SmallConnect

We help small businesses thrive during the pandemic and beyond by connecting them with volunteers skilled in web design, social media marketing, and data analytics.

Comment

Inspiration

Small businesses are struggling to adapt during the pandemic. For two of our team members, a long time restaurant serving generations of college students near our campus recently closed down because they weren't having enough business. We believe small businesses may lack the resources to make modern aesthetic websites and establish a strong online presence to connect with and build their customer base during the pandemic.

What it does

Our solution was to create a web app that connects small businesses with volunteers who are skilled in web development, marketing, and data science to help businesses adapt and thrive in a situation that is highly dependent on online presence and e-commerce. From experience, we also know there are college students who are eager to get involved in a project, but who lack the skills necessary. We wanted to incorporate this volunteer base by creating a mentorship program where students can sign up, be paired with a mentor, and trained to help small businesses by doing web development, marketing, and analysing data from online marketing.

How I built it

We started by prototyping the UI in Figma and then moved on to implementing the front-end using React.js, and set up a backend server using Express.js and Node.js

Challenges I ran into

3 of our 4 team members were not familiar with the different frameworks we used so it was time consuming for each of us to learn them. One of our team members ended up not being able to learn enough and was not able to contribute significantly. Another of our team members ended up carrying a heavy load and the project was pretty ambitious for the short amount of time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of and what we learned

-Tung: Designing the entire UI mockup in Figma despite not being a designer -Afaz: learning MongoDB from scratch and making the database -Johnny: I learnt some JavaScript and gained some PM experience

What's next for SmallConnect

We would finish implementing a functioning prototype and deploy the website using Heroku or Google Cloud. After some user testing, we would improve the product based on feedback and incorporate more features addressing security concerns. Then, starting to reach out to real businesses and potential volunteers to make an actual impact!

Built With

Share this project:

Updates