For the last 20 years my parents have been running there own business and its pretty well they make a living from it but for the last 5 years they have asked me to do a company website for them for the last 7 years they have Owned a domain for the business but never had a website attached to it. During this time they have built in in-house stock management inventory type of system using Lotus Approach Database System.
Last Couple of weeks ago they made a comment on when we should start working on the website i came up with couple of ideas of building a Scanner for special tags for their stuff that comes in but they thought it be wud difficult due to most/all of packs of Lumber wont have on barcode so we would have to print one off
anyway back on topic I am Just Curious as part of the website would it be good to have a desktop or web-application to Manage our stocks and what not??
As they built one that has whats in the yard and whats being stripped/destripped/machined what not for a Lumber Saw mill Company?
Would that benfit much you guys think as i know a web-based one would b easier to get updated than a desktop one??
Personally, I’d make a web based since I haven’t done much desktop application. Comes down to learning curve. But…web approach has greater benefits. For example, the users doesn’t have to install any software. They can just pop in the URL and ready to go. The bad… you have to test multiple browsers and etc… The testing effort will be harder but accessiblity will be easier. Depending on your stock managment requirement…I won’t be surprise there’s a 3rd party software that does this. I’d suggest doing a research on those first. Maintaining an app can be quite expensive and time consuming.
Personally, being new to the website business, I think you should start small.
Build the brand, establish an identity, have a small shop where Customers can request orders, but don’t process them online, process them through your current known to work methods that you have relied on for the past 20 years. Yes, that means there isn’t an instantaneous result, but it does ensure you won’t promise something you can’t do and helps avoid any glitches that may arise from a fully built web site.
Take it slow. No need to hurry if the business is already making money. You have plenty of time and years to add more features to the web site, but do it based on customer request, not on what you think you need.