A few months back, one of my web design clients asked me to create a solution for a major pain-point in his business.
My client's business is safety inspections and thermography of houses, so he has to collect tons of documents and contracts from his customers.
His pain-point was:
On the website, I added a "log in" function where customers can create an account and enter their project info (service, date, address, etc.) in a form. Then they're taken to a "your project" page where they can see all the documents they need to upload based on the service they chose. When they upload a document, it goes to a password-protected page where my client can see all his customers and their files. He can then add a status comment to the document (accepted, denied, re-send, under evaluation, etc.). This makes communication easier for both my client and the user since they don't have to deal with countless emails.
It's not an advanced program, but it solves my client's problem (I think). He would happily pay me $1500 for it if it works as intended, but I haven't launched it yet as my client is going through other major changes at the moment.
Also, when I started building this, I had no experience at all. I learned along the way and gained valuable skills from the process.
For those curious about the back-end:
-- I DIDN'T use only code for this, as I didn't want to stress myself with learning to code too. --
I now want to sell this to other businesses, maybe offering a free trial so I can validate it, although im not sure how to find clients for this. I could try cold calling or cold email, but i think it might be a bit too agressive when selling large stuff like this program.
Heck, i don't even know if this i a problem other businesses are facing, maybe i'm solving a problem that doesn't exist.
My client's business is safety inspections and thermography of houses, so he has to collect tons of documents and contracts from his customers.
His pain-point was:
- Spending many hours each week collecting customer documents via email, which was total chaos. If there was something wrong in the document, he had to send a new email about it, then wait for a response, find the correct response from the right customer, and review the document again.
On the website, I added a "log in" function where customers can create an account and enter their project info (service, date, address, etc.) in a form. Then they're taken to a "your project" page where they can see all the documents they need to upload based on the service they chose. When they upload a document, it goes to a password-protected page where my client can see all his customers and their files. He can then add a status comment to the document (accepted, denied, re-send, under evaluation, etc.). This makes communication easier for both my client and the user since they don't have to deal with countless emails.
It's not an advanced program, but it solves my client's problem (I think). He would happily pay me $1500 for it if it works as intended, but I haven't launched it yet as my client is going through other major changes at the moment.
Also, when I started building this, I had no experience at all. I learned along the way and gained valuable skills from the process.
For those curious about the back-end:
-- I DIDN'T use only code for this, as I didn't want to stress myself with learning to code too. --
- I used Memberstack for sign-in and member ID, which works well with Webflow (which I used to build my client's website)
- For automation I used Make (Integromat). This made it easy to send files to the database and to the correct user as JSON.
- I used Sheets as the database since it's free and reliable.
- When a client enters the "your project" page, a webhook sends to Make which retrieves the right files with their status and comments. I had ChatGPT help me write the code for handling all of that.
I now want to sell this to other businesses, maybe offering a free trial so I can validate it, although im not sure how to find clients for this. I could try cold calling or cold email, but i think it might be a bit too agressive when selling large stuff like this program.
Heck, i don't even know if this i a problem other businesses are facing, maybe i'm solving a problem that doesn't exist.
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