP.NET Identity and 21 more
- Platforms
- Web
Overview
Top Tier Editing sells document editing, and customers get a price before they order. The platform has a customer app, where people build a quote from the service, document type, delivery speed and word count, upload their document, pay by card or PayPal and follow their orders, and a back office where staff manage orders, pricing rules, promo codes and email templates. We have developed and maintained it since 2023.
The challenge
Prices depend on many inputs that staff change over time, delivery dates have to respect business hours and holidays, and the word count comes from the uploaded file itself. Staff need to change pricing and switch the calculator off without a developer, and promotional and order emails have to go out on a schedule.
What we built
- An instant quote calculator driven by pricing rules that staff edit: services, document types, delivery methods, word-count tiers, tables and figures, and revision assurance
- Document upload with automatic word count and a clear message for oversized files
- Order placement with supporting documents, formatting requirements and instructions
- Checkout with Stripe and PayPal, promo codes and PDF order receipts
- Customer accounts with email and Google sign-in, and current and past order lists
- A back office with order management, editor assignment, users and roles, and Excel exports
- Business hours and holiday calendars that set delivery times, and a switch that turns the calculator off with a message to customers
- Promo code management and an email template builder for promotional and order emails
- A scheduled email service, and a build and deployment pipeline on AWS
- Customer profile editing with a photo cropper, account deletion and an unsubscribe page for promotional emails
- Customer order lists split into current and completed orders with their status
- Back-office roles (super admin, admin, user and lead) and registration of staff users
- Maintenance of the client's WordPress marketing sites: core, plugin and theme updates, design changes, speed work and security clean-up
How a system like this fits together
Reference architecture: online quote, order and payment platform
Simplified reference architecture, not a client schematic.
- A customer opens the calculator app, builds a quote from the service, document type, delivery speed and word count (prices come from rules that staff maintain) and signs in with email or Google.
- The customer uploads their document, which is stored in Amazon S3; its word count is read from the file, and oversized files get a clear message.
- At checkout the customer pays by card through Stripe or through PayPal, optionally with a promo code, and the order is saved in MySQL.
- Staff sign in to the back office by role to see the order, assign an editor and keep services, pricing rules, promo codes and email templates up to date, with Excel exports.
- A scheduled email service (Quartz.NET) calls the back office, which sends promotional emails built from the email templates through Mailgun or SMTP.
Technology used
| Layer | Choice | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Delivery | AWS Elastic Beanstalk, CodeBuild | build and hosting |
| Data | MySQL, Entity Framework Core | orders, users and pricing rules |
| Payments | Stripe, PayPal | card and PayPal checkout |
| Web apps | Blazor Server, ASP.NET Core | customer calculator and staff back office |
| Files | Amazon S3 | uploaded documents |
| Jobs | Quartz.NET | scheduled promotional and order emails |
What happened next
- Delivered
The work described above was delivered to the client.
- Operational facts
- Our work on this project spanned 2023–2026.
- It was maintained and extended over 3 years.
Could this be your project?
- You need a web application with user accounts, admin tools and reporting. Website and web app development
- You run a retail brand or an online store and need custom ordering, checkout, catalogue or customer-loyalty rules. eCommerce solutions
- You work in retail and ecommerce and want a team that has built for it before. Retail and eCommerce work
Questions about this project
How long did this project take?
Our work on it ran from 2023 to 2026.
What technology was used?
AWS Elastic Beanstalk, AWS CodeBuild, ASP.NET Core, ASP.NET Identity, .NET, C#, MySQL, Stripe, WordPress, PayPal, Blazor, Entity Framework Core, Amazon S3, Quartz.NET, Tailwind CSS, Dapper, Mapster, FluentValidation, Serilog, QuestPDF, Radzen, Syncfusion, MailKit, Mailgun, Swagger.
Was it maintained and extended over time?
Yes. Our work on this project was maintained and extended over 3 years, from 2023 to 2026.
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