Background
In the competitive e-commerce market, launch speed can determine whether a startup succeeds or fails. Zecento, an Italian startup that helps users save on Amazon purchases, had reached a crucial stage: it needed to monetize its platform by introducing a premium tier.
Zecento’s idea is simple and effective: users can monitor Amazon prices and access exclusive discounts. To make the business sustainable, the team needed premium functionality backed by a robust payment system.
Timing was critical. Zecento already had users interested in premium features, and every delay meant losing potential paying customers.
The project
The work focused on two key elements of the monetization strategy.
Complete premium page
- A compelling design encouraging users to upgrade
- A dedicated dashboard with exclusive features
Enterprise-ready Stripe integration
- Recurring subscriptions
- Monthly and annual plans
- Webhooks to synchronize payment status automatically
The solution used Next.js, Stripe, and AWS, providing the scalability and reliability needed for a growing platform.
The challenges
Joining an existing project means working with code and processes that are not always perfect. The main challenges were:
- Rapid onboarding: the subscription lasted only one week, with a substantial amount of work to complete.
- New technologies: AWS required additional investigation because I had only used it briefly before.
- Limited communication: during the project, Zecento’s founders were in San Francisco, making coordination more difficult.
The results
One week was not enough to finish every requested feature, but I completed the entire frontend for the new Zecento Premium page.
To finish the product, the founders still needed to connect the remaining APIs, particularly the Stripe integration. I developed that integration but could not fully test it because of issues in the AWS environment.
The result was a complete premium frontend and a solid technical foundation for the final payment integration.
Want to monetize your platform?
If you have an active user base and need to introduce premium features or payments quickly without compromising security and reliability, let’s talk.
Book a free call and tell me about your monetization strategy.
