Notes on building the systems businesses run on.
What I have learned shipping point-of-sale, school, clinic, ordering and booking systems: what to build, what to skip, what it costs, and the things that only show up once real users arrive.
What a POS system should actually do for a small shop
Most shops do not lose money to theft. They lose it to not knowing what sold, what is finished, and whether the drawer balanced at closing. Here is what to insist on before you pay for any point-of-sale system.
Read →Choosing a school management system without wasting a term
Schools rarely fail at buying software. They fail at the rollover, when last term's data will not carry into this one. These are the questions to ask before you commit a session to any system.
Read →Why your restaurant is losing orders to a phone number
A hungry person deciding where to eat wants to see the food, the price and how long delivery takes. If your answer is 'call us', most of them call someone else instead.
Read →Paystack, Flutterwave, Remita or Stripe: picking the right one
The gateway question is rarely about fees. It is about who your customers are, what currency they pay in, and what happens on the day a payment succeeds but your system never hears about it.
Read →Building apps that survive a bad network
Software built on fast wifi breaks in the places it gets used: a classroom, a shop counter, a delivery van. Designing for the bad connection is not an optimisation, it is the requirement.
Read →What a website or app actually costs, and why nobody will quote you
The honest answer to 'how much for a website' is another question, and here is why. Also: how to describe what you want so that any developer can price it properly.
Read →What patients actually look for on a hospital website
A patient choosing a hospital has three questions and limited patience. Most clinic websites answer none of them and lead with a photo of the building instead.
Read →Selling on Instagram? Here is what the DMs are costing you
Instagram is where customers find you. It is a terrible place to sell to them. Every 'price?' comment is a sale that needed an answer eight hours ago.
Read →Hotels: every booking platform sale costs you twice
Travel platforms bring guests you would not otherwise reach, and charge for it twice: the commission, and the fact that the guest becomes theirs, not yours.
Read →Custom system or off-the-shelf software: how to decide
Custom is not automatically better, and SaaS is not automatically cheaper. The decision comes down to how unusual your process really is, and how much of it you are willing to change.
Read →Have something like this to build?
Tell me what the system has to do and who uses it, and you get a fixed scope, a timeline and a price before anything starts.
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