Large chains use AI for demand forecasting, customer insights, and marketing automation. Small businesses rarely get that same advantage.
Local business owners are stretched thin. They need customers, funding, and a strong online presence, often with no time or budget for any of it.
Customers want to shop local but don't have an easy way to discover, compare, and support small businesses in one place.
We wanted one platform that solves both sides: helps businesses grow, and helps customers find them.
What it does
A marketplace where customers can search and filter local businesses by category, location, and rating.
Full storefront pages for every business: products and services, photo gallery, store hours, location map, promotions, FAQs, and reviews.
Customers can save favorites, follow businesses for updates, leave ratings and reviews with photos, and message businesses directly.
A business dashboard covering inquiries, reviews, orders, analytics, notifications, and profile completion, all in one place.
Smart grant matching: business owners answer a short eligibility questionnaire and instantly get ranked matches to grants, loans, incubators, accelerators, and pitch competitions, complete with match percentage, funding amount, deadline, and eligibility summary.
An events section for sales, pop-ups, workshops, and community events hosted by local businesses.
Built-in accessibility controls: dark mode, high contrast mode, adjustable text size, reduced motion, full keyboard navigation, and screen reader support.
How we built it
Next.js 14 with the App Router and TypeScript, for a fast, type-safe foundation across every page.
Tailwind CSS for a consistent, responsive design system that scales from mobile to desktop.
A custom React context layer to manage authentication, accessibility preferences, and shared app state like favorites, follows, reviews, and messages.
Hand-built UI components, including cards, modals, star ratings, and SVG-based analytics charts, so we could tune every detail for accessibility and performance.
A custom scoring algorithm for grant matching that weighs industry, years in operation, ownership category, business stage, and team size to produce a genuine fit score.
Realistic sample content across ten businesses, complete with products, reviews, grants, and events, so every flow can be demoed end to end.
Challenges we ran into
Covering real breadth (every feature a small business or customer would expect) while keeping every page genuinely functional instead of a static mockup.
Designing a grant-matching algorithm that felt meaningful rather than arbitrary, and tuning the weighting until the results made sense.
Keeping the interface consistent and accessible, including dark mode, high contrast, and adjustable text size, across dozens of pages without breaking the design system.
Managing shared state cleanly so favorites, follows, reviews, and messages all stay in sync across the entire app.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Shipped a complete, working prototype covering both the business owner journey and the customer journey end to end.
Built a real grant-matching algorithm instead of a static list of programs.
Made accessibility a first-class feature from the start, not an afterthought bolted on at the end.
Delivered over 30 fully functional routes, each demo-ready with polished, responsive design.
What we learned
Designing for two very different user types on one platform takes real discipline in navigation and information architecture.
A strong shared design system is what makes it possible to build this much surface area without the product feeling inconsistent.
Good "AI-powered insight" for small businesses often comes down to clear, well-organized decision support, not complexity for its own sake.
Accessibility improvements like contrast, motion control, and text sizing make the product better for every user, not just the ones who need them.
What's next for ShopLocal
Let business owners claim and verify their real storefronts with live business data.
Connect to live government and nonprofit grant databases so funding opportunities stay current automatically.
Add real-time messaging and push notifications for faster communication between businesses and customers.
Build out real order processing and payments.
Expand grant matching with AI-generated eligibility summaries and guided application assistance.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.